First Impressions?

[WheresMyD20]

My first impression is that there is some good, some bad, and some ugly (funky stuff that will likely get tweaked in playtesting).

The thing that jumped out at me the most was the check mechanic. It seems that the random factor far outweighs the character's natural ability.

It looks like a STR 3 weakling has a decent chance (about 25% or so it seems - I haven't crunched the numbers) of beating a STR 18 bodybuilder in an armwrestling contest per the RAW.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

My first impression is that there is some good, some bad, and some ugly (funky stuff that will likely get tweaked in playtesting).

The thing that jumped out at me the most was the check mechanic. It seems that the random factor far outweighs the character's natural ability.

It looks like a STR 3 weakling has a decent chance (about 25% or so it seems - I haven't crunched the numbers) of beating a STR 18 bodybuilder in an armwrestling contest per the RAW.

Yeah, I think games need to stop using arm wrestling as an example of an opposed roll. Arm wrestling is a test of raw strength. There is no random element. The stronger person wins. The door example is a little better.

 

[LordGraz'zt]

Can someone explain how removing "long rest takes you to full" makes the game more enjoyable?

Removing it would seem to create a situation where the party continually needs to return to base for days on end?

 

[slobster]

Can someone explain how removing "long rest takes you to full" makes the game more enjoyable?

Removing it would seem to create a situation where the party continually needs to return to base for days on end?

It hurts the enjoyability of the game for the simulationist crowd. Going below bloodied is supposed to represent some actual physical wounds. With hit dice to spend, you could yo-yo back and forth across the line, accumulating an impressive number of cuts and bruises which, in real life, would take weeks to heal.

Then somehow after a good night's sleep in the forest your as fresh as if you'd walked straight out of a health spa. It's jarring in the fiction for a lot of people.

Personally I can roll with it, I've always seen HP as such a nebulous abstraction that I prefer not to strain myself by thinking about it too much. But I can see where the distaste comes from.

That's not even getting into how a full heal from a sleep cycle reinforces the 15 minute workday.

 

[Transformer]

Can someone explain how removing "long rest takes you to full" makes the game more enjoyable?

Removing it would seem to create a situation where the party continually needs to return to base for days on end?

It would make the game more enjoyable for me by adding to my immersion. Without full overnight healing, all healing is done either my magic or by using actual first aid supplies to patch myself up for ten minutes. So it's easy to think of hp damage (or at least, hp damage below half hp, as the doc says) as meaningful if not critical wounds: gashes, sprains, bad burns, and the like.

Like I said elsewhere, I love the hit dice healing mechanic, where you can recover a significant amount of hp by mundane means out of combat given supplies. I'm not suggesting they take that out. And I even want extended rests to grant some healing. I suggested making them heal the same amount as one round of hit dice healing: hit die + con mod. 8 hours of rest does, after all, help some. Between an extended rest and hit dice mundane healing, then, I don't think anyone would have to return to base for days on end; they could heal most damage right in the dungeon without a cleric, and we also wouldn't have to deal with all hit point damage evaporating overnight without even any first aid like it was nothing at all.

 

[MoxieFu]

me as well... c'mon Wizards... please don't ruin all my excitement...

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In the words of Charlie Brown: AAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHH!

 

[Aegeri]

It's pretty much as bad as I feared it would be. A bunch of often randomly (or it feels that way) designed mechanics with little logic to them beyond "Older editions did this, so we're going to redo it now with different language". Perhaps all of this magically works out when you play the game (assembling my group at the moment to get together and play it), but my intial feeling from reading the rules in this playtest indicates to me I'm going to have no interest in playing this for very long at all.

I wish I could say I'm disappointed, but the legends and lore articles gave me all the indication I needed this edition was not being designed for me at all. The aspects I loved most about 4E are entirely gone and the aspects I've long since abandoned as "good design" from previous editions are back. What a shame.

 

[Mircoles]

Too many steps back in game design for my personal tastes. Though, over all, it's the return of vancian that's the deal breaker for me.

Does the fighter forget how to swing his ax? No he doesn't and it wouldn't make sense if he did, nor would it make sense for him to have to memorize it multiple times so that he could do it multiple times.

Neither does it make sense for a spell caster to to do the same for their spells. It's what they spent years learning to do.

It didn't make sense to me in AD&D and never will.

Other changes I can work around, but I will most likely just adapt the ones that I like to 4e.

 

[erleni]

Not really. You break enough of somebody's fingers and they are usually falling over themselves to mollify you and make the hurting stop.

- Marty Lund

They should rename Charm Person into Stockholm Syndrome.

 

[nnms]

Participated in a few hours of playtesting.

Liked the rules, sort of. Some things I didn't like:

- rolling two dice and dropping the highest or the lowest.
- full hp after a night's rest
- light, medium & heavy armour bolted on out of 3E.
- weird combination of simulation focus and the occasional very gamey effect

What I really didn't like, is how the characters work. It's almost like the rules are for a cleaned up hybrid of all the versions of D&D with an eye to old school play, but the characters are 2E/4E hybrids with a new school vibe. Like they don't fit in with the basic D&D style of play the rules seem to have. I thought I would like at-wills and dailies for spells, but I didn't.

The story related traits also rubbed us the wrong way. I'm not sure I buy that a cleric's companions all get to be healed at the temple regardless of their relationship with that particular religion. Or that a noble will put up the companions of a Knight regardless of their own station or relationship with the governing authorities. At least "researcher" wasn't something that gave everyone in the party library cards.

I don't know what I was expecting, but we stopped after a couple hours of play and went back to our Basic D&D retroclone game. Updated my ENWorld status: "Not finding 5E interesting enough to playtest it further."

I'll check in again after there's some sort of update or change. As it stands, I'm not seeing anything that competes with other gaming options out there.