D&D 5E First Basic Game: Fun With Backgrounds (And Not Much Else)

[gyor]

At level 2 you would have gotten a encounter power of sorts, channel divinity, with a choice between usingg turn undead and Preserve Life.

 

[FireLance]

Your group should call themselves "The Breakfast Club".

I think the Leverage crew is closer to what the PCs actually do, though.

 

[FireLance]

At level 2 you would have gotten a encounter power of sorts, channel divinity, with a choice between usingg turn undead and Preserve Life.

Yes, I'm looking forward to trying it out this weekend.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yes, it could be because we weren't using properly balanced monsters and encounters. However, with 4e, I'd be more comfortable breaking up the monotony of at-will attacks with an encounter power or rwo.

So there's an interesting distinction. 1st-level clerics in 5e don't have encounter powers, but they do have a bucket of dailies (well, two, it's not a very full bucket, but it's more than 1!).

In 4e terms, for Basic Cleric Attacks that aren't just "whack things with your weapon" we've got

1) Sacred Flame(at-will ranged attack vs. Ref for 1d8 radiant damage), which you noticed was less effective than your crossbow...though a critter's DEX save is generally < AC, so I dunno 'bout that...)
2) Guiding Bolt (daily ranged attack vs. AC for 4d6 damage and +5 to hit until EONT)
3) Inflict Wounds (daily melee attack vs. AC for 3d10 necrotic damage)
4) Various Daily combos of bonus action buff/healing spells + some other attack 'till you're out of slots.

In "conservative mode" you're not spending your dailies, so other than your weapon, you've just got Sacred Flame....which should generally be more useful than your bow, at least against critters who don't pump DEX, if only because your DC 13 saving throw is going up against DEX scores < 13-15 generally. But maybe you're up against ninjas, I dunno.

But being stingy with your dailies ain't helpin' no one, either. And not feeling like you NEED to use your dailies makes it sound like the DM underestimated what you guys could take on. You had an easy run, that's easy on the healer. You never came across a really urgent scenario, and given that you had two spell slots, you probably should've stumbled on at LEAST two!

I wonder how your wizard fared. Did they feel the need to spend spells, or were they plinking through encounters as well?

 

[GX.Sigma]

However, what I found to be the biggest flaw in Basic 5e (at least, from the play experience in my first game) was this: I was playing an elven cleric, and it didn't feel like I was playing a cleric, or an elf.

Perhaps it was because I was playing in conservative, my-spells-should-only-be-used-when-we-really-need-it mode, but my decision tree for the adventure can pretty much be summarized as follows:

1. Are we in enough trouble that I need to use a daily spell slot? (The answer was usually no.)
2. If no, do the creatures we are fighting seem to be resistant or immune to piercing damage? (The answer was usually no.)
3. If no, fire my light crossbow. (Firing a light crossbow is usually better than casting sacred flame.)
4. Repeat.

Apart from the encounter balance thing (which is probably the root of the problem), I think you can chalk this up to creating a character before getting comfy with the system. Once you know what you're doing, you can make a cleric that does clericy stuff all the time, or you can make a cleric that is good with a crossbow.

Sorry to be all That Guy about it.

4e has been criticized for having "yo-yo hit points", but the fact that one or two PCs would normally drop to half hit points or less in a standard fight meant that healers had plenty of opportunities to heal.

Your DM must have been going easy on you. Rest assured, 5e definitely has yo-yo hit points.

Well, the DM asked us to level up to 2nd level, and we'll be playing again this weekend, so The Sage will now have an encounter power and one more daily 1st-level spell slot.

Expectation check: a power that recharges with a short rest in 5e is not like an encounter power in 4e. It's more like a daily utility power that you sometimes have the pleasant surprise of recharging.

 

[unan oranis]

I read this thread just before running my first 5e session today, and I'm glad I did!

Originally I was going to keep things extra simple and skip the Background stuff just to save a little time. 3 out of 4 players had never played dnd before and we only had 3.5 hours to play from scratch, and none of us were interested in pre-gens.

I showed them some examples and told them to make up their own, and it was a big success. Got everyone right into character and laughing.

I couldn't tell if combat was too simple of course, the new players were relatively overwhelmed by their first combat... rogue on the frontline switching targets every round, cleric hiding, other rogue trying to throw spears long range and failing at getting behind cover, it was a newb-fest.

 

[FireLance]

In "conservative mode" you're not spending your dailies, so other than your weapon, you've just got Sacred Flame....which should generally be more useful than your bow, at least against critters who don't pump DEX, if only because your DC 13 saving throw is going up against DEX scores < 13-15 generally. But maybe you're up against ninjas, I dunno.

Actually, looking at the (spoilered) ACs in one of the posts above, the light crossbow would have hit at about the same rate as saving throws would have failed (assuming saving throw bonuses of +0 to +2). Hence, the damage bonus would make the light crossbow the better option most of the time.

I wonder how your wizard fared. Did they feel the need to spend spells, or were they plinking through encounters as well?

Here is where starting equipment made a difference. The Criminal didn't start with a light crossbow, so he was casting ray of frost when he wasn't casting magic missile.

 

[FireLance]

Apart from the encounter balance thing (which is probably the root of the problem), I think you can chalk this up to creating a character before getting comfy with the system. Once you know what you're doing, you can make a cleric that does clericy stuff all the time, or you can make a cleric that is good with a crossbow.

Oh, I could have cast sacred flame all the time. It's just that I didn't, most of the time, because firing a light crossbow seemed to be the better choice.

Expectation check: a power that recharges with a short rest in 5e is not like an encounter power in 4e. It's more like a daily utility power that you sometimes have the pleasant surprise of recharging.

If the encounter difficulty does go up next session, I expect everyone will want to take a short rest after each fight to spend Hit Dice if we can. If I used Channel Divinity in the fight, I'll get it back then.

 

[Pickles JG]

Apart from the encounter balance thing (which is probably the root of the problem), I think you can chalk this up to creating a character before getting comfy with the system. Once you know what you're doing, you can make a cleric that does clericy stuff all the time, or you can make a cleric that is good with a crossbow.

Sorry to be all That Guy about it.

Your DM must have been going easy on you. Rest assured, 5e definitely has yo-yo hit points.

Expectation check: a power that recharges with a short rest in 5e is not like an encounter power in 4e. It's more like a daily utility power that you sometimes have the pleasant surprise of recharging.

It sounds like he's a wood elf cleric with 16 wis and 16 dex. It's hard to see how he could be better at either clericing or crossbowing, regardles of his system mastery.

Hp yo yo unless you have no cleric when they just yo.

Good way of looking at short rest powers, I will set my expectations thus!

 

[Blackbrrd]

So there's an interesting distinction. 1st-level clerics in 5e don't have encounter powers, but they do have a bucket of dailies (well, two, it's not a very full bucket, but it's more than 1!).

In 4e terms, for Basic Cleric Attacks that aren't just "whack things with your weapon" we've got

1) Sacred Flame(at-will ranged attack vs. Ref for 1d8 radiant damage), which you noticed was less effective than your crossbow...though a critter's DEX save is generally < AC, so I dunno 'bout that...)
2) Guiding Bolt (daily ranged attack vs. AC for 4d6 damage and +5 to hit until EONT)
3) Inflict Wounds (daily melee attack vs. AC for 3d10 necrotic damage)
4) Various Daily combos of bonus action buff/healing spells + some other attack 'till you're out of slots.

In "conservative mode" you're not spending your dailies, so other than your weapon, you've just got Sacred Flame....which should generally be more useful than your bow, at least against critters who don't pump DEX, if only because your DC 13 saving throw is going up against DEX scores < 13-15 generally. But maybe you're up against ninjas, I dunno.

But being stingy with your dailies ain't helpin' no one, either. And not feeling like you NEED to use your dailies makes it sound like the DM underestimated what you guys could take on. You had an easy run, that's easy on the healer. You never came across a really urgent scenario, and given that you had two spell slots, you probably should've stumbled on at LEAST two!

I wonder how your wizard fared. Did they feel the need to spend spells, or were they plinking through encounters as well?

For the cleric mentioned, the crossbow does 1d8+3 damage vs 1d8 for Sacred flame, so against relatively low AC targets, the extra damage is probably more important. The average damage is 7.5 vs 4.5, or 66% higher. The apply-damage chance would have to be 66% better for Sacred flame for it to do the same average damage after calculating for to-hit/save. In short, Sacred Flame is an awful cantrip for this Cleric.

I think having a cantrip with a save is a bad idea, since you don't get to roll the attack yourself, especially since it has no effect on a succesful save and is against a single target.

... I don't get why the PC isn't using a longbow, which he has proficiency with and would feel more like an Elf. The Elven Cleric Archer of 3e was one of my favourite builds.