So I played 5e last Friday with my regular group plus 2 semi-new players. I'm coming at 5e from the perspective of someone who liked a lot of things about 4e - it's not my favourite edition, that's 2e, but I liked it much more than 3e and a lot of this was because of the tactical interplay and the ability to play a fighter with interesting mechanical choices. I also like storygame stuff but I'm not sure I want to mix the two streams, D&D is its own thing and is better for it IMO.

We played at fifth level in some kind of zombie apocalypse scenario, my character was a high elf mage.  

Things I liked

• Rolling for stats felt viable again, although getting STR 6 sucks :-)
• Rolling for HD but with a decent 'play it safe' option for scaredycats, yay
• Backgrounds are good game design, primarily the flavourful 'feature' powers, I hope they publish a lot more of them and that there is a way to buy new ones with feat slots
• All the little random personality trait and trinket tables are great
• Playing a wizard was fun, the new spell slot system reads strangely but makes a lot of sense in play
• Cantrips make casters more satisfying to play (although I wonder if the offensive ones are maybe too good with the level 5 damage boost)
• Ritual spells work well and give some interesting extra options
• It felt like the rules struck a nice balance between depth and lightness
• Minor actions are gone and you can combine stuff with your move, never again will a cool plan of action have to be aborted because I don't have a spare minor action to pull the relevant bit of equipment out of my backpack

Things I didn't like

• The fighter and thief in the group seemed way less effective than the 3 casters, although this may be partly due to the scenario (big clusters of blastable/turnable zombies) and partly because the people playing them were maybe less... tactically minded than the ones playing the casters. This is potentially a huge issue for me though as my main character of nearly 25 years (which I'll end up converting to 5th) is a fighter
• My roll on the trinket table gave me a candle that can't be lit, WTF am I meant to do with that. :-)
• Hitting or succeeding on a roll of 10 because of bounded accuracy just feels wrong after spending so much time playing 3e then 4e - irrational, I know
• Roll on the PHB and the rest of the options, although even the lists of feats etc that have been spoilered don't really feel like enough. So roll on PHB 2 I guess? (I don't want to see 3e/4e levels of bloat though).
• Added as an edit: Rolling damage twice for crits is bullshit, just sack up and give us double damage already!

Thanks for the review! I love this kind of info.

I'm glad to hear that the wizard spell-slot thing wasn't complex in-game. My eyes kind of glaze over whenever I read about that sort of thing.

I'm playing a Wood Elf Wizard STR 7 Pbp so I feel your pain. But the actual point is I'm playing a Wood Elf Wizard with the background acolyte and she's totally viable because of all the built in things that shape her tactics and even spell list to her actual abilities not DPR.

@Necrozious, it's alot like a 3x sorcerer with far more choice in my opinion. Pretty easy yet whatever you do spellwise pretty effective if you play off your party.

Quote from: Necrozius;771334Thanks for the review! I love this kind of info.

I'm glad to hear that the wizard spell-slot thing wasn't complex in-game. My eyes kind of glaze over whenever I read about that sort of thing.

Its pretty straightforward really. The slots act as a sort of pseudo-spell point system in that you can spend a higher level slot to get more oomph out of certain spells. Or to just cast the spell more times.

Magic missile for example. three 1d4 missiles base. Using a 2nd level slot to cast it adds another missile, and so on.

Passwall: Say you've used up all your 5th level slots. But you have a 6th level slot still and REALLY need passwall ASAP. Burn the 6th level slot. Boom, hole made.

The spell slot thing sounds easy mechanically but hard to swallow in terms of game reality beyond "It's magic!" I mean we used to say that about the original Vancian casting, but Gygax's gloss in the 1e DMG turns out to be flavorful, reasonably close to the literary precedent, and intelligible as an in-game "thing". I suppose 5e slots could be glossed as minor bound spirits (vaguely like Vance's sandestins) which would account for their being like individually-wrapped pouches of magical energy.

Regarding the scaredy-cat option on hit dice, if you're rolling up a sixth-level character, you're better off with the "default" about 2/3 of the time, and rolling the dice will only do better than default about a quarter of the time. (Speaking roughly and generalizing across different hit dice.)

At fifth level as in the OP you have a little better chance of getting lucky but not much. (I can't be bothered at the moment to redo the calculations.) Personally if I were playing RAW starting at 1st level then I'd roll the dice at each level unless and until I wanted to "protect" my character. Then I'd take the gimme. This sort of assumes a high-lethality game and Traveller Scout mentality: take big risks with below-average PCs until they're either dead or above-average. (In a low-lethality game, the number of HP doesn't matter anyway.)

Quote from: Arminius;771386The spell slot thing sounds easy mechanically but hard to swallow in terms of game reality beyond "It's magic!" I mean we used to say that about the original Vancian casting, but Gygax's gloss in the 1e DMG turns out to be flavorful, reasonably close to the literary precedent, and intelligible as an in-game "thing". I suppose 5e slots could be glossed as minor bound spirits (vaguely like Vance's sandestins) which would account for their being like individually-wrapped pouches of magical energy.

Regarding the scaredy-cat option on hit dice, if you're rolling up a sixth-level character, you're better off with the "default" about 2/3 of the time, and rolling the dice will only do better than default about a quarter of the time. (Speaking roughly and generalizing across different hit dice.)

At fifth level as in the OP you have a little better chance of getting lucky but not much. (I can't be bothered at the moment to redo the calculations.) Personally if I were playing RAW starting at 1st level then I'd roll the dice at each level unless and until I wanted to "protect" my character. Then I'd take the gimme. This sort of assumes a high-lethality game and Traveller Scout mentality: take big risks with below-average PCs until they're either dead or above-average. (In a low-lethality game, the number of HP doesn't matter anyway.)

I never thought you'd  do a bullshit post. Color me disappointed and a bit pissed actually. Your line of reasoning matches Polaris and his stupid Mountain Dwarf Wizard: mess.

Quote from: Arminius;771386The spell slot thing sounds easy mechanically but hard to swallow in terms of game reality beyond "It's magic!"

Think of the slots as levels of wattage the mage can output into a spell.

You have enough erg in you to power a batch of small spells, or you can blow more erg to pump up that small spell and get a little more out of it, Or just waste erg on casting it at all in a pinch, Or power a more complex spell.

A caster is like a solar cell that charges at night... Plug em in and power your Matrix!

5e spell slots are, basically, spell points. Just with different quantum energies.

Actually, you could sort of imagine a wizard's spell slots as electrons in various shells...

...

Ok, it doesn't work EXACTLY, but hey.

Quote from: Will;7713945e spell slots are, basically, spell points. Just with different quantum energies.

Actually, you could sort of imagine a wizard's spell slots as electrons in various shells...

...

Ok, it doesn't work EXACTLY, but hey.

Dont cross the wizards....

Quote from: Will;7713945e spell slots are, basically, spell points. Just with different quantum energies.

Actually, you could sort of imagine a wizard's spell slots as electrons in various shells...

...

Ok, it doesn't work EXACTLY, but hey.

Yeah, it's the quantumness that needs explanation.

And that's not a bad one, actually.

I wouldn't fret about a low-STR character in a game with DEX-based melee.  DEX is such a ridiculous uber-stat in 5th that you can run a fighter with low STR and do just fine.

Quote from: cranebump;771404I wouldn't fret about a low-STR character in a game with DEX-based melee.  DEX is such a ridiculous uber-stat in 5th that you can run a fighter with low STR and do just fine.

Will that get nerfed with rules updates, do you think?

Quote from: cranebump;771404I wouldn't fret about a low-STR character in a game with DEX-based melee.  DEX is such a ridiculous uber-stat in 5th that you can run a fighter with low STR and do just fine.

More like DEX got more things added that play off it while STR remained about the same.

Quote from: cranebump;771404I wouldn't fret about a low-STR character in a game with DEX-based melee.  DEX is such a ridiculous uber-stat in 5th that you can run a fighter with low STR and do just fine.

By the math possibly but do you play or just run numbers devoid of actual situations?

Personally I chalk it up to being Basic. It might not change, but I hope it does.

Personally I'd like to have seen a bit more stat-mechanic distribution like in Fantasy Craft where all the stats matter and dump-stats are practically non-existent. But the downstream design effects required to pull that off would have probably been too much for Basic.

We'll see. I have one fighter in my game, and went Dex-finesse dual scimitar wielding desert-fighter. I haven't felt his combat ability is "too much" or "not enough". He's a total number's guy, and right now I think he's okay with how things are. We'll know more after a few more levels I'm sure.

My gut reaction is - it seems fine for now.

Having said that, I've always maintained the best stats in the world won't save your sorry ass for doing stupid shit. So stats are really kinda meh to me as a GM. If it makes you feel better as a player - I'm happy for you and hope you use them well.

Silly anecdote - I once ran Throne of Bloodstone as a one-shot. I let all my players choose a hero from the original Deities and Demigods books to play as their characters. I had one player choose Elric and another Yyrkoon (so Stormbringer and Mournblade were BOTH in play) and Cu Chulain and Raiko, and fucking Math the wizard. I ran that module RAW and slagged the whole party. Sure they fucking slaughtered MASSIVE amounts of monsters, an 800hp roided dragon (Fyrillicus - look him up) among hundreds of demons, devils and killed Tiamat... they still failed, and every single one of them due to making dumb decisions.