Spoony thinks it's too streamlined and too balanced. He says the old games never were this streamlined and balanced.

If you have no life and waaaay too much time you can watch it here and here.

Does he have a point?

Quote from: jan paparazzi;808499Spoony thinks it's too streamlined and too balanced. He says the old games never were this streamlined and balanced.

If you have no life and waaaay too much time you can watch it here and here.

Does he have a point?

Jesus, fucking, christ. Is there a condensed/summarized version I can actually respond to? Is there a reason he needs two fucking hours to review the book?

I've played 5e several times now. I think it came out a lot better than Mike Mearls made it sound like it would, and I haven't noticed any big issues. The main problem I am concerned about is the balance between full casters and non casters; in our main campaign that's gone through every edition since 2e I play a mid to high level fighter so I was worried about losing some of the cool things I'd picked up during 4e (especially after how bad things were in 3e). I've been able to build a version of him in 5e dipping into both barbarian and ranger that has given me I think a decent amount of noncombat options without sacrificing his contribution in a fight. The designers have certainly made some effort to address all the LFQW stuff, but I'm not sure it's enough. I look at what our paladin, cleric, and warlord can do, and I'm worried about feeling overshadowed especially as we level up. We've only played those characters once in 5e so it's too early to tell yet, we've played more 5e with a different group of characters where I play a wizard and in that campaign I have definitely felt like the most powerful character by a significant margin. I guess that only actual play will tell whether this concern is valid or not.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;8084525E: Your D&D, Your Way*

  *So long as you can document 1000 hours of actual play experience, 200 hours of DMing, 20 years of overall experience in the hobby, ownership of 1E, BX and Holmes in original printings (or OD&D in any form), attendance at no less than 4 GenCons, 50 hours of tabletop wargaming experience, destruction of all 4E material previously possessed, a signed Oath of Loyalty to Demogygax, and the conferral of the Sacred Viking Hat of True Old School 5E DMing by either RPGPundit, High Anticleric of the World; Zak S, High Anticleric of the Flesh; or the yet-to-be-ordained High Anticleric of the Devil

Oh shut the fuck up and preferably piss off.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;808501Jesus, fucking, christ. Is there a condensed/summarized version I can actually respond to? Is there a reason he needs two fucking hours to review the book?

Too streamlined and too balanced. He doesn't recognize AD&D 2nd edition in 5th. It plays too quick and too simple. AD&D has always been a bloated mess of rules. He liked it that way.

As an aside, I find nearly all video blogs to be really fucking awful excuses for people too fucking lazy to sit down and organize their thoughts.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;808501Jesus, fucking, christ. Is there a condensed/summarized version I can actually respond to? Is there a reason he needs two fucking hours to review the book?

I took a glance, and he did say something that other people said here. That cantrips are way too strong and OP.

He also hates advantage/disadvantage because it grants the same result no matter how big or small the advantage is. Spitting wine in the face grants the same advantage as having the high ground with a bunker of archers, etc. Also that it relies on "your ability to argue whether you have the advantage or not. It would become a court case where the GM and player try to wrangle advantage and disadvantage out of each other."

He says everything with death saving throws was made too abstract. Getting kicked by a halfling does the same thing as getting stabbed in the chest with a greataxe -- you fail one death saving throw. That and the chance of success and failure is the same whether you're some huge musclebound bodybuilder or a diseased weakling. In addition, it's way too hard to die.

He hates point buy because everybody ends up making the same optimal characters. He likes rolling for stats.

A thoughts from playing in a fairly beer-and-pretzels-y D&D5 campaign for the past few months:

1) Large numbers of creatures are really difficult to deal with, out of proportion with their listed challenge - particularly when they have special abilities like kobolds and goblins. It seems like the challenge number is based on how hard creatures are to kill, and not on how much damage they do. (Our 3rd level party was nearly wiped out by 12 kobolds yesterday.)

2) Healing is really hard on my suspension-of-disbelief - although admittedly I've had at least some problems with hit points in every edition. Healing completely in one night is strange, as is bleeding out to dead within seconds after being knocked unconscious, as is popping up so easily after being downed in combat. I would have preferred it if they made very common magic to facilitate such healing.

3) I've had no problems with spells or cantrips, but then I'm not hugely concerned with game balance.

4) A few rules are confusing, such as tool kits and others. Just lack of clarity and referencing, mainly.

Quote from: Will;808439Like 'low level creatures remain a threat against high level creatures when in large numbers.'

wasn't that supposed to be the point? I remember reading about the threat of low level monsters to high level characters as a design feature or something.

Something like this:

QuoteThe Monstrous Horde: Sometimes outnumbering the characters gives monsters a big tactical advantage. If you're creating an encounter with monsters that have a relatively low XP value compared to the XP budget for the party's level, you might end up with twice as many monsters as characters. However, if you looked at our preview of the hobgoblin, you'll have seen that even lower-CR monsters can become more dangerous when they fight as a group. As such, large numbers of monsters can skew the balance of an encounter.

Mearls and his L&L

I've GMed most of the starter set (and have the three core books) and our group are a mix of 3rd and 4th levels, with: Battle Master Fighter 4, Trickster Cleric 3, Shadow Monk 3, Arcane Trickster, 3 Diviner Wizard, 3 multi-class Bear Totem Barbarian 3 / Fighter 1.

So far, all bar the Monk have done well. The monk was killed by a surprise attack from a bugbear whilst still first level, and his player created another monk who is still alive but has been put on the deck again since then. I started him at 1st level with his new character whilst the rest of the party had levelled to 2.

Previously we have usually done what we can to keep level parity even after death due to differences being tricky in past editions. I didn't do this here, so we could test out the effect of having disparate levels, and a 1-level difference is definitely viable. I think bigger level disparities would be tricky due to the chance of a 1st level character being one-shot'ed by a higher CR monster. It would require very cautious play by the lower level character.

All the characters have tactical options during combat, and resources to manage. We see this as a good thing. Casters are not notably more powerful than non-casters in the larger context of a sequence of combats. They are just more 'peak-y' with lower 'reguler' damage from cantrips but the possibility of higher burst damage. Although the fighter has a similar capability for burst damage with Action Surge!

Outside of combat all the characters still have options to contribute, which is excellent. No more of the fighter only having one or two skills out of a set of 20-ish potential skills.

The game is a joy to run. It has less moving parts than any post-2000 edition of DnD and the elements are more loosely coupled. It is very easy to make ref calls which help verisimilitude without feeling the need to root through the book looking for modifiers or special rules. Adjudicating short rests is just common sense, too, in my experience. Somewhere safe? Yes! In the middle of a dungeon? No! As long as the PCs aren't up against the clock there is little stopping them falling back to engineer a rest, but the monsters should respond accordingly.

Example from the Lost Mines of Phandelver

Spoiler

For example, the party assaulted Cragmaw Castle, fought through half of it then felt the need to bug out. They took a short rest so I decided the remaining monsters vacated the castle, leaving behind the doppelgänger disguised as the dwarf they were looking for. He led them into an ambush outside the castle and attacked himself with his surprise attack ability.

If they had had a full rest instead I was going to basically re-stock the entire castle and have them on maximum alert.

None of this was in the module, it just made natural sense based on the situation in hand.

Despite the characters having less components than in 3.x or 4e it is very easy to customise them and make them distinct. The combination of race, class and background gives a lot of variability and it is so easy to swap out a skill or proficiency to fine tune a character concept (for example, the trickster cleric wanted to have Intimidation rather than Persuade - no problem!).

It's the best DnD style game we have played in a long time. Prior to 5e 13th Age was our favourite current game of this type.

In terms of what is tricky to manage, Inspiration is a little fiddly. Unless the character has some kind of blatant characterisation it is quite tricky as the GM to decide when to award it. I probably need a chart of all character traits to run this effectively, like I would with Aspects in Fate.

I've just been avoiding Inspiration. There's already plenty of ways to gain advantage.

Quote from: dbm;808540In terms of what is tricky to manage, Inspiration is a little fiddly. Unless the character has some kind of blatant characterisation it is quite tricky as the GM to decide when to award it. I probably need a chart of all character traits to run this effectively, like I would with Aspects in Fate.

I'm just going with the suggestion from the DMG and letting the players reward each other Inspiration. My friends don't try to abuse the system, so I trust their judgment.

Quote from: Will;808524As an aside, I find nearly all video blogs to be really fucking awful excuses for people too fucking lazy to sit down and organize their thoughts.

Yep his mayor problem. He used to do proper reviews/rants on awful games which were really funny. Nowadays he just rambles. I guess he just gets paid for uploading something. His countermonkey stories are funny as well.