Quote from: Omega;793368Seems like alot of give and take. The biggest problem will be that the character now has a brain the size of a walnut and any sort of planning is totally out the window. But damn great for pointing at the enemy and letting loose.

Another thing that may be a pretty big issue in some games is you can't use your equipment, and a T-Rex does not do magical damage.

That said, turning into a T-Rex is just cool.

Perhaps the trade-off with having low intelligence is having a very high Wisdom (perception) due to increased sense of smell, hearing or whatever other senses animals have. Even the stupidest ones.

I played 5e about two dozen times with four different groups with one of them very large in size (8 to 10 players per session).

My opinion is that there is no single combination of abilities or characters that provides an "I win" in D&D 5e. Sufficient numbers will provide a challenge every time.

I ran running Phandelver for two different groups, one a five man party and the other the 10 man large group. Doubling the Phandelver number wasn't sufficient. It wasn't until I increase the number to four to five times the original value did the encounter have the same outcomes as the five man party.

My takeaway that the teamwork rules 5e. Multiple character working together effectively have a huge multiplier effect. Then again they do in real life as well. That it works for monsters as well as PCs. Even if the characters are carbon copies of each other. The interrim encounter guidelines leads me to think that Wizards know this as well. I think they need to play with the number but overall the interrim encounter guidelines have the right idea.

There are some character ability combination that are highly effective against some types of monsters. For example life clerics versus undead.

Preperation and planning are force multipliers exactly in the same way they are in real life. My last two sessions of the Phandelver campaigns illustrate this. In the next to last session, the party had a plan, stuck to it and hit Castle Cragmaw. They aborted the attack after killing a quarter of the goblins and hobgoblins. They didn't suffer much in the way of damage but were very cautious. Also the Cragmaws were largely unprepared scattered about in the module setup.

In the last session, the party did not have as good of a plan. They had one and stuck to it but it wasn't the right one for attacked the now prepared Cragmaws. So they got strung out in the center of the castle being attacked by the remaining Cragmaws.

Despite a little higher in level, and facing a weaker foe (most of the Cragmaws killed in the previous session were hobgoblins) the party had a rougher time.

For the larger group what did them in was a horde of orcs at Wyvern Tor and exhausting all their area of effect spells. The orcs due to their bonus move were able to disperse.  Plus they got strung out along the perimeter around the cave entrance. When the orcs managed down one party member it opened a hole and allowed the orc to attempt to defeat the party in detail. In the end out of 10 only two were standing with two permanently dead. This even after a failed morale check took out a quarter of the remaining orcs.

In my opinion 5e rewards tactics in the same way as 4e but without all the detail and fussiness of 4e. That the decreased number of abilities has effectively minimized broken rules combination.

That for groups that don't care about tactics all they have to do is maintain superior numbers in combat to come out ahead. Mainly through by carefully picking the time when to start a fight.

Too busy having fun with 5E to post much right now. Two new players have joined the group and picked it right up. No one is dominating the action. The advantage mechanic has been an outrageous hit. The party is only at level 3 right now, so I don't have much input on higher level spells, but I'm not terribly worried.

Quote from: Omega;793368Seems like alot of give and take. The biggest problem will be that the character now has a brain the size of a walnut and any sort of planning is totally out the window. But damn great for pointing at the enemy and letting loose.

Going to be absolutely vulnerable though to charms and Id hate to be the PC group that had this thing turned back against them. ow.

Quote from: jadrax;793376Another thing that may be a pretty big issue in some games is you can't use your equipment, and a T-Rex does not do magical damage.

Also, fitting a T-Rex into a dungeon corridor will be amusing...

Quote from: Saplatt;793389Too busy having fun with 5E to post much right now. Two new players have joined the group and picked it right up. No one is dominating the action. The advantage mechanic has been an outrageous hit. The party is only at level 3 right now, so I don't have much input on higher level spells, but I'm not terribly worried.

I would imagine low levels will remain a lot of fun. Higher level stuff has always presented more possible problems, the likes of which some folks are seeing, evidently, in the adventuring "sweet spot." The game held up pretty well when we playtested, though I thought some of the spell damage was whacked (first level spells that do 3d8, for example). I think most people haven't had any major problems, which is good.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;793287oh, on the wotc forums?  I bet I can guess who was involved in that conversation.  Some people have nothing better to do than bitch about games I guess

This seems to be the case even offline.  Some people just love to bitch about anything and everything, whether games, tv shows, movies, video games, books, local politics, other people's kids, old farts, etc ...

Online forums like twitter, facebook, and other message boards just amplifies the "tempest in a teapot" bitching into a huge "echo chamber".  The local watering hole serves a similar purpose offline.

Quote from: Necrozius;793380Perhaps the trade-off with having low intelligence is having a very high Wisdom (perception) due to increased sense of smell, hearing or whatever other senses animals have. Even the stupidest ones.

Hightened senses are a poor substitute for intellect when such basic decisions of " food or or not food?" need to be made about a bunch of practically identical (to a T-Rex) two legged appetizers are running around.

Quote from: Raven;793263Most of them don't actually play. Bitching online is the hobby.

AB&B: Advanced Bitching & Bickering

My main bitch about 5e is trouble finding players. Posted in 2 different hobby shops...got one player, total. So, my group is right at 4, enough for a game, but it wasn't that long ago that I could get 8 players sitting around a PF table.

Quote from: Doom;793472...it wasn't that long ago that I could get 8 players sitting around a PF table.

So the good new is you have 8 players. But the bad news is you are playing Pathfinder.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;793412Also, fitting a T-Rex into a dungeon corridor will be amusing...

Thought of that too.

Since you cant kill someone with the spell I assume theyd either be as big a dinosaur as the hall will fit. Or they deform into a cube shape cartoon style.

Quote from: Doom;793472My main bitch about 5e is trouble finding players. Posted in 2 different hobby shops...got one player, total. So, my group is right at 4, enough for a game

I also recently looked into local 5E groups.

At the nearby gaming stores, it was mostly the same guys I knew from 4E back in 2008-2010.  (Mostly guys I don't want to play rpg games with anymore).  This is when I knew the local pool of players is heavily "calcified".

Until I find a group of players I get along with, I'm probably going to forgo 5E for the foreseeable near future.

Quote from: ggroy;793660I also recently looked into local 5E groups.

At the nearby gaming stores, it was mostly the same guys I knew from 4E back in 2008-2010.  (Mostly guys I don't want to play rpg games with anymore).  This is when I knew the local pool of players is heavily "calcified".

Until I find a group of players I get along with, I'm probably going to forgo 5E for the foreseeable near future.

That's a shame because 5e is very playable. Oh wait, this is a bitch thread.

I'm not real wild with Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the adventures have way too much talking, not enough dungeons. I've been making dungeons on the side to cut through the talky-bits, but I might just give up and just move the players over to a campaign idea I have.

Quote from: Doom;793698That's a shame because 5e is very playable. Oh wait, this is a bitch thread.

I'm not real wild with Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the adventures have way too much talking, not enough dungeons. I've been making dungeons on the side to cut through the talky-bits, but I might just give up and just move the players over to a campaign idea I have.

It was supposed to be a "bitching about bitchers" thread, but I think it SHOULD be "bitching about bitchers who bitch about bitching."