D&D 5E (2014) Fifth Edition.....Why?

[Oofta]

NEWS FLASH: THIS JUST RELEASED ....

No single game will work for every individual. Repeat. No single game will work for every individual.

STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER UPDATES...

 

[Sacrosanct]

Per the High Level Campaigns book, it takes 250,000 xp for a fighter to go from level 29 to 30. For a multiclassed character with 3 classes, you could roughly triple that for somewhere around 750K xp (classes progressed at varying rates, so a thief or bard only required 120K xp, whereas a druid needed 500K xp to go from 29th to 30th). If a dual classed character picked a new class at the same time that the multiclassed character needed 750K xp to go from level 29 to 30 in all three classes, the dual classed character ought to be somewhere between levels 10 and 13 in the new class by the time Mr Multiclass gains the 750K he needs. I'll grant you, the rule about only gaining one level at a time (you would stop 1 xp shy of the next level) might cause the human to fall behind slightly, but it shouldn't be anywhere near as dramatic as you describe.

When a fighter/mage/thief is 30th level (22,500K xp), his human companion should be something like 20 ranger/20 wizard/20 cleric/20 thief/20 fighter/20 paladin/20 druid/20 bard based on xp.

Whenever I see people talk about their 30th and 40th level PCs in AD&D, it's either one of two things, neither using actual XP tracking as designed

1. Monty Haul where you receive 100000 exp for each orc you kill or you get told "level up" for successfully walking into a bar
2. You just start at level 20 or 30 and go from there.

Yeah, well, a bunch of his details seem strange. Shadowrun 3e was around 2005, for example. And he went from there to basic set to AD&D to 3rd? Heck 3.5 was out before he even started gaming, apparently.

Yeah, that whole post was inconsistency after inconsistency. The OD&D he talks about was actually B/X, not OD&D, and as you mention, the time frames are all out of wack. I'm suspecting the poster's location is Russia...

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

When I started gaming it wasn't on AD&D, it was West End Games Star Wars,

So at least 1987

TSR Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Shadowrun 3rd Edition,

Now we're up to at least 1998 for SR 3E

Werewolf the Apocalypse, Vampire the Masquerade. It wouldn't be until about 4 years into my gaming tenure when my grandmother would purchase the blue and red box of original DnD for me complete with the crayon to mark the dice with.

So now we're at least up to 2001 when your grandmother bought you an 18-year old version of D&D? Was she at a con when she did that?

Your described timeline is kind of a puzzle but alright.

Having begun my RP experience with systems that offered generous character options and variability. I disliked the limitation of AD&D where humans only actual benefit was they could progress through a class for a bit, then could restart progression in another class, and there was no limit to their progression, however, no group I ever played with followed that proscription, and for every 40th level Human 20 rgr/5 fgtr/ 5 rogue/ 5 mage/ 5 cleric there was a 40/40/40 Elven multiclass that shouldn't have ever been allowed.

You were playing AD&D after you received the Basic/Expert D&D sets? Because B/X didn't have any multiclassing rules.

I didn't get into DnD until 3rd Edition where some of Ed Greenwood's characters in his novels finally made sense statistically. And I adored 3rd edition, it allowed me to create the fantasy character I wanted to play in an easy to delineate manner.

Cool, a lot of us had a ton of fun with 3E. Per-level multiclassing and a unified experience table was a huge innovation at the time. Even if it led to some of the worst breakages later on, it was still a great idea compared to what we had before.

Then came fourth edition which eliminated everything great about 3rd Edition but tried to turn the system into a tabletop World of Warcraft, a system I promptly demonstrated the idiocy of its lack of thought with by building a fey aspected warlock with a cape of the mountebank which let me basically deal damage and teleport, the damage and teleport, and when the GM tried to be clever and isolate me then I used the cape to teleport me back behind the line the party had formed, the whole system was stupid, not to mention the abject horror they turned the Forgotten Realms into.

You're a few years late for the Edition Wars. Many here remember them but few wish to reignite them.

Then I bought the 5th Edition players handbook, It seemed to actually streamline the 4th Edition and make it less a tabletop MMO while bringing back the simplicity of the old school blue and red boxes. However what drove me to ignore the rule set was that fundamental lack of variability that 3rd Edition actually offered. It seems like I'm pretty much stuck in the class I began the game in and I can either choose a mediocre stat bonus where I used to be able to alter the standard progression path by taking a feat, and the stat bonus would come later which demonstrated a focus in a differing area of my character's priority.

You can still multiclass in 5th just like you did in 3rd. There are still feats. There are now backgrounds. There are not as many options overall as in 3.5 for two reasons: 1) it hasn't been out for anywhere near as long as 3.5 and 2) There's a deliberate design choice here not to flood the market with rules expansions as they did with 3E and 4E.

So, why should I play 5th Edition? It eliminated the wonderful options a player could take his character and even it's weak multiclassing can't portray the most famous characters of our favorite DnD novel characters. I mean, stat out Elminster the way he should be in 5th Ed, or even Mirt the Merciless.

One, if you have a group of players who like 3rd edition D&D why would you ask strangers on the internet to convince you to change to a new edition? If you don't have that group anymore but have found a new one that's playing 5th, well, is a game in a new system you're not sure about better than no game at all? The best way to learn about a new system is to play it.

Two, if your measuring stick is how well it reproduces characters from D&D novels it really depends on what you want them to be and I don't know that any version of D&D is going to make you happy. Heck, I'd say Hero system might be your best option for that!

Three, this edition has been out for 3 years now. There is a load of reviews, recaps, podcasts, and actual plays out there. If you still aren't sure about it, see if there's an AL group near you and go watch or play a game there.

Bonus: If you're that serious a 3E fan and like the options and detailed support it had I would think you would be looking more at Pathfinder. Seriously, it sounds a lot more like what you're looking for. It looks like you're in Aggieland so I am sure there are some PF groups there too, mixed in with the 5E crowd.

Regardless, good luck, and in my experience the group often matters far more than the rules set they're playing right now. Hopefully you can find one and have some fun.

 

[Tev]

When I play a game I think of the rules as more of a backbone for playing rather than a stringent set of instructions that must be followed to play. The people I play with are all at the table to mainly RP and have fun. Min/maxing is never our aim and I don't play with people who are just playing to do that. This allows us to tweak, change and sometimes completely ignore rules or make new ones up if we think our enjoyment is going to benefit from that.

Getting bogged down in the mechanics and systems is not the essence of playing an RPG in my opinion. As roleplaying games are so open to interpretation some systems may combine to give strange and unintended results that could ruin the gameplay experience. However if everyone is there to have fun and enjoy themselves then this is rarely an issue as no one is trying to exploit the game.

This is my favourite mindset for me and the people I play with to have as it means we're so much less reliant on the ruleset to have fun.

 

[cmad1977]

You’re basically wrong about your 5e conclusions but here’s the good news and it comes in two parts.

Part 1: play whatever you have fun with.
Part 2: no ones going to try to convince you to play 5e because no one really cares what you play.

Have fun!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Tormyr]

When I started gaming it wasn't on AD&D, it was West End Games Star Wars, TSR Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Shadowrun 3rd Edition, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Vampire the Masquerade. It wouldn't be until about 4 years into my gaming tenure when my grandmother would purchase the blue and red box of original DnD for me complete with the crayon to mark the dice with. Having begun my RP experience with systems that offered generous character options and variability. I disliked the limitation of AD&D where humans only actual benefit was they could progress through a class for a bit, then could restart progression in another class, and there was no limit to their progression, however, no group I ever played with followed that proscription, and for every 40th level Human 20 rgr/5 fgtr/ 5 rogue/ 5 mage/ 5 cleric there was a 40/40/40 Elven multiclass that shouldn't have ever been allowed. I didn't get into DnD until 3rd Edition where some of Ed Greenwood's characters in his novels finally made sense statistically. And I adored 3rd edition, it allowed me to create the fantasy character I wanted to play in an easy to delineate manner. Then came fourth edition which eliminated everything great about 3rd Edition but tried to turn the system into a tabletop World of Warcraft, a system I promptly demonstrated the idiocy of its lack of thought with by building a fey aspected warlock with a cape of the mountebank which let me basically deal damage and teleport, the damage and teleport, and when the GM tried to be clever and isolate me then I used the cape to teleport me back behind the line the party had formed, the whole system was stupid, not to mention the abject horror they turned the Forgotten Realms into.
Then I bought the 5th Edition players handbook, It seemed to actually streamline the 4th Edition and make it less a tabletop MMO while bringing back the simplicity of the old school blue and red boxes. However what drove me to ignore the rule set was that fundamental lack of variability that 3rd Edition actually offered. It seems like I'm pretty much stuck in the class I began the game in and I can either choose a mediocre stat bonus where I used to be able to alter the standard progression path by taking a feat, and the stat bonus would come later which demonstrated a focus in a differing area of my character's priority.
So, why should I play 5th Edition? It eliminated the wonderful options a player could take his character and even it's weak multiclassing can't portray the most famous characters of our favorite DnD novel characters. I mean, stat out Elminster the way he should be in 5th Ed, or even Mirt the Merciless.

Ooh, boy. Your rant may not have been the best way to get advice on 5th edition. Looking back through your posts, it seems like you are looking for a regular group, are possibly new to the Bryan / College Station area, and are frustrated with not being able to find a new group. A cursory search of the area shows it to be very light on game stores in a university town.

If you are attending Texas A&M, there may be some groups or meetups on site or nearby. Other than that, have you taken a look at Clockwork Games? http://www.clockworkgaming.com/events.php They are in College station northeast of Texas A&M. They have Adventurer's League on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. This is a public play format that allows players to show up when they can. The story line can be a little jumbled from people showing up irregularly, and it has a standardized set of which options are used, but it would provide you a low key forum to try 5e without expectations. Just do not show up and complain about 5e. Focus on playing. Aside from that, the staff at the game store may know of Pathfinder groups.

Another option to look at would be the looking for group sections of Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. https://app.roll20.net/forum/category/22 I started with Roll20 as it did not have software to install (it runs in the browser). You lose some of the face to face je ne sais quoi from everyone looking at each other through video cameras, but your ability to find people to play with goes up immensely.

Good luck, and if you pull back on the trashing of 5e in the 5e forum, you will probably get a better reception. This is a good group of people, even if we are somewhat opinionated at times (otherwise we would not be talking about games on an internet forum).

 

[Wulffolk]

Fifth Edition . . . Why not?

 

[Satyrn]

It has been my experience that the players who have had the hardest time adjusting to 5E have been those who started in 3E. While the mechanics of 5E are closest to 3E, the design style is vastly different, being much closer to AD&D and 4E. 3E attempted to have detailed rules for many different possible scenarios, while 5E has tried to simplify the rules as much as possible. 3E had system mastery, where player skill in character design was a huge benefit, while optimized characters in 5E aren't that much stronger than the average character.

As others have said, there is nothing wrong with not liking 5E, and you should play a game system that fits your preferences. Rather than suggest you continue to play 3E, however, I would suggest looking into Pathfinder as an alternative, since not only is it a cleaned up system, but it is a currently supported product by Piazo. Happy gaming.

Interestingly, my group (before I joined with them) all started with 3e together. I joined them about the time 4e came out. We played 3e together for a while and had great fun with it, played 4e for a while and had great fun with it. Then I took over DMing for a while, I took us back to 3e. Later, the other DM had us convert our characters to 5e and we have loved it.

There has been no longing from them for the complexity of character creation that 3e provided, nor for the tactical complexity that 4e provided.

It's like 5e combined exactly the right measure of 3e and 4e for them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fifth Edition.....Why?

Really, because it's the current edition. It means there's a community to engage with, organized play, and new material coming out (however slowly)....

Apart from that, and the usual flat-out h4ter lies about 4e, which I'll snip....

When I started gaming it wasn't on AD&D, it was West End Games Star Wars, TSR Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Shadowrun 3rd Edition, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Vampire the Masquerade. ... Having begun my RP experience with systems that offered generous character options and variability. I disliked the limitation of AD&D .... I didn't get into DnD until 3rd Edition, it allowed me to create the fantasy character I wanted to play in an easy to delineate manner. ...
So, why should I play 5th Edition? It eliminated the wonderful options a player could take his character

5e does not have nearly the wealth of character-building options that 3e and 4e did (and PF still has & continued to build upon). It's not as eminently breakable as 3.x/PF nor as nearly-balanced as 4e. It /is/ much more evocative of the classic game than either of them - but since you never cared for the classic game, that's not a positive, either.

5e is meant to be D&D for anyone who ever loved D&D, regardless of edition, but while it doesn't have anything but digging out your old books to compete with when it comes to 2e or 4e, it has the OSR movement rivaling it for old-school fans, and, relevant to you: PF to compete with if 3.x was the only time you ever loved D&D. It's not that 5e has abandoned 3.5 fans, it's just that it's not catering to them to a much greater extent than it is fans of the classic game. So, you might just want to give your business to Paizo, they are catering to exactly what you want, and producing tons of stuff for it. It's not like you have any special loyalty to the official D&D brand because you started with it back in the day (which is how some of us feel about it).

Ultimately, if you do decide to go that way, your absence from the current-ed D&D forum would be much appreciated. It's one thing to have a preference - especially when you have the luxury of having that preference catered to lavishly - it's another to rant against the preferences of others, especially those who don't have that luxury.

 

[Stalker0]

Mechanically I think 5e has done a lot to smooth out fighter vs casters.

The fighter classes in general feel better than the 3e equivalents. The casters are better balanced by less spell slots, concentration, and better spell balance.

This was a key for me. Overall I like most of the classes better. I miss 3e sometimes, but I think 5e is just a natural improvement to the core design