Quote from: David Johansen;1071790Yeah, the problem, of course, is that many monsters that should be scary tough are only resistant to non-magic weapons while the barbarian is resistant to slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning at first level while raging.

That's not really all that much of a problem if other damage types are available, and there is nothing stopping DMs from giving class levels (or just a few abilities) to monsters to adjust the challenge rating. Adding Rage, a Fighting Style, or Sneak Attack to melee enemies is a pretty basic (but meaningful) change.

The paradox of 5E is that there are many minor things about the system that I dislike, but nothing I can point to as a dealbreaker. So I'd go for new art. The art in the 5E PHB is simply there, it doesn't stand out positively or negatively (exception: Halflings, which are awful.) The art for Curse of Strahd and Out of the Abyss was excellent.

an editor that would take an axe to about 50% of the bloated text

Quote from: Doom;1071627This. Most of the monsters are basically 2nd edition monsters, unaware of the power creep. "Mage Slayer" should be a built in feat for half of them, "Always get opportunity attacks" is another, "Magic Resistance" needs to be not-stupid (the most common spells don't have saves anyway, and there's always autofail methods), spellcasting monsters should cast spells as a bonus action (most of them),
ways to counter "I win" buttons would be good, multi-attack should be on just about every monster past CR3 or so, many more should have effective ranged attacks, perhaps a few other things to bring them in line with the "new and improved" PCs.

Quote from: mhensley;1071803an editor that would take an axe to about 50% of the bloated text

I am torn between these two. :confused:

Also I wish I didn't have to cross reference interlocking functions, (e.g. rules adjusted by keywords, etc.). But that might be unavoidable given WotC's original design ethos (MtG unified core system cascades due to exception-based interactions, very CCG). This is them making a strong effort to change their aesthetic closer to TSR's, focusing on more table-individualized human judgment, and I want to encourage that direction.

Quote from: Aglondir;1071795The paradox of 5E is that there are many minor things about the system that I dislike, but nothing I can point to as a dealbreaker. So I'd go for new art. The art in the 5E PHB is simply there, it doesn't stand out positively or negatively (exception: Halflings, which are awful.) The art for Curse of Strahd and Out of the Abyss was excellent.

Yeah the game is basically fine but could use some tweaking and rebalancing down the line.

The only big problem is blandness. Feels pretty design by committee in places.

Quote from: Daztur;1071817The only big problem is blandness. Feels pretty design by committee in places.

I find 5e is great at soaking up the flavour of the setting I use it with - Wilderlands high-magic swords & sorcery, Golarion's pulp fantasy, are the two I've done so far, and it also worked well in 5e Primeval Thule and of course 5e Forgotten Realms.

However I do agree there is too much spellcasteriness in the PC classes, for me making Ranger & Paladin spell-based is annoying and hurts their flavour significantly.  Conversely the 'proper' caster classes like Bard & Wizard, and the few non-caster classes, work very well.

Quote from: ArtemisAlpha;1071736A pretty big part of Storm King's Thunder is a description of many, many key locations in the Savage Coast region of the Forgotten Realms. Likewise Out of the Abyss and the Underdark beneath the Savage Coast.

Yeah, they're choosing to wrap their setting information in their mega adventures, which does include a lot of information that might not be of interest if you're just looking for the campaign setting. But the setting information is out there.

Well, for starters I never buy adventures. Never ran an "official" adventure for D&D in any of its incarnations, likely never will.

Secondly, it seems they chose this scattershot approach to dispersing FR info because they simply can't or won't produce something on the level of the Gray Boxes or the FRCS. As far as I'm aware, the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is basically a regional sourcebook, instead of an actual whole setting.

I have just purchased the Midgard Worldbook since that looks like an actual CS in the same vein as the FRCS. Ravnica holds NO interest for me...I quit Magic in like 1996, not about to go learning about a setting that looks and sounds like the worst of modern gaming all put together in a single book. Eberron, which apparently will follow after Ravnica, also holds no interest for me, since it's basically a kitchen sink setting, which usually ends up making absolutely no sense as a world (I hate the idea of "everything goes" in CSs).

Thankfully, I still have all my 1E/2E boxes and 3E setting books.

Quote from: S'mon;1071819I find 5e is great at soaking up the flavour of the setting I use it with - Wilderlands high-magic swords & sorcery, Golarion's pulp fantasy, are the two I've done so far, and it also worked well in 5e Primeval Thule and of course 5e Forgotten Realms.

However I do agree there is too much spellcasteriness in the PC classes, for me making Ranger & Paladin spell-based is annoying and hurts their flavour significantly.  Conversely the 'proper' caster classes like Bard & Wizard, and the few non-caster classes, work very well.

Yes.  I almost picked making Ranger and Paladin base as non-casters as my first choice on this topic.  With the "path" system, they could have made it work well, with only some paths getting spells.  However, I think they didn't because they recognized that they simply don't have enough non-caster things in the game to make it work.  Specifically, had they gone that route, ranger and paladin might as well have been paths off of the fighter.  (Or with a little more imagination and shuffling, maybe the paladin and cleric come off of a new "Priest" class.)  They couldn't do that, since they promised all the traditional classes would be classes.

A better choice would have required early design changes.  They would have needed to recognize that the above problem is a symptom of too much design space spent on magic vis-a-vis the warrior/rogue arenas, and done something about that.  Or accept that D&D doesn't do that, and thus not make bad promises on keeping ranger and paladin as classes.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1071832Yes.  I almost picked making Ranger and Paladin base as non-casters as my first choice on this topic.  With the "path" system, they could have made it work well, with only some paths getting spells.  However, I think they didn't because they recognized that they simply don't have enough non-caster things in the game to make it work.  Specifically, had they gone that route, ranger and paladin might as well have been paths off of the fighter.  (Or with a little more imagination and shuffling, maybe the paladin and cleric come off of a new "Priest" class.)  They couldn't do that, since they promised all the traditional classes would be classes.

A better choice would have required early design changes.  They would have needed to recognize that the above problem is a symptom of too much design space spent on magic vis-a-vis the warrior/rogue arenas, and done something about that.  Or accept that D&D doesn't do that, and thus not make bad promises on keeping ranger and paladin as classes.

Yes, since Paths are the new Subclasses, Ranger & Paladin should have been Fighter paths IMO.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1071823Well, for starters I never buy adventures. Never ran an "official" adventure for D&D in any of its incarnations, likely never will.

Secondly, it seems they chose this scattershot approach to dispersing FR info because they simply can't or won't produce something on the level of the Gray Boxes or the FRCS. As far as I'm aware, the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is basically a regional sourcebook, instead of an actual whole setting.

I have just purchased the Midgard Worldbook since that looks like an actual CS in the same vein as the FRCS. Ravnica holds NO interest for me...I quit Magic in like 1996, not about to go learning about a setting that looks and sounds like the worst of modern gaming all put together in a single book. Eberron, which apparently will follow after Ravnica, also holds no interest for me, since it's basically a kitchen sink setting, which usually ends up making absolutely no sense as a world (I hate the idea of "everything goes" in CSs).

Thankfully, I still have all my 1E/2E boxes and 3E setting books.

The 5e adventures are more like half adventures, half sourcebooks. They decided to do this so everyone has a reason to buy them and they don't make a ton of extra books.

Quote from: S'mon;1071841Yes, since Paths are the new Subclasses, Ranger & Paladin should have been Fighter paths IMO.

That's a really good idea. Hmm... could be fun to create some subclasses to handle just that and see how they work.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1071616Addition by subtraction is an actual thing.

I use subtraction by addition all the time.

Quote from: Robyo;1071523Kender!  ((ducks, hides))

Dude, no reason to hide at all.

Just look at this:

Dragonborn
Dwarf
Elf
Gnome
Half Elf
Half Orc
Halfling
Human
Tiefling


The real question is why weren't Kender included in 5e from the get go!

Quote from: Jaeger;1071905Dude, no reason to hide at all.

Just look at this:

Dragonborn
Dwarf
Elf
Gnome
Half Elf
Half Orc
Halfling
Human
Tiefling


The real question is why weren't Kender included in 5e from the get go!

You forgot to divide those into common and uncommon races. Only dwarves, elves (excluding dark/drow), halflings, and humans are common. The rest are uncommon and may or may not exist in any given world, so the book more or less says to ask your DM before selecting them.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1071910You forgot to divide those into common and uncommon races. Only dwarves, elves (excluding dark/drow), halflings, and humans are common. The rest are uncommon and may or may not exist in any given world, so the book more or less says to ask your DM before selecting them.

Please.

They're in the corebook.

99.9% of the groups out there don't bother to distinguish between any of this common/uncommon nonsense. 99.999% of players will consider them all equally fair game as a character choice.

Outside of forums like this; rare is the GM that will even think of putting his foot down on a corebook race.