5th Edition DnD

[SensiiMiller 29]

I bought the 5th Edition Players Handbook this weekend. First impression...looks a lot like 4th Edition minus a lot of the skills paths of 4th.

[AndrewGould 53]

I've been running 5th edition games since the Starter Set appeared, and I love it. In my opinion it's the best D&D edition yet. I was a big 3.x player, but I skipped 4th because of its reliance on miniatures. 5th takes a lot of the ideas of 4th and blends them with some of the principles of 3rd, while introducing a few new ways of doing things. It sounds like it'd be a mess, but in fact it's a very well-streamlined and comprehensive ruleset that is a delight to play.

[Chaosound 50]

Loving 5e ever since the "Next" playtests.

A great blend of all previous editions I think, and yeah even 4th.

[JoshuaSorenson 7]

I like a lot of the ideas behind D&D5:

 

Bounded accuracy and the proficiency bonus

Advantage/Disadvantage

New and improved meatier feats

Concentration rules for magic

Traits, Bonds, Flaws and Inspiration

Backgrounds

Races/Subraces

 

Class design is a little underwhelming. Monster design makes no sense: a CR2 Intellect Devourer is scary shit for a party of any level, but a CR18 Pit Fiend is just a brute that throws fireballs? Also, magic is muddy. I think they missed an opportunity to clean up D&D's magic system for the new edition.

 

That said, I like 5E better than 3rd or 4th edition. I suspect that these things will improve as the edition matures.

[Jotchua 431]

+1 for 5th edition. My Halfling Bard is a lot of fun. Mechanics are much cleaner.

[AndrewGould 53]

One of the things I particularly love about this edition is the capacity for epic cinematic action. I could mention several instances from my own game, but one of the most recent is the fighter using Boots of Springing and Striding to catch a flameskull in mid-leap in a sack, while the room around him was set on fire.

 

It's not that these sorts of things couldn't happen in other editions, it's just that this edition (and awesome players) make them so easy and quick to resolve.

[DoctorGeniusPHD 135]

Gonna bump this up from a couple of months ago but I bought the starter box to play with my friends after listening to this show since the beginning. None of us had ever played before so that's my perspective coming into this world and the included campaign/characters. We are all having fun but I will say that Wizards have at once gone too far and not far enough in the department of hand holding for new players in the starter box.

 

The pre-made characters are fine (although in my box I didn't receive five characters as is indicated in the product information; instead I got a cleric, a rogue, and two fighters. Huh?) to jump in with and people picked up on who they were and what they would be capable of as a character right away. However their sheets are muddled with lots of boxes that are already filled in, so for example you just have to cross out what your characters max HP is when you level up or their AC when you use a shield/change armor. It just looks sloppy and at face value a new player has no idea why his stats are what they are with these premade characters, and they really should be able to glean some of that information from the large amount that's written onto each sheet considering that part of the aim of this set is to bring in people who have never played before. The set also did a poor job of describing what is going on with some of the calculations or mechanics. The information is there but for us it took a few sessions before we could actually see and understand why things were the way they were and a lot of that was me looking information up outside of the included handbook whether out of necessity, convenience, or just actually having the mechanic plainly explained. I guess the main gripe here is that the information is here sort of but in order to really understand what's going on it seems like we'll have to buy the dungeon master's guide and a full players' handbook, which is probably exactly what was intended. But only having a portion of the game explained thoroughly is pretty frustrating.

 

All in all I am still satisfied with how things are going, and as I have said through other research we have come to understand what's going on -- and why -- better. We will probably continue on playing in the future and despite what I have said it was all pretty easy to get into for everyone at the end of the day. So for a group of new folks, yes we do like 5e.

[AndrewGould 53]

(although in my box I didn't receive five characters as is indicated in the product information; instead I got a cleric, a rogue, and two fighters. Huh?)

 

You missed the wizard. That's a shame - the wizard's cool.

 

Sounds like you're getting along pretty well, but I think you had too-high expectations of what the Starter Set should have provided. It's designed so that people can start playing immediately - as you have - and the mechanics and how things came about can come later.

 

It sounds like you're finding all the info you need, so that's great.

[Cymbeline 1]

Mechanically, a really good game and easy to play.

 

Production-wise, the worst since 1e. Released the PH by itself, had to wait for the MM. One published adventure.

 

The rules are just randomly scattered around the PH and it's not clear what is rules and what is flavour text. Nice little rules boxes in the races and classes.....explicitly missing 15% of essential content.

[AnimatedBeaver 253]

I studied up on 4e a fair bit, but then when the time came for me to actually play D&D for the first time it was a 5e campaign. I'm now playing two campaigns -- In one I'm a gnome illusionist, and in the other a human barbarian. There was a lot to re-learn, and I still try to do stuff from time to time thinking it'll work the way I've always heard it done on various podcasts, but we've been enjoying 5e. A lot of the number-crunching is more streamlined and I like that its mechanics actively push character development and roleplay. I'm constantly flipping around the PHB and fumbling over rules and not knowing what to do, but I think that's just me being a newbie -- The guys in the group who were already D&D vets seem pretty comfortable.

 

Also, as a fan of design and artwork I love the handbooks. Several of my favorite illustrators have pieces in there, and every time I flip through it I feel inspired to get good enough to submit to 6E years from now. Couldn't be happier with the production design.

[AndrewGould 53]

Mechanically, a really good game and easy to play.

 

Production-wise, the worst since 1e. Released the PH by itself, had to wait for the MM. One published adventure.

 

The rules are just randomly scattered around the PH and it's not clear what is rules and what is flavour text. Nice little rules boxes in the races and classes.....explicitly missing 15% of essential content.

 

Do you ever say anything nice?

[aelfinn 27]

 

Do you ever say anything nice?

 

not so far as I've seen, no.

[Trogdor 37]

Hi. First off I've listened to all shows up to this point and enjoyed every one of them, regardless of who's playing/DMing. Always good for a laugh.

 

I'll be DMing my first 5e session this weekend with family and friends. We meet about once every 3 months for a marathon weekend of D & D, junk food, and cocktails. Woot! Nerd weekend!

 

 

 

[McBars 1]

Mechanically, a really good game and easy to play.

 

Production-wise, the worst since 1e. Released the PH by itself, had to wait for the MM. One published adventure.

 

The rules are just randomly scattered around the PH and it's not clear what is rules and what is flavour text. Nice little rules boxes in the races and classes.....explicitly missing 15% of essential content.

 

Actually it's pretty clear which parts of the text "is rules." Maybe work on your goddamn illiteracy you chimp.

[Jotchua 431]

Actually it's pretty clear which parts of the text "is rules." Maybe work on your goddamn illiteracy you chimp.

To quote Dan, "You seem fun."

[Dan Telfer 266]

To quote Dan, "You seem fun."

 

*blatantly stolen from Jen Kirkman (and agreed)

[McBars 1]

 

To quote Dan, "You seem fun."

 

You've got a keen eye laddie buck; I'm more fun than a LED hula hoop on Billy Joel dubstep night.

 

I just don't care for Cymbeline & his snide commentary.

[JohnathanEggstaff 2]

I bought 2e because of this podcast and play with a mixture of the rules from 5e and 2e. Pretty awesome spelljamming and streamlined rules. How could you go wrong?

[Jug Bandit 133]

We've been playing 5e for about 6 months now, and everyone seems happy with it.

 

This looks like WoTC's big push to make D&D accessable and relevant again, and aside from my irritation with WoTC for systematically pulling all old content from the web (free PDFs, where has you gone?), I'd say they're doing a bang-up job.