Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition - Now your playing with Playtests!

[huttj509]

Uhh, the wizard still has to succeed on an attack roll. Unless there's already some piece of cheese that lets you auto-succeed on every attack roll already that I missed.

And uses the mage's action. I mean, yeah, if it's all against 1, the mage using their actions to keep the one from moving (but can still attack) is great, but in a larger fight, it might not be worthwhile to lock yourself down each round to immobilize an enemy for one round.

[Dienekes]

I'd put Fighter and Rogue at T4 - while they can't do much except attack, we don't know that they're bad at this. The casters are T3 or possibly T2 - they don't seem to have anything gamebreaking (Charm and Ray of Frost excluded), can game the action economy somewhat, and have utility stuff. But of course, until we see the Monk, D&D's mage killer, the casters will seem really strong.

I don't know about the Rogue. A better version of Skill Mastery at 1st level for every skill he's trained in? That's really awesome just by itself depending on what shenanigans skills can do.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Now seems to be a good time for three general warnings. First, please don't advise or facilitate copyright infringement here. Second, please keep it civil and don't insult other people based on their playstyle preferences. Third, please tone down the hostility and profanity.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

Did I skim over something?

There seems to be no Flat footed or Touch attack AC.

Or BAB. Then again the +hit for the Dwarf warrior is +6 (Str is only +3) so I doubt we are seeing everything.

3 things they did right.

[Craft (Cheese)]

BAB seems to be constant: Fighter gets +3 for weapons, Wizard gets the same for spells (and +2 for weapons), while the clerics get +2 for weapons and +0 for spells.

Wait wait wait, Fighter only gets +1 extra point of BAB!?

[Empedocles]

Can somebody please help me?

I've had it emailed to 2 different emails (1 of which was my WotC account email) and had both of them be a 400 error. I also reset my cache, and tried the Sword & Board link. Anyone have any possible solutions?

[Craft (Cheese)]

BAB seems to be constant: Fighter gets +3 for weapons, Wizard gets the same for spells (and +2 for weapons), while the clerics get +2 for weapons and +0 for spells.

Wait wait wait, Fighter only gets +1 extra point of BAB!?

My mistake folks: The Quarterstaff is a finesse weapon, making the attribute bonus +2 (the wizard's DEX modifier), meaning the wizard's weapon BAB is -1. That sounds much better.

[Dienekes]

BAB seems to be constant: Fighter gets +3 for weapons, Wizard gets the same for spells (and +2 for weapons), while the clerics get +2 for weapons and +0 for spells.

Wait wait wait, Fighter only gets +1 extra point of BAB!?

I think the wizard is using Dex instead of Str on the quarterstaff so +0 for weapons (and -2 damage? I think they were thinking of 3.5 finesse here). Rogue +2 weapons, Cleric seems to maybe be either +2 in both or one or the other. The numbers are funky.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I think the wizard is using Dex instead of Str on the quarterstaff so +0 for weapons. Rogue +2 weapons, Cleric seems to maybe be either +2 in both or one or the other. The numbers are funky.

I corrected my Wizard mistake above, though it IS weird now that I look at both clerics instead of just one: The Moradin cleric has a higher spell attack bonus even though his WIS modifier is lower! The frick's up with that? I have a feeling there's more to calculating attack bonuses than we got to see in the how to play document.

[DrBurr]

This is really part of their test... it's not about "oh, here's D&D5e, go have fun!" It's "Here's some characters, here's some monsters, here's the situation you are in... how does this work for you? How do the mechanics feel? What's wrong with this? What's right with this?"

Character creation is later on, and then they'll have everyone rolling up tons of characters and listening to "this isn't intuitive, this is unbalanced..." and tweaking things over and over again.

I think, in the end, people keep forgetting that this isn't a product. It's the first draft of a set of rules, and are subject to massive, sweeping changes over the next few years as they approach having an actual releasable product.

I'm aware but I still want my group to have fun and I have more than 5 members committed for my Tuesday group, plus Its fun

[Pyromancer999]

Read it again. Even the first level elf wizard has 16 hp, not enough to auto-charm. Also, it just prevents the caster from being attacked, not allies. So you can charm, then you have a better chance to diplomance him.

Edit: Charmed is not dominated. Read the description under 'conditions.'

Hmmm....true. So they'd just have to beat the tar out of them to auto-charm. The point is, it's still a good ability, and should not allow for auto-charming.

[navar100]

Why is WOTC so focused on having heavy armor be The Suck? Why must it reduce speed? It's fine to reduce speed if not proficient but proficiency implies knowing how to walk in it. At least make it based on Strength. At some Strength score armor no longer encumbers you to cause a lower speed.

I get it. No warrior in heavy armor will beat Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps in their respective races, but come on, they can win against the tortoise that beat the hare.

[DefKab]

I think I just got slapped in the face... I am actually offended.
Give me a second while I ice this bruise.

Serious, WOTC, WTF?

Ok, some fighters dont want the Highest AC, they want mobility, and might sacrifice the heavy armor for it. Got it.
THIS IS NOT THAT FIGHTER.
That fighter has a good Dex.
That fighter has something to do with its mobility.

This fighter is a Dwarf. With an OK, but not good, Dex, and gains NOTHING by losing out on AC.

HOWEVER, the Paladin, c'mon, that's what he is, no, he OUTSTRIPS the fighter's AC. So, the Fighter is in the back with the Rogue, because they can't take it, and meanwhile, the Wizard is laughing maniacally as he single handidly shuts down any one creature he wants. You know, unless that creature has a ranged weapon, then he just shrugs and shoots the Wizard in the FACE.

UHG. This is infuriating.
It looks like 3.5, meaning it has little purpose to exist, as 3.5 is STILL better supported.
It BORROWS from 4th, but only in a way that makes it suck. (Hit Dice is fine. I'm all for mundane healing. But 4e did it better.)
And it tries to Emulate AD&D. Hell, the Module looks like it's from the 1980s, and that's great, because it seems like the Adventure is the only thing that's worth having out of this package!

I'll play the playtest, WOTC, but only because if enough people write to you, you might be convinced to get the hell out of my game...

And note, none of this mentions what they left out. Just what they wanted to show. You know, what they thought was the BEST PARTS...

EDIT: Oh, LOL! Now I know why I liked the Module, it was written by Gary Gygax! Glad to see WOTC is really comin' up with somethin' original here....

[Thanatos 51-50]

So, I've signed up for the Playtest and whenever I click the handy link in my E-mail to download the data I get...

A web page informing me I have a bad link.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

[Draz74]

Some thoughts:

On Boring Fighters

People are complaining that the Level 1 Fighter can't do anything but swing attack after attack. That's true ... but, um, duh. They pretty much told us in preview articles that they were going to start out by introducing a Fighter that appealed to grognards or newbies who don't want to have to make choices as a Fighter in fights, just kill stuff.

I'm not concerned with the Fighter being boring, because we know they're going to eventually include ACFs or feats or whatever to give the Fighter some more interesting options. Heck, even with just the preview materials, it's easy to assume that the "Guardian" theme of the Cleric of Moradin is also accessible to Fighters, and swap it in.

I assume the Fighter's lack of class features is also because his main class feature is just bonuses to attack and damage; at least, his attack/damage numbers don't seem to match his ability modifiers (even with the additional +2 damage that is listed as a class feature ... hmmm ... apparently I'm missing something).

What I am concerned with is that they won't be able to truly balance characters with more numerical bonuses against characters who swap out such bonuses in favor of more flexibility. I don't see the two versions of the Fighter really playing well together at the same table.

On Races

Same issue, really, with Humans. People are complaining (at least on the WotC boards) about how the human has no racial features. But the human pregen has higher ability scores across the board -- +1 to all scores, it looks like -- than the other characters. So apparently that's the Humans' appeal. Blech. Not only boring, and hard to balance with races that have actual options from their race, but also kind of breaks verisimilitude, since all the normal NPC humans probably aren't going to have higher-than-average ability scores due to this Human Racial "Feature."

As long as I'm complaining about Races ... the Elves are immune to sleep and charm effects. Not resistant, not gain-advantage-when-saving-against, just immune. Same with Dwarves and poison. Apparently WotC still hasn't learned that immunities are bad game design.

Poison

Speaking of poison ... it seems like poison just deals extra damage on a hit, which is negated by a CON-save. That's a little bit boring, but frankly it's better than any previous D&D poison rules. (Still unrealistic, but then, so were all the others.) 1e and 2e poison turned combat into a long, swingy series of save-or-lose effects. 3e and 4e poison (by separate means) both turned combat into a slow grind-fest of bookkeeping. 5e poison so far is definitely a step in the right direction.

One problem with it, though, is that it leads to a lot of dice-rolling on a single attack. Now the attack of a poisonous creature involves an attack roll, a damage roll, a CON save, and a poison-damage roll. So, basically, in terms of how long it takes to resolve, it takes as long as two attacks. Yuck. I think just one additional die roll to resolve poison would be preferable, which should obviously be a CON save. So I think I'd recommend to WotC that the poison damage added to an attack should be changed to a flat number, save-for-half. One thing that would be nice about this would be that getting poisoned always sucks (except for Dwarves, I guess).

As a side note, I'll join the choir here and mention that Intoxicated is terrible for game flow. Damage Reduction is already a mechanic that annoys me ... but this is variable DR, 1d6. Talk about awkward mechanics.

On Dice Mechanics

I have mixed feelings about the "Advantage/Disadvantage" mechanic, which replaces (basically) all Circumstance Modifiers from earlier editions. On the one hand, it's nice to have a unified mechanic for them. Makes the DM's decision process much easier. And it gives an easy way for lots of spells or effects to give non-stacking bonuses to a character.

But on the other hand, the non-stacking thing doesn't really make sense. So if I'm drunk, hanging upside down, using an improvised bow and arrow, firing at a concealed target that's outside my bow's normal range, I still only get an (effective) -5 penalty to my attack? Ha.

Even worse, if I have Advantage on the same attack for some reason, it cancels all the Disadvantages by RAW.

Also, there are situations (like the elf's Keen Senses) where the Advantage bonus seems a little overpowering. And other situations where it probably won't be severe enough. The advantage of subjective Circumstance Modifiers was adaptability.

This new reroll-based system would be more commendable if it meant the game was getting rid of fiddly modifiers to die rolls in general, which slow the game down with math. But they don't. The new skill system is plenty proof of that -- +3 situational modifiers to various checks all over the place. (That bothers me more than the lack of a set skill list.)

Almost-Brilliant Idea: Constitution

The one thing in the ruleset that really made me stop and say, "Huh, that's new ... and elegant ..." was the rule that, when you level up and roll for new Hit Points, you get a minimum number of new HP equal to your CON bonus (if any). That's a cute way to make CON matter to your HP without making it matter too much, like it did in 3e. And it's a cute way to allow characters to roll for HP without the danger of rolling a 1 and crippling their character's defenses forever more.

But as I thought about it, I realized it wasn't really so great for two reasons:

1. I don't really have a problem with HP/level simply being a set number instead of a die roll.
2. Most characters aren't going to have a CON modifier higher than +2. So that's not really going to improve HP rolls much; it just lets you turn 1's into 2's. Which is especially lame for big-HD classes like Fighters.

Oddly, after presenting this improved, almost-cool new rule, the pregen characters don't use it. They just add the average numbers of HP (rounded down) at each level. Lame.

On Ability Scores

CON won't be the dominant defensive stat that it was in 3e. But I'm still thinking it will be the second-most important stat for pretty much everyone.

As other people have been saying, CHA is back to its classic position as the universal dump stat. It doesn't even resist Fear effects anymore, like they said it would a couple weeks ago. (Maybe because they've been realizing that having to have every score high for Saving Throws against spells is a problem?) None of the pregen classes use CHA at all, except (probably, based on some reverse-engineered guessing) for the uses/day of the Cleric's Channel Divinity power. And the rules for social encounters use CHA, of course ... but they also encourage the DM to frequently ignore the dice and just roleplay social encounters without them. So ... yeah. 8 CHA seems like it will be very common once again. And INT isn't in much better shape, unless you're a Wizard.

Interestingly, no indication yet about whether ability scores will increase as you level up. Except that apparently they don't, at Levels 1-3.

Based on reverse-engineering guesses, they seem to still be assuming a standard ability score array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. And Races seem to grant only ability bonuses, not penalties. (Hello, 4e. )

On Monster Stat Blocks

On a quick eyeball, I'm guessing that monsters' stats are generated similar to 4e, mostly looked up on a table based on the monster's Role and Difficulty Level. They certainly aren't constructed using the same rules as PCs, with an initial boost in HP equal to CON score.

I like having monsters follow the same rules as PCs, but I have also heard a lot of 4e DMs praise the simplified monster stat block generator, so I guess it might be worth it in spite of my design aesthetic.

On Six Saving Throws

I think people are worrying a little too much about having to keep seven different defenses (including AC) high. Especially from a spellcaster-centric point of view; I actually think STR saves will be most common against warrior-types, not spellcasters. (E.g. bull rush.) And we don't know yet whether ability scores scale with level, and whether all of them scale at the same rate.

I'm pretty sure WotC has enough balance sense to avoid Spell Save DCs scaling with the level of spell slot used. That would be uber-broken in this system.

On Daily Resources

I'm not really a big fan of daily resources. They still seem like they'll put the pressure on DMs to provide a lot of urgency in order to avoid the 15-minute workday. But as long as Vancian Casting is here to stay, I guess it's sensible for all classes to have daily resources that they can try to spend on the same schedule as the caster's spell slots.

Which the Fighter and the Halfling do, but (apparently) not the Rogue, Human, Dwarf, or Elf. Odd.

On Equipment Lists

I do think people are making too big a deal of messy tables for weapons, armor, and equipment; these were obviously just thrown together and can be changed a LOT by playtesting.

I am a bit concerned about the weapons seeming a little bland, though. And a few other nitpicks about weapons. Oh -- like Longbow being a "simple" ranged weapon. Uh. Look at the longbow's historical use. It shouldn't be a simple weapon; it should be (in 3e jargon) an exotic weapon.

OK, I'll add more later, but I've gotta sign off for now ...

[Craft (Cheese)]

As long as I'm complaining about Races ... the Elves are immune to sleep and charm effects. Not resistant, not gain-advantage-when-saving-against, just immune. Same with Dwarves and poison. Apparently WotC still hasn't learned that immunities are bad game design.

What you're forgetting here is that elves being immune to sleep is "iconic", and thus a sacred cow. What!? My elf character isn't immune to sleep effects anymore!? Those bastards are copying WoW again to bring in the kiddies! *gets pitchfork and torch*

I'm pretty sure WotC has enough balance sense to avoid Spell Save DCs scaling with the level of spell slot used. That would be uber-broken in this system.

By my reading of the magic section, that's how it already works. DC is always 10 + primary spellcasting modifier. (INT for wizards, WIS for clerics).

[Textor44]

13.5 hours, and I'm still trying to get the playtest downloaded. They really must not have prepared properly for the demand.

FYI, I just swapped from firefox to IE on the download link, and it went through. If anyone else is having issues, you may try swapping browsers temporarily and see if that fixes it.

[The Troubadour]

None of the pregen classes use CHA at all, except (probably, based on some reverse-engineered guessing) for the uses/day of the Cleric's Channel Divinity power.

I think that's based on Wisdom.

[Starbuck_II]

13.5 hours, and I'm still trying to get the playtest downloaded. They really must not have prepared properly for the demand.

FYI, I just swapped from firefox to IE on the download link, and it went through. If anyone else is having issues, you may try swapping browsers temporarily and see if that fixes it.

Or try the backup link:
http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answ...tail/a_id/2230

[Draz74]

OK, I'm back ...

...
They took away ability damage/drain the very worst of all 3e's bookkeeping nightmares, which made you re-calculate your entire character mid-battle.

HALELUJAH.

What you're forgetting here is that elves being immune to sleep is "iconic", and thus a sacred cow. What!? My elf character isn't immune to sleep effects anymore!? Those bastards are copying WoW again to bring in the kiddies! *gets pitchfork and torch*

Yeah, and I wouldn't have been quite as annoyed if it was just sleep effects they were immune to. But Charm effects, too ...

I think that's based on Wisdom.

Equally possible.

On Class Balance

So far, this edition is looking to be just as much "spellcasters = win" as 3e. The spells are still powerful, the spellcasters still know a lot of different spells, and they still get a pretty liberal quantity of spells per day. Well, maybe not at Level 1. But by Level 3, they can prepare/cast 5 spells per day. That's more than I was hoping for -- in my book, when they gain their first Level 2 spell slot(s), it should come at the expense of Level 1 spell slots.

Mirror Image caught my eye. One of the classic, best defensive spells in 3e. So how did they nerf it? Well, they made it conjure 2 images, instead of 1d4+1. So it still gives the Wizard a 67% miss chance when he first casts it. Wow. I guess it can now also be destroyed by area spells, so that's another nerf. Still ... seems pretty powerful. And so do a lot of other spells, besides the obviously-overpowered Ray of Frost that everyone's protesting.

And this is only when the spells are prepared in Level 1-2 spell slots. They've said that spells gain more powerful effects when prepared in higher slots. (I'm pretty sure they just deleted such lines from the playtest document. I remember the fluff description at the beginning of one spell implying how it grows in power later in the game, even though its provided rules text didn't have anything scaling.) For some spells, such as Cure Light Wounds, which look weak here, that's good. But other spells, I'm a little worried to think about them improving and scaling.

Besides the fact that spellcasting is still awesome (and therefore the Wizard), my spidey sense is also tingling about ClericZilla being a thing. The pregen Cleric of Moradin is ... impressive, in melee, even without his spells. And his spells are nothing to sneeze at either. He might not outfight the Fighter, but even if he doesn't, I'm having a hard time seeing what design space is left for the Paladin, if a Cleric can be this martial. Also, Clerics seem to be operating with Spirit Shaman-style casting: prepare a number of spells in the morning, then cast from that selection spontaneously throughout the day. Which is a very powerful mechanic, moreso than the Wizard's strict preparation. It's not entirely clear whether Clerics "know" (can prepare from) their entire spell list ... but I'm guessing they can, since it would be really annoying to keep track of a "Spells Known" list and a "Spells Prepared" list and a "Spell Slots Used" table.

Oh yeah, and Clerics also essentially get bonus spell slots (above the amount that was already worrying me) from their Channel Divinity feature. They can only use Channel Divinity charges to replicate a select few spells, as well as some effects that aren't technically spells but might as well be ... but considering that lets them spontaneously "cast" a number of magical effects without even having to prepare them, it's pretty powerful.

Leaving casters behind for now ... I'm also kind of worried about the Rogue sucking. They've talked about how they're trying to get away from the phenomenon in 4e, and to a lesser extent in 3e, where the Rogue made up for his lack of traditional melee power by being a melee glass cannon with high DPR. I have mixed feelings about that. It can work, if the game has enough mechanical non-combat elements for the Rogue to have meaningful class features. This playtest ruleset ... doesn't. There's just not all that much that the Rogue can do compared to the other characters, in any situation that doesn't involve traps or sneaking or locked doors.

The Rogue's best feature is Skill Mastery, where he can always Take 10 on a trained skill check. No, wait, it's better than that -- he can roll the die, then if it's lower than a 10, upgrade it to a 10 before he adds his bonus and announces the result. Cool. (And quite similar to the "Coasting" rules in my own homebrew system, by the by.) But wait -- it's not as cool as it sounds, due to the limited breadth of abilities that can be covered by Trained "Skills" in this system. The sample Rogue can breeze through opening locks, finding traps, sneaking, buying and selling, handling animals, and gossiping with the common folk. That's nice ... but there's a lot of roguish tasks in the world that aren't covered in that list, which the Rogue should be able to "show off" and make look easy, which he can't. Put that together with a lack of cool combat abilities, and ... yeah. I'd rather play some other class.

On Spells

Besides the worry I noted earlier, about many spells being overpowered, I'm also worried that they're just not being written carefully enough. As someone on the WotC forums noted, there's no duration given for Sleep. If nobody slaps you to wake you up, you apparently Sleep indefinitely. I guess that kind of has a Sleeping Beauty fairy tale vibe, but ... no.

Likewise, the Battle Psalm spell perpetuates Ye Olde Bard Ambiguity, where it doesn't make it clear what the caster can do while they "continue singing" to make the duration of the spell continue. As-written, I'd interpret it the same way rules gurus interpreted Bard Song: you can keep singing while you do anything that's not prohibited (i.e. cast more spells). Continuing to sing doesn't require spending your Action on it each turn. But DMs who prohibited Bards from attacking while they sang will still do so for Clerics with the Battle Psalm spell. Is a little clarification clause too much to ask?

I'm also pretty disappointed with the Rituals system. Instead of noncombat effects being a truly separate mechanic, like they were in 4e, they are just an extra line at the end of a spell that lets a caster cast those spells outside combat, without even preparing them or expending a spell slot. I guess that's not bad, in and of itself -- it really just means that if a caster cares enough about performing a Ritual spell quickly, enough to spend a Prepared spell on it, he can do so. So I guess my real issue is that there aren't very many Rituals provided (just Alarm, I think), and they suck (just like in 4e, on the whole). Spending 25 gp and ten minutes on eight hours of home security seems pretty steep.

And the 25 gp of material components that an Alarm ritual requires aren't even generic components like 4e had. No, they're the same old "ha ha, I get it, funny joke" components that older editions had. So you'll either have to do a load of bookkeeping for material components, or abstract them away like 3e did with spell component pouches (in which case, what's the point?) And even if you cast the spell as a non-ritual, you need to spend 1 gp on a silver bell material component. Come on WotC, I thought we were past all that. I mean, requiring a special gem or a rare dragon's scale for powerful rituals would be kind of cool and flavorful, but ... requiring a 1-gp bell for an Alarm spell? That's just annoying.

On Monetary Bookkeeping

Speaking of keeping track of material components, simplifying or abstracting mundane inventories doesn't seem to be on the priority list. Coinage is the part that is already annoying me the most. Keeping track of the party's coins was a pain in the butt in 3e, and it looks even worse here with the addition return of two more kinds of coins, with a "fluff" note that these new kinds of coins are actually hard to even spend, drawing suspicion from merchants and so forth.

On Scaling

One of the things that does please me is that WotC seems to be sticking to their plan of having HP/damage scale pretty quickly, but having attack bonuses and AC largely stay the same. I mean, we don't know enough details of character advancement to say whether that's going to stay true forever, but it's a good sign.

On Save-Or-Dies

Charm is a little overpowered in non-combat situations right now, but I'm not too worried about that -- I like that they are at least trying to make sure that effects with HP Thresholds (like Sleep) have some uses against creatures that are above those thresholds.

That being said, if you're embracing a HP Threshold mechanic, why the devil doesn't it apply to the Medusa too? I mean, you're already abandoning the Medusa's mythological roots by making it so that tough characters (i.e. those that succeed on their CON save) can resist the petrification effect, so why shouldn't having a lot of HP protect you in the same way?

On Critical Hits

Critical Hits are mostly 4e-style: only on a 20 (although I'd imagine class features or feats could change that at higher levels), deal maximum damage. Good. This was one of the things I thought 4e did well. Interestingly, bonus damage such as Sneak Attack is also maximized. That should keep crits painful through all levels of the game!

TL;DR

I will probably remember other comments I was going to make, later. But in the meantime, here's my overall impression:

The playtest rules do a very good job feeling like D&D. IMO, in spite of having the unified "d20 + modifiers vs. DC" dice mechanic, they are more similar to 2e than they are to 3e. And the little bits of successful 3e and 4e mechanics that sneak in are nice, in some cases.

But other than this general atmosphere, the rules mostly fail to be an impressive, elegant piece of game design.

[J.Gellert]

Reading a bit on the monsters now...

I like how they say that trolls may live under bridges because they fear fire

And skeletons are automatons now I see, this will end the debate on what do skeletons do when uncontrolled.

Zombies are The Plague now, or can be.

Also loving the information on orcs, it takes me back to Tolkien, long before the dirty bastards were proud-warrior-race material.

[Vovix]

Has anyone tried playing with the ruleset as opposed to just reading through? I'm probably going to try to get our group to play tomorrow. The biggest problem seems to be that we have more than five people.

[Knaight]

I've got mixed opinions on this. Some of it is elegant, some of it is likeable, and some of it is a mess. The equipment is a joke (though the light/medium/heavy armor division is different, though they really don't need a plethora of types), and then there is the perception section. Said perception section seems to be inspired by 1e, in which the player notes every little thing their character does searching. Only, now they have to roll on top of that. It's awful. Spells are also dubious. However, if those things are changed, I could see this becoming a genuinely good game, a first for D&D. I said the same about 4e before it came out though, so I suspect that this optimism is misplaced.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Has anyone tried playing with the ruleset as opposed to just reading through? I'm probably going to try to get our group to play tomorrow. The biggest problem seems to be that we have more than five people.

I've been trying to talk my partner into it, but he doesn't seem interested in attempting it. He's the only one I play regularly with (we do solo sessions together) so I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a game organized anytime soon.

[Draz74]

However, if those things are changed, I could see this becoming a genuinely good game, a first for D&D. I said the same about 4e before it came out though, so I suspect that this optimism is misplaced.

Hmmm, I'm a lot less disappointed with 5e than I was with 4e ... but that might just be due to a difference in how high I let my expectations get.

So far, I'm inclined to say that I'm going to like 5e better than any other edition except 3e. The way it's going, I'm guessing it will be better than 3e in some ways, but not amazingly so. Of course, it's still early enough that anything could happen.

[ClothedInVelvet]

I enjoyed my read-through of the rules, but I think that enjoyment was heavily based in my assumption that they're only testing a few parts of this. For example, I am REALLY hoping that the equipment rules are just there because they figured players would be able to use them quickly. I think it'd be dumb to drop the basic 10 from AC and add it to armor. That implies that the naked man is always insanely easy to hit (even with 20 Dex, he'd have 5 AC). But I'm fairly confident that they're testing things like the cleric spellcasting, basic fighter mechanics, advantage/disadvantage, etc. And those things I thought were decent. Draz had some good points, but I think this is a good base to be working from.

I'm also assuming they left a lot of things out. Skills, for one thing. Using ability scores on skill checks is fine at level 4, but if your level 20 fighter only has 20 strength (a seemingly arbitrary limit at this point), he only climbs slightly better than a halfling bard with 8 strength. I think that WotC will recognize this (especially if they actually read my survey), and I'm looking forward to seeing the other parts of the system as its revealed.

[Just to Browse]

I'll be DMing the pre-made adventure on Saturday or Sunday, and shall report back post-haste with hate and praise.

[Ichneumon]

I like the fluff and flavourful writingstyle they've adopted to write these documents. The way they describe the monters etc.

[Venser]

I LOVE IT :D

So much like 4th edition never existed :D

[WitchSlayer]

My general reaction:

Nnnyyeeeehh.

It's not BAD, it's just for everything that I liked about the system, the advantage/disadvantage system (Although it'll probably need some tweaking because having a disadvantage is going to be a really really tough thing to deal with and may make you feel useless if you have it for a while), the backgrounds, the themes, the raw simplicity of the way it works there are things that I didn't like or that made me worry, the ray of frost debacle, fighters being kind of meh again, the saves for every stat which worries me once things start targeting all stats rather than a select few from what we've seen of the bestiary/module. It seems to me like they picked things from 3e, 2e and 4e and mooshed them together and the end result.. Isn't that good. Although this is just an alpha.

Oh and then there's my massive pet peeve which is: Redundant weapons. Club being 100% superior to mace and flail being 100% superior to warhammer. Also are damage types REALLY necessary? Thought dwarf was an interesting choice for fighter rather than the ever iconic human.

Also a weird thing to note: If high elves are both the ones who live in the forest sing dance and use bows... AND the ones famous for their lore and magical prowess

What are NORMAL elves?

Oh and of course armor and Dexterity as the godstat and quarterstaff being the best sneak attack weapon.

Could use a lot of work, hope they get things worked out and we'll be able to see more!

Edit: Also the spells could be formatted better! Slice away the fluffy stuff from the actual mechanical description!