Author Topic: D&D 5E  (Read 2660 times)

Stuffman

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D&D 5E
« on: February 21, 2015, 07:42:46 PM »
So, all three core books have been out for a month or two, probably time to give this thing a whirl.

For the uninformed, the design goal of 5E was to speed up and streamline 3E. Most mechanics that 4E introduced have been abandoned. The game should be much easier to pick up; near as I can tell, even the DMG is largely unnecessary.

To give a brief overview of 5E, if you're coming from 3.5/PF:
- The game's extensive scaling has been slashed drastically. Attack bonus and saves don't go up at each level. You instead have a generic proficiency bonus that applies to everything you're proficient in. Saves are not derived stats, but direct ability checks that can target any of the six ability scores,
- Instead of stacking tons of +2 or -2 modifiers, many effects simply give you "advantage", which makes you roll two d20s and take the higher result, or "disadvantage" which makes you take the lower. Advantage effects don't stack, and advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out.
- Move actions are no longer a thing. During your turn, you get a normal action and a "bonus action" (swift action), and you can use portions of your movement at any point before, during, or after those actions. Everyone has Spring Attack now!
- Magic items (aside from consumables) can no longer be bought or made; they are all essentially artifacts now, to be handed out by the whims of the treasure hoard's percentile dice (or DM fiat). I presume some of you won't like this, but it does save an eternity of time in building characters and adds a neat roguelike quality to the game. And, most importantly, low-level characters acquiring massive wealth no longer breaks the game.
- Feats are now a sort of alternate class feature. At certain levels, each class gets the choice between increasing one of their ability scores or taking a feat (the earliest opportunity to do so is level 4). You can safely ignore feats to speed character building even more if you desire.
- Classes come with a choice of built-in variants that are meant to replace prestige classes. For instance, you can choose to be a generic fighter with big numbers, a fighter that learns a few ToB-esque maneuvers, or a fighter that picks up some spellcasting progression.

The state of balance is largely untested, though it is known that bards kick ass and rangers still suck. Casters are still cheesy but martial classes are much more effective, being freed from the yoke of needing feats to get anything done.

Anyway, who'd be interested in a short adventure to try the new system out (i.e. going from level 3 to 5~6)? I can provide the PHB if you can't google it up yourself; you will be expected to read it and be familiar with the rules by the time we play.

I don't have a lot of timeslots available unfortunately, so it would need to run on a Friday night or sometime during the day on a Saturday. Sessions would probably be capped at 3~4 hours. My timezone is EST.

Alternately, feel free to discuss the new edition and your experiences with it.

Bardiche

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Re: D&D 5E
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2015, 07:49:14 PM »
I'd like to play, but my timezone is GMT+1, so that may cause difficulties.

One note regarding feats: humans can, under variant ruling, get a bonus feat at level 1, and given that there are feats that include a +1 to a specific stat, yeah, they're pretty good. If you're not using the bonus feat ruling, humans are the worst race mechanically, due to having absolutely no special thing besides flexible stat allocation; the other races provide a +1/+2 depending on race and variant of the race.

O4rfish

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Re: D&D 5E
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2015, 08:23:14 PM »
It's like the mainstream version of Dungeonworld!

I'll play if it's on Friday.
[9:49:09] <Purvis> Generally not, but your mother may be an exception.