Anyone Play D&D 5th Edition Yet?
The Blind Eternities forum
Posted on Oct. 27, 2014, 3:59 p.m. by Sloanan
I know it's not really MTG-related (though both properties are owned by Wizards, so...maybe?), but I was just wondering if anyone here plays D&D and, if so, what they think of the new 5th edition.
I've not been the most hardcore of D&D players, but I'm really enjoying it when I'm at our weekly adventurer's league at my LGS. Very streamlined, which makes it a lot easier to get other people to play, at least.
Anyone else enjoying it or is the community consensus that Wizards is selling out again?
AngryBearTony says... #3
I so miss my old D&D group. We ran 3.5 and it's been about 5 years since we all split (amicable, just people living and moving). Would love to find a new group either running 3.5 or Pathfinder or hell, I'd give 5ed a try.
October 27, 2014 4:08 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #4
All forums except BE are for Magic discussion only. Moved.
October 27, 2014 4:26 p.m.
JakeHarlow says... #5
I haven't gotten a chance to try it yet either...how is it? Does it compare favorably with 3.0 or 3.5 (I hated 4E)?
October 27, 2014 5:20 p.m.
5E is good, possibly great.
This is from someone who loved AD&D/2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions but for different reasons.
I feel like 5E brings back a lot of cool stuff refined in 3E, and drops the tactical focus of 4E almost entirely, bringing back various combat-boring classes that mostly just swing and pass the turn. In fact, so far as I can tell, they abandoned nearly all the innovative improvements they introduced in 4E. (Attack rolls vs. Fort / Reflex / Will defenses were a solid improvement on saving throws, for example. It was also nice to separate combat powers from noncombat powers, so that spellcasters don't feel obligated to load up almost entirely on combat spells and ignore the vast array of other spells.)
5E is basically the iterative successor to 3.5E. But what really killed 3E was broken imbalance between classes, and it's too early to know if they've fixed that. (Advantage/Disadvantage seems much more swingy than +2/-2 ever did, so I'm not feeling confident.)
The other question is: if this is 3.5.5, what is the point of that, exactly? We already have Pathfinder...
October 27, 2014 7:49 p.m.
I really enjoy it. Especially the spell casting system they decided on.
October 27, 2014 11:08 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #9
I did some early playtesting of 5E (then called "D&D Next"), and I was surprised at how much of a hard turn they took back towards the structure of 3E and earlier. Though I didn't care for the old HP system coming back (granted, I don't know if it's still in 5E), I did appreciate how the looser tactical constraints helped combat feel more natural. Sometimes 4E combat played more like an overly complicated board game, and the nearly exclusive focus on combat-relevant skills for each class did feel like it negatively impacted the RP element.
The combat-centric design philosophy for 4E was at its worst in the Pyramid of Shadows adventure, with very heavy combat and what seemed like severely limited RP and exploration options. I would say it might as well have been a Diablo adventure, but at least a game like that would have given us some interesting loot to make the time we spent slogging through it seem worthwhile. Our group was not having fun by the end of that one. We only made it halfway through King of the Trollhaunt Warrens before life got in the way and we scattered to the winds.
Anyway, the D&D Next encounters I played were written to be much more interesting with regard to RP and were able to show off the improvements to combat very effectively. I was having a FB chat with my old co-DM a few days ago and we might try to get the group back together to see what we think about 5E.
andymaul123 says... #2
I haven't played it yet, but I'm hosting a 5e campaign starting around end of November. From what I've read, though, it looks very promising - similar to how I streamlined 3.5 rules.
October 27, 2014 4:04 p.m.