D&D 5E Mike Mearls did an interview for Escapist Magazine and reveals PHB classes, races, and much more

[thalmin]

He talked about the classes in the PHB

We've got the four core [Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard], the Monk, Ranger, Paladin, Barbarian, then we have Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, and the... now I'm forgetting one, and I always forget one. Oh, the Druid!

Also

For races, it's basically 3rd Edition plus 4th Edition. Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling from the basic set. Then Half-Orc, Half-Elf, Gnome, Tiefling, and Dragonborn. And for Elves, since in the game when you pick a race you also pick a subtype, there's also Drow in the Player's Handbook.

There's a whole lot more.

http://bit.ly/1mLoyWX

i want to thank E-Tallitnics on the WotC boards for finding this

 

[DDNFan]

Things I've learned from this.

A) The people on the forums saying the PHB had to be 100% finalized for an august release, giving a six month leeway were way off here. Printing in the USA makes perfect sense. Assuming it would be done in China and require multiple revisions was just conjecture.
B) People saying it was too late in the process (even months ago now) for last minute corrections to the PHB, ditto. Way off base here.
C) Fifteen people working on an RPG of D&D's stature seems low to me. I hope their playtest department is at least 50 fulltime testers.

I think it's short-sighted to finalize the PHB when the DMG isn't even close. The optional rules modules in the DMG also require extensive testing to make sure they are even worth putting in, and would have ramifications system-wide that could require retconning stuff in the PH. Let's say there are magic item creation rules via a feat in the DMG only, will that require spells such as Permanency in the PHB? Probably. That's just an example.

I look forward to seeing the final rules, and hope they take a well-deserved vacation after it comes out. I also hope they release the game without a bunch of broken overpowered feats and combos that ruin the game. I hope they have some decent optimisers, theorycrafters and min-maxers in their QA department.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Lots of meat in that article! Hints at what the DMG and MM might contain, a bit about "The Program" (their licensing scheme/OGL thing), Mearls basically owning the fact that 5e's "example setting" is FR.

I'm still kind of lost on their organized play ideas, and why Red Hand of Doom doesn't have a "home" in D&D. Not quite sure what he's getting at with those...

On the races, it's interesting that he mentioned that there's at least 2 subraces per race. So maybe there's hope that in 5e, hadlebarred empire-shadowed puply Tieflings are one flavor, and gritty outcast street-rats are another flavor? Though it looks like there's like 4 subraces of elf, hilariously (to combine 3e and 4e, plus Drow, they'll need Eladrin, High (3e elf), Wood (4e elf), and Drow all together).

Curious stuff. They are packing that book full of options! And with rumblings of things like Warforged in the DMG, perhaps the DMG is going to provide even more race and class options...

Plus, class building guidelines! Exciting!

And the bit he dropped about OGL-ing makes some sense to me in that the most they might do for QA is "Just wait a bit and play the game a bit first, guys," and then be mostly hands-off (possiblity: they'll make the Basic game OGL, call it good). That's a world away from a curated marketplace, but does a little something to help skew the odds in favor of a better series of products, just from giving more people time to absorb the rules.

That's an optimistic speculation, of course.

 

[gweinel]

All well said, however I am concerned about the Forgotten Realms exposure. Neither I nor my gaming group is fond of realms. I hope to not be too much exposure and I really hope to be differents approaches from a more general setting or a more to my liking. I don't want to go constantly "meh" when I read the books or to reflavor everything in there...

 

[fjw70]

He also mentions they may do a print version of the basic version eventually.

 

[Ichneumon]

It was good to finally see the PHB race list confirmed, with no surprises other than the teensy not-really-a-surprise of drow going back under the elf umbrella. I'm not convinced that 'eladrin' will be a subtype, since as an elf subtype it clashes hugely with 'high elf', and Mike's referential phrase was "basically 3rd edition plus 4th edition", which doesn't mean 'exactly'. Still, we will see.

As for subraces, they appear in a Players Handbook for the first time since 2nd Edition. That might surprise some people.

If the higher level monsters in the Monster Manual are limited to a handful of classic critters, fighting large groups could be the norm for high-level PCs. It wouldn't surprise me to see the Battlesystem rules, or a scaled-down variant, in the Basic pdf.

 

[Evenglare]

I don't think I have ever been more excited for a book than I am the DM guide. This is -exactly- what I wanted, a book that allows you to look at the meta rules of the game change them to fit the vision of your campaign. I love all the toolkit stuff, im so happy they decided to give us this in the DM guide. I just went from a sort of "meh" view on the edition to "HOLY CRAP YES". They won me over after reading that article. Thanks.

 

[Blackbrrd]

What I found most interesting was that he states that this time the whole team is working on the same book (PHB). Which more or less states that they had different teams on each of the books in the past. No wonder the math between monsters and characters didn't align in 4e...

I find this a bit disturbing when it comes to digital tools:

Mearls: The team as a whole has about fifteen people. About half that are actually working on the RPG right now. The other half are working on other D&D stuff like Neverwinter, iOS games, licensing, or board games.

It doesn't sound like they have anybody working on digital tools for D&D. I looks to me like they are going to miss out on a huge opportunity to set a new standard for digital support.

 

[Plaguescarred]

All PHB Races/Classes were announced as well as juicy infos on the DMG and MM!

I would have liked to know if the D&D Expeditions adventures downloadable for stores and convention play will also be available for home/online play like LFR did with most of their adventures?

RE Default Forgotten Realms, i wasn't too fond of it at first, but the reasons make sense from a design standpoint and i prefer having adventures backdrop using published setting than have them use new place/people everytime like published or dungeons adventures often do. And those not liking it will change FR references and update adventures to a different/homebrew setting anyway. But for FR fans its more support. So overall i think there's more good than bad in using FR as default.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

It was good to finally see the PHB race list confirmed, with no surprises other than the teensy not-really-a-surprise of drow going back under the elf umbrella. I'm not convinced that 'eladrin' will be a subtype, since as an elf subtype it clashes hugely with 'high elf', and Mike's referential phrase was "basically 3rd edition plus 4th edition", which doesn't mean 'exactly'. Still, we will see.

Eladrin had the same stat modifiers as Grey Elves in 2e. In the Forgotten Realms, it said that people referred to Eladrin in that world as Moon Elves. In 2e it said that Moon Elves were just another name for Grey Elves.

Moon Elves=Grey Elves=Eladrin. They are the same race.

There's always been a split between the Dex elves and the Int elves. 4e just gave a bigger reason why there was a split and said that the Eladrin actively came from another plane more recently.