D&D 5E Have you played 5E yet?

[Olaf the Stout]

My PF game had a sudden cancel on Friday, so the rest of us decided to hit the starter set. Knocked HD recovery by 50% and took a 0 off the long rest HP recovery. Also tweaked the death and dying rule.

Biggest observations:
It is hard to judge based on Levels 1 and 2
All in all we had fun
Some of the lack of mechanical distinction was showing already
Good game that could be hacked into a primary game, but unless the hacks work well it may not replace PF as the go to.
Good enough that we will certainly start a campaign post-DMG and see where it takes us.

Not trying to start a flame war. I'm genuinely curious.

Why did you house rule some of the rules without playing with them as-is first to see how well they worked with the rest of the rule set?

I'm not against house rules, but personally I prefer to see how the rules as written work in practice before coming up with fixes.

 

[BryonD]

Not trying to start a flame war. I'm genuinely curious.

Why did you house rule some of the rules without playing with them as-is first to see how well they worked with the rest of the rule set?

I'm not against house rules, but personally I prefer to see how the rules as written work in practice before coming up with fixes.

I've been playing for over 30 years. I've tried a lot of rules and I have a good feeling on a lot of things I like and don't like. To provide the most direct and recent example for this question, I've played 4E and I know how completely dissatisfying it is when healing comes too easy.

I don't need to re-learn that something like 100% healing every night is going to be a game I'm not going to play. I have already seen it first.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I got to play my first session of Lost Mine of Phandelver, though we only got through the first combat due to limited time.

We don't have enough experience to have informed opinions, but overall we had fun and there weren't any complaints in regard to the rules. Also, backgrounds have proven popular, though I think they may be the second most agonized over decision in character creation, behind choosing a name.

 

[Kestrel]

Played the Starter Set last night. Only had three players, they chose the Noble Fighter, the Folk Hero Fighter, and the Dwarf Cleric. We had one death, the cleric.

Some spoilers below

Spoiler

They did well in the initial goblin combat, the noble surviving a critical shot from one arrow. They proceeded to the caves, where I decided to level them to 2nd level. The folk hero stealthed ahead of the chain mail wearers. Hetook out the goblin sentries solo with two shots from his bow on a surprise round using action surge. They realized they would need light for the cave, so decided to try to draw some goblins out of the cave. They set up their ambush, with the cleric and noble flanking the entrance and the folk hero in the brush with his bow. They began hooting and hollering to get attention. The goblins responded by loosing the penned wolves and following up with two goblin archers. The party took them out pretty quickly and then proceeded to the wolf pen.

The cleric decided to climb the chimney to the bugbear's cave. He rolled badly on the climb and then horribly on stealth. The bugbear heard him and waited to smack him when he stuck his head out. The bugbear got surprise and got two rounds of hits, but the cleric managed to stay conscious (at 5 hp) . The cleric scrambled back down the chimney to the wolf cave. The group then dithered around in the wolf cave for a few minutes, trying to decide a plan of action. The cleric was badly hurt and out of healing and the other two had damage as well. While they planned, the goblins set up archers in stream cave. The party heard the goblins moving about, so they decided to retreat from the cave for a rest. The goblins fired on them as they left, and for some reason, the party turned to fight the goblins in the open, outside the cave. In the ensuing fight, the cleric was dropped, and then bled out. (he made two death saves and then failed three in a row) The folk hero was dropped as well, but the noble managed to remain standing, with five goblins dying and one (Yeemix) fleeing back into the cave. The noble then drug/carried his friends back to the oxen at the main trail. They did a long rest, with the folk hero coming back to consciousness and new dwarf cleric arriving out the woods. (I let the cleric player rename his character so we could continue) The next day, they proceeded back into the cave and managed to defeat the remaining goblins and bugbear, who had much less warning with their numbers depleted the day before.

It was a fun session. From a gm perspective, I enjoyed the simplicity of the rules. I'm not sure if its due to the low level of the characters or the system. Will need to try again at around 5th with the PHB rules to get a good grasp of the new game's complexity.

 

[delericho]

No, but my read-though of most of Basic has convinced me that I really want to. So, job done there, then.

 

[wlmartin]

I dont intend to really

aside from a few cool things (namely advantage), they have not made enough changes from 3.0/3.5 to make me think this isn't just a 3rd edition homebrew.

I really feel that you could home rule a lot of their changes into a 3.5 campaign and job is done


They screwed the pooch with 4th edition and 5e just feels like back pedaling

 

[GrumpyGamer]

I voted yes, as I am playing through the starter set, but I won't really feel like I am playing the game until I have a copy of the PHB.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Yes, and I love it.

 

[Murkmoldiev]

Hi ! I run a group in Sydney and we just played a 4 hour game and is was so smooth and flowing that no one rememberd anything except the amazing story we were creating.

Easily 3 times as much as in the my path finder game. It was very similar to how we used to play 2nd editon and basic . Everyone agreed it was better and they have never had as much fun. I had no attention on how the rules worked even though I had just learned them so I had alot more free attention to make the game exiting and interesting. Even my step son who has been hating on 5th ed since it came out and was refusing to play until we bribed him with pizza and chocolate , had so much fun just like he was 8 years old again and learning to play.

One of my players was overseas and had not heard about the release - I wrote to him telling him how amazing it is and how we are switching over- He said “ It's funny a few days before you sent the first email about 5th edition I was thinking about dnd and how complex and pidley it had become and what a shame it was. I was also thinking of older games like our 2nd edition games and how awesome they were. Pathfinder did do a great job of fixing 3rd ed but I felt it became was way to complex . Simple is so key, then you can just focus on playing and creating .

WINNING.

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[MerricB]

Sounds fantastic, [MENTION=6777915]Murkmoldiev[/MENTION]! I hope you continue to have a good time with 5E!

Cheers!