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This baffled me at first, too, but I've done some investigating about the fact that the adventure as written just looks like a bunch of rooms with stat blocks. As a previous poster mentioned, B2 was originally part of the Basic set and intended to do most, but not all, of the prep-work for a...

Two quick thoughts: 1. I don't think the rogue is really meant to be getting advantage every round. That would put his damage much closer to the fighter's. My sense is that the rogue should be average damage with a few spikes rewarding creative play or taking the time to hide. I think the idea...

Here's an outrageous question: what's so wrong about requiring a cleric? I'm kind of just playing devil's advocate here, but go with me. The elephant in the room in all of this is that WotC's (and most players') baseline assumption is that nobody enjoys being a healer and we should go to any...

I play 4e pretty much exclusively because that's what my group plays (with a handful of PF players as well). Speaking personally I'm ready for a change from 4e; it doesn't support the style of game I want very well, and the long combats are wearing on me quite a bit. I intend to switch to 5e as...

I'm not totally sure about Reaper either, but I will say that I'm betting it's part of the attempt to make fighters not get outclassed by wizards. At first level the wizard has two attack spells that have an effect on a miss (Burning Hands does half damage and Sleep slows) plus an auto-hit...

The downside to the Light spell is that it can only be cast on one object at a time (casting it again dispels the first casting). Your point still stands, though, especially on those corridors that turns out to be dead ends another ten feet down!

Thanks! Yeah, I could definitely sense that there was a lot left up to the DM in terms of how things played out. It could have just been rooms of monsters, but it felt like a living hobgoblin den. The module gives you situations, and the story comes from how you deal with them, rather than...

Thanks! My take on healing is now that while I'm still not crazy about the overnight max heal (which would take a few more hours if you're below 1 hp), the fact that you can't self-heal from unconscious does create a real resource management/when do we head home/should we camp here tension. I'd...

Absolutely. Every time I dropped a spell it was a game-changer, except maybe the one time that my Sleep only took out one hobgoblin-- which is still basically an auto-kill. I never used Shield, though I probably would have if we had kept going. I didn't prepare Comprehend Languages; it would...

Playtest Report 5/26/12 On Saturday I played the 5e playtest packet for the first time. The adventure was being run by a trio of local DMs who had tried it out Friday night for the first time. We had, I believe, 14 players there for the playtest, so while our table had exactly five, one had...

Hmm, thanks for all the thoughtful responses. I'm still concerned about Shocking Grasp. I know there's disagreement over whether the lack of stickiness makes this stronger or weaker but my sense is that if the DM wants to pile monsters on the wizard he's going to do it, and if he's feeling...

That's a really good point. So maybe the intent is actually that since you can only have Advantage or Disadvantage no matter how many times you "get it," having both will cancel out. That would certainly be faster. We'll just have to wait and see.

Right, but what if the fighter isn't a slayer?

I haven't played yet-- will tomorrow-- but just from looking at the character sheets I was very surprised by the wizard's at-wills. I had expected from earlier playtest reports that the wizard could get a single at-will as a single feat (Lance of Flame or whatever it was called that was talked...

I'm worried about this, too. We'll see how it plays tomorrow. I will say that somewhere in the rules it says to give anyone an auto-success if the DC would be 5 or more less than their relevant ability score, which does mean that not only rogues can auto-succeed. Not sure if a skill bonus would...

You cannot have advantage or disadvantage more than once on a single roll, so "stacking" advantages isn't any better than just having one, and similarly with disadvantages. Meanwhile, if you have both advantage and disadvantage, they cancel each other out. So, then, I think the question you're...

I'm not sure about Magic Missile being a cantrip. At its current damage value it can auto-kill the lowest-level monsters. That means that against a pack of kobolds or rats, for example, the wizard is essentially doing the same damage as the fighter (defined as "enough to kill the enemy in one...

I like the lack of AoOs/OAs thus far. I remember when 3e came out, there were so many feats that had to do with AoOs and I thought "My God, they're really forcing us to play with a grid for any of this to make sense!" For a group that had never used minis at all, this was a big change and one of...

I love this post. Assuming I understand all your work correctly, I actually like this system. I like that a low-HD PC can make up for it with a high Con-- that feels right to me, and fits with the primacy that 5e is giving to ability scores. If you want your wizard to be tough, give him lots of...

There's a lot of debate here about what HP represent. I think this somewhat misses the mark regarding the long-rest healing rule. Hopefully we can all agree that to a certain extent the very idea of hit points is a necessary game artifice. Because of that, there can never be a solid answer to...