I agree, but hey, it's an option.

I'm all for more options.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;807105Yeah, and if you weren't speculating but going by actual experience with the rules like the OP asked, you'd see that magic items do have a gp value and the DMG explicitly tells you that if you want ye ol magic shop, here's how to do it.  So your guesswork is flat out incorrect.

So I go back to my original statement.  The OP was asking for actual in game experiences.  I'm about done with people like you who have this incessant need to bitch about the game without actually playing it.  You guys make just about every thread toxic because in  nearly every case, your problems aren't actual problems and it's needless arguing.

You've got a serious problem. That doesn't necessarily make you different from many posters on forums like the present one, but you somehow decided to make it everyone else's problem. Like this thread here. I can't even begin to describe how bizarre it is to read this same post of yours, which you wrote like 8 months ago, over and over, in total disregard to other people's context, or even (heaven forbid) the context of their posts.

I'm really quite floored by how far the forum has come in piling up on people who dare to have an opinion other than their own. You might wanna reread this post of Jeff Rients a propos 4e:

http://jrients.blogspot.nl/2008/07/4e-reader-response.html

It's basically the only valid response to the gang who's taken hostage of 5e discussions here. The notion that edition discussions, or game discussions per se, are only legit among active, long term players of the game in question (aka the supporters - only a masochist would indulge in playing a game s/he dislikes on a long term basis), is so obviously inimical to friendly, sober dialogue, that the only interesting thing left to do with threads like these is marvel at the extent of intellectual and emotional insecurity that exerts its constant hold on the 12-15 people left regularly 'contributing' to 5e threads.

Quote from: Windjammer;808024It's basically the only valid response to the gang who's taken hostage of 5e discussions here. The notion that edition discussions, or game discussions per se, are only legit among active, long term players of the game in question (aka the supporters - only a masochist would indulge in playing a game s/he dislikes on a long term basis), is so obviously inimical to friendly, sober dialogue, that the only interesting thing left to do with threads like these is marvel at the extent of intellectual and emotional insecurity that exerts its constant hold on the 12-15 people left regularly 'contributing' to 5e threads.

I don't really know the history of whatever beef you have here, but the context of the OP was specifically in regard to actual play experience. So from an ignoring context perspective it all seems pot-kettle to me.

Quote from: Vic99;806911I hope to start a 5e D&D campaign from first level in the next month.  I've got the three core books and have read most of each.  Been playing D&D for over thirty years, although I skipped 4e.  The more stream-lined approach of 5e really appeals to me, especially the elegance of advantage/disadvantage.

For those of you that have actually played 5e, is there a mechanic or a concept that does not work as well or as easily as it seemed?  I have a few ideas, but I don't want to start the thread by biasing it in one direction.  Thanks.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;808046I don't really know the history of whatever beef you have here, but the context of the OP was specifically in regard to actual play experience. So from an ignoring context perspective it all seems pot-kettle to me.

Don't worry about it.  I think Windjammer has some serious issues with reality.  Every few months he pops in to attack me personally, with reasoning that makes no sense at all.  He did this the same thing a couple months ago, and was quickly shown how wrong he was.

Just look at his post here?  My post from 8 months ago?  It was last week.

Maybe I stole his girlfriend or something, I don't know.

*Edit*  I will fully admit that my response to batman was aggressive and I was being kind of a dick.  But I'm not sorry about it.  AFAIC, he's established himself with a long history of jumping into threads to bitch about a game without actual game experience.  He's no different that people like Paraxis, or any of the other usual suspects who base everything on theorycrafting rather than actual play.  And what I've found is that 5e, probably moreso than any other edition, cannot be accurately evaluated based on theorycrafting.  So when there's a thread from someone asking specifically about actual play, that theorycrafting bitching gets old fast.

Sacrosanct likes to go up my ass with mining equipment on other subforums, and he and I get along about as well as cats in a wet sack.

He is totally right, here.

Well, thanks for all the serious replies to those who tried to answer my question. I realize that threads can go off topic. Sometimes a poster can read the question too quickly or really wants to use the topic as a spring board to talk about whatever his thing is related to the thread topic . . . I think I have done that.  Any other 5e play tested experience out there?  Thanks.

I've run and played 5E since the PHB was released and bought each core book pretty much from release date.

I've run quite a few of the classes and races from 1st level up to about level 5.
So I think I have a pretty good feel for 5E now.

Having run 5E for a player for a Moon Druid, I really don't know what the concern is.
Sure they're powerful, like all the classes in different ways, but the Shapechange thing is limiting as well.
No spellcasting in the wildshape (a major drawback for a caster class)
Can't really communicate with others properly
Limited number of times to shapechange anyway.
It has to be a beast the Druid shapechanges into.
The damage isn't that fantastic really and the AC is often pretty bad.

Overall I'm very happy with 5E.
I DO think the whole tool proficiency thing was confusing at first. I don't know they just didn't use skills instead of having this catch all tool proficiency, but it's no big deal really and I've gotten used to it now.

Quote from: danskmacabre;808057I've run and played 5E since the PHB was released and bought each core book pretty much from release date.

I've run quite a few of the classes and races from 1st level up to about level 5.
So I think I have a pretty good feel for 5E now.

Having run 5E for a player for a Moon Druid, I really don't know what the concern is.
Sure they're powerful, like all the classes in different ways, but the Shapechange thing is limiting as well.
No spellcasting in the wildshape (a major drawback for a caster class)
Can't really communicate with others properly
Limited number of times to shapechange anyway.
It has to be a beast the Druid shapechanges into.
The damage isn't that fantastic really and the AC is often pretty bad.

Overall I'm very happy with 5E.
I DO think the whole tool proficiency thing was confusing at first. I don't know they just didn't use skills instead of having this catch all tool proficiency, but it's no big deal really and I've gotten used to it now.

This aligns with my experience of the moon druid as well.  Often, he would have to use his 2nd usage to change back early (needed to talk, needed to cross the rope bridge, etc).

Quote from: Sacrosanct;808058This aligns with my experience of the moon druid as well.  Often, he would have to use his 2nd usage to change back early (needed to talk, needed to cross the rope bridge, etc).

Agreed. This has been an issue on several occasions where the player had to balance the disadvantage of staying in Beast form (due to various circumstances) or turning back into a humanoid form and using up a valuable shapeshift slot.

I also didn't like the "Long rest = full HP heal", but the DMG has a nice alternative of full HD + CON bonus healing on a long rest, which works very well.
That way, if a party is hammered really hard for some reason, a full rest is still good, but most likely they'll not be back on 100% HPs after resting for 8 hours.

Which makes more sense and feels better to me.

Quote from: danskmacabre;808068I also didn't like the "Long rest = full HP heal", but the DMG has a nice alternative of full HD + CON bonus healing on a long rest, which works very well.
That way, if a party is hammered really hard for some reason, a full rest is still good, but most likely they'll not be back on 100% HPs after resting for 8 hours.

Which makes more sense and feels better to me.

the houserule I used, long before the DMG actually came out, was no healing on full rest, but you did get all HD back.  So if you were really weakened, you could use those HD to heal back some, but then of course you used them so you wouldn't have them for short rest healing.  Or however you wanted to manage them.

Quote from: Beagle;806964I think it is a good idea to keep the grappling rules as simple as possible while making it a useful option. As is, grappling isn't particularly useful.

Oh my, you don't know just how wrong you are.   Behold, the secrets revealed.

Seriously, grappling is awesome in 5e.  It's just that it's subtle.  But once you know how to use it, it's very very powerful.

Quote from: Windjammer;808024It's basically the only valid response to the gang who's taken hostage of 5e discussions here.

STFU you whiner, nobody has taken anyone hostage.  If you feel like you're drowning in a sea of people who disagree with your world view, it's either your own lack of confidence in your world view, or your world view just wasn't strong to begin with.  But don't blame others for your feelings.  Everyone's handling the discussion just fine except you.

My 5E players discovered grappling a few weeks ago, and yes, it can be extremely effective.

Grappling was one of those things where I was guilty of not following my own advice.  Initially upon skimming the rules, I didn't feel like it was all that great so I didn't bother attempting it.  But like I keep saying, I needed to actually see how it worked in actual play before dismissing it.  It really augments my battlemaster fighter very well, as far as controlling the enemy goes.

I think that group of gamers who follow the philosophy of "If my PC isn't doing as much damage as every other PC" are missing out on a lot, and are probably inadvertently making the entire party less effective.  It's not PC vs PC, it's the party vs monsters.

I just had this come up on ENWorld yesterday as a matter of fact.  I had mentioned how my halfling BM fighter used action surge to get a total of five attacks in the first round, using his superiority dice on each attack, forcing the dragon they were fighting to make a saving throw on each one.  That ended up using up all of the dragon's legendary resistance, opening it up for the casters.

Saelorn (I think that's how you spelled it), was saying that the BM is still not as good as the caster becuase his maneuvers that forced a save weren't nearly as good at the caster's spells that required a save.  My position was that you shouldn't compare maneuver vs spell because that wasn't the objective.  The objective was overcoming the legendary resistance, and just because the BM didn't do 50 pts of damage with a fireball, his actions accounted for 25 of those points since the caster's damage would have been halved if the dragon still had legendary resistance remaining.  so the point was not to look at each individual power/skill/spell and make a comparison, but to evaluate each in the greater context of a team sport, so-to-speak.

So how does this relate to grappling?  If you're the grappling PC, you don't need to do as much damage as everyone else, because you're effectively increasing their damage output by putting them in a position to inflict greater harm.  Without you grappling, your party might not even hit.