D&D 5E Official D&D Basic Discussion Thread

[Blackbrrd]

So I'm here looking at Basic D&D, listening to the Go-Go's and Huey Lewis & The News, and feel like I just jumped back 30 years - I definitely like what I'm seeing, I like the little tweaks like upping spell effect by slot instead of caster level, the action surge of the fighter, and the short rests, while still feeling so much "like D&D" it's ridiculous. I know these rules probably upset all 4E players so far but it is definitely the rules I could introduce a group of new players to.

I gotta sell a "team building exercise" to my boss... Hmmmm....

I am a 4e player/dm and I like 5e. I liked 3e as well. And AD&D 2e. And BE[CMI]. Never played 1e. I just started an awesome 4e campaign that I have planned to run up until ~level 10. The only issue I have with it is that it's going to get hard to get time to run 5e.

When 4e was released, I was pretty burned out on 3.5. I was tired of the uninspiring high level play and jumped right on 4e and had fun playing it. I kind of burned out on DM-ing, but when I got back to it about 6 months ago, there were so many improvements that 5e just looks like another alternative. I think 4e and 5e could live side by side if they didn't drop the adventure support for 4e, which I believe they have.

So far, I like about 90% of what I read. I think the basic rules, released as a PDF is just awesome. I am really looking forward to getting my hands on the PHB where the rest of the classes and feats are.

I think basic 5e looks like the best system to introduce new players to since BECMI. At the same time, 5e looks advanced enough to lure the 3e crowd over as well. It's a two-for-one deal! Awesome!

I love how they have made the stat boosts from race less important with the stat gain rules and the cap of 20. This way race is much less important in the long run and makes it much easier for me to just go with a Dwarf Rogue, even if they don't get a bonus to dex.

Looking at the stat generation methods, I noticed you can't buy a stat higher than 15 at level 1. The pre-generated array doesn't have anything above 15 either. If you want anything higher, you have to gamble and roll! Smart move WotC! <3

 

[barasawa]

Fantasy realism

I'm curious, is there any constituency for "realism over balance"? Or, is "balance over realism" totally ascendant? I like the idea of some realism in there. Maybe a middle ground between the two extremes. Something that acknowledges that people wore armor because it worked, not because they didn't take classes in Barbarian (most real barbarians would have loved to have a hauberk). That (in certain eras) people used swords when they could afford them because they were better weapons than axes, not because they thought swords were cooler. That kind of thing.

As you are looking through the pages of the new D&D Basic 5th edition, a white dragon silently lands behind you and peers over your shoulder for a moment.
You feel a sudden chill as the great scaled creature whispers in your ear with a chuckle, "Funny aren't they. Next thing you know they'll be saying that magic doesn't exist."
With that statement he rockets skyward on his powerful wings leaving nothing but a touch of frost and cold shivering in your very being as you wonder just how close you were to becoming a corpsicle.

 

[Hussar]

On a pretty much completely side point, I don't read FR fiction. Never have. I was reading the sidebars on Tika and Artemis and it took a second or possibly third reading to realise that Artemis is a dude. Really?

Not important, just made me kinda giggle.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

On a pretty much completely side point, I don't read FR fiction. Never have. I was reading the sidebars on Tika and Artemis and it took a second or possibly third reading to realise that Artemis is a dude. Really?

Not important, just made me kinda giggle.

It's why he is mostly called by his last name Entreri instead of his first.

 

[evileeyore]

In the eye! With a pencil!

Wanna see a magic trick?

Make me explain every nit-picky way we're searching this room. Please.

Iknowrite? I don't want to get stabbed. Why is D&D exposing me to these outrageous risks?

Heh.

At a con I once challenged the DM to put his rules penalties where his mouth was and if we had to have penalties on our skill checks* (a 3.5 game) his monsters needed penalties on their to hit rolls if he couldn't best me in a boffer sparring match. Funny thing was, two of the other players at the table were his friends (and in his home game) and they totally backed the idea!

Suffice to say he was the "ideal" of the worst sort of D&D player, in DMing practices, hygiene, and health.



* He was making the party Diplomat have to give rousing and convincing speeches, and when she failed (because she was a bit shy and not a good public speaker) the DM penalized her harshly. The Rogue had to specify how he was searching for traps, how he was disarming them, etc and also was punitively penalized for failing to "describe doing it the correct way". So after an hour of this balderdash we came upon a serious fight scene (it wold have been tough but fair - I'll grant the DM he built combats well). So I challenged him. He refused and we collectively threatened to walk and cancel on him. At this con too many cancellations and he'd have to pay full price (DMs who ran games got in for cheap or free if they ran enough). He backed down and accepted the penalty... so what would have been a tough fight became a cake walk. And the players smiles grew in size for every mumble, grumble, and curse as he had to roll to-hits at "harsh but fair" penalties.

 

[occam]

As someone with some archaeological training, and a special interest in how people's bodies changed in different societies, I have to say, I am very very very very unconvinced that the average sort of people around in, say, medieval times, could, on the whole, lift more than the several inches taller, vastly better fed, people of today (and D&D people seem to be short - humans only go up to "just over 6' tall" ). I think it's probably easier and fairer to say this is just a strange simplification - especially as you can also only push-pull 300lbs, and I know from experience that I can't deadlift 300lbs, but I sure as hell can push something that weighs 300lbs (with a fair bit of swearing, admittedly).

Mostly I'm just totally unfairly mocking amusing simplifications in D&D's rules. Man I am still vexed by "walking more than eight hours..." deal though jeez.

On travel distances, I think they're just working from historical records of travel distances by pre-modern military units… or rather, from earlier editions of D&D which were based on those since the days of their wargaming roots. Given that in D&D we're talking about smaller groups, what you might call skirmish units, but a military unit making 15-18 miles per day (the Slow rate) was doing pretty well, and 30 miles per day (the Fast rate) was rare. You could get units moving on foot up to 40 miles per day, but it was almost unheard-of, and 50 miles per day even on horseback was often considered unbelievably fast (although some could manage it).

Also, consider that today's "vastly better fed" individuals might tire less easily than the typical medieval adventurer subsisting on hard bread, hard cheese, and somewhat-clean water. I wonder what a D&D adventurer could do with modern endurance training and some protein bars?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Engaging in 3 or 4 life-or-death battles against half a dozen opponents in a single day would be more likely to be exhausting than walking for 10 hours.

Definitely. I was noticing the even sneezing a bunch of times (I have recently acquired hayfever, never having had it before) is vastly more exhausting than walking really fast for a mile and a half. Combat, with adrenaline and dodging and so on, jeez, that would trash you.

I heard that it was a myth that people in the Middle Ages were much shorter; that that notion was falsely extrapolated from early Industrial Age height trends.

It's pretty complicated, but no, people in the past were generally quite a bit shorter, just not AS short as people during industrialization (especially urban people then). Interestingly, hunter-gatherers seem to tend to be taller than people who use agriculture, probably because those groups distribute food more evenly. Medieval people were pretty short, on the whole, because they were pretty poorly-nourished, on the whole. Well-nourished people who dodged famine and disease could be pretty big, of course.

 

[skotothalamos]

yeah, the Cleric and the Wizard are gonna get together and make a couple of rolls to figure out where the best places to search are, and then we're going to search those places.

 

[Morlock]

As you are looking through the pages of the new D&D Basic 5th edition, a white dragon silently lands behind you and peers over your shoulder for a moment.
You feel a sudden chill as the great scaled creature whispers in your ear with a chuckle, "Funny aren't they. Next thing you know they'll be saying that magic doesn't exist."
With that statement he rockets skyward on his powerful wings leaving nothing but a touch of frost and cold shivering in your very being as you wonder just how close you were to becoming a corpsicle.

Yeah, but I prefer reasoned fantasy gaming to balanced gamist fantasy gaming. E.g., "what would the middle ages have looked like if dragons were real." Dragons and magic don't explain away the bits based on real life. This is not to say that I don't like players being able to build, say, barbarians who can improve their AC via class abilities, but I'd rather those abilities not be explained in ways that make the abilities seem mundane*. A character like Achilles is fine, but his mommy did dip him in a magic river. I find the "it's fantasy" to be a form of hand-waving. I also prefer "realism" as the default, where we can tweak it to be balanced with options, rather than having to house-rule our "realism."

*Come to think of it, I think I'd prefer classes like Barbarian done as prestige classes; at low levels, barbarians are just Fighters. At higher levels, they can PrC into something like the mystic berserkers we see in the Barbarian class.

This is a meta thing for me, I guess. It's like with art, I find many artists use "it's my style" as a crutch. Cartoony style (for example) is fine if you can do realistic styles well. If not, style is just a crutch hiding your deficiencies. Except they're not really hidden.

 

[Agamon]

yeah, the Cleric and the Wizard are gonna get together and make a couple of rolls to figure out where the best places to search are, and then we're going to search those places.

So that's what the dice on the equipment list is for!

Player:My PC wants to speak to the king!

DM: I hope he has proficiency with dice...