D&D 5E Just wrapped up four consecutive days of D&D 5th.

[Melkor]

Two of us picked up our Starter Sets at a midnight release from our FLGS on Wednesday night, and we downloaded the basic PDFs the next day. We started playing D&D 5th Thursday afternoon, and continued playing Friday, Saturday, and just wrapped up a session today. About 16 hours of actual game time.

The three of us have all been playing together (usually with a fourth who was away for the 4th of July holiday) for just over 28 years - starting with Basic/AD&D, then a lot of AD&D 2E, 3.0, 3.5, a brief foray into 4E, then Pathfinder. Although we thought 4E combats could be really exciting and fun, we all generally didn't like the reliance on a grid, our perceived focus on tactical combat, and the length of combat.

Going into our game on Thursday, we were pretty skeptical about Second Wind, Hit Dice recovery, full healing upon a Long Rest, Action Surge, at-will Cantrips, and a few other things.

After playing over four days - roughly 12 combat encounters with mixed in roleplaying, we all had a blast, and saw some really interesting (and fun) situations that wouldn't have happened without Second Wind, Action Surge, and at-will Cantrips, I think we are all in agreement that those actually added quite a bit of character to the game.

We ended up with an early total party kill, that, in the interest of the game, we "rewound" and replayed differently to see how it went (the character's all survived). Today, another one of the characters died in a pretty epic battle. All of this eased our concerns about Second Wind, Hit Dice, and full HP recovery during a long rest. The game still has a good level of danger.

We haven't played this many straight days since the 90s, so it was a lot of fun.

TL;DR - A lot of our initial concerns about some of the rules were pretty much wiped away after several solid sessions of play, we really like the way 5th Edition plays, and we all had a blast. We can't wait for the PHB and Tyranny of Dragons.

 

[The Hitcher]

Now this is the kind of rules discussion that I actually enjoy reading - real discussion of rules as seen in actual play. Cheers! Looking forward to playing, myself.

 

[sidonunspa]

So tell us.

what did you learn? did anything not work?

 

[Arctic Wolf]

So tell us.

what did you learn? did anything not work?

Yeah I am with sidnunspa here. I am curious since I have only read bits of the basic rules at the moment.

 

[Dayte]

Now this is the kind of rules discussion that I actually enjoy reading - real discussion of rules as seen in actual play. Cheers! Looking forward to playing, myself.

I agree. Sometimes things do not play out at the table like we think they will in our head. Looks like I'll be playing the starter set adventure this week myself and can't wait.

 

[Der-Rage]

Oh wait, so Second Wind doesn't break the game open and need immediate errata? But DDNfan was so certain!

Mod Note: Folks, let's not make this personal, and let us not use it as an opportunity to pursue old arguments. Thanks. ~Umbran

 

[IronWolf]

Good to hear!

With Basic there a couple of things I am not sure I like, but they are things I am willing to see how it behaves during play. Funny - my list is very similar to yours. I think I can get used to most of it, the one of most concern is full recovery of HP with a long rest. I sort of like a grindy game and I like that sense of attrition, but I need to see it in play before I decide.

 

[Melkor]

So tell us.

what did you learn? did anything not work?

Some additional thoughts (apologies in advance for run on sentences):

The Halfling Rogue in the Starter spent a lot of time using his bow with success. The "Lucky" reroll a 1 ability was a godsend no less than six times over the course of several days. When he went to use his Shortsword, the DM asked why he wouldn't simply pick up a light weapon in his off-hand and use it all of the time...I didn't do that, but had to agree. The Sneak Attack with the bow when an enemy of the target is within 5' was used over and over in the game. It was a big boon for the Rogue.

The other character I played was the Human Defense Fighter. I consistently rolled badly with him, but he seemed a little underwhelming. He was able to block a corridor during an epic battle that played out and soak up some damage with Second Wind, his Hit Points, and his decent AC - but fell and failed three Death Saves after a single success. Second Wind and Action Surge felt 'necessary' against some of the bigger foes we encountered and kept the battles exciting.

My friend played the Elven Mage and the Dwarf Cleric. He seemed to own the day when he was fully rested with spells, but if we were pressed into multiple encounters without a Short Rest, he quickly was relegated to Cantrips with these two characters, and both went down fairly regularly. All four characters seemed like they were hard to kill, but went down at times. He was never a big fan of 4E, and loved the versatility of Mages/Wizards in 3E, but had grown tired of playing them. He LOVED playing this 5th edition Wizard.

After our first session, we thought "Wow, it seems really hard to kill characters," and enjoying the grit of AD&D and 2E games, this felt wrong to us - we blamed it on Second Wind, Hit Dice use at Short Rests, and Full HP healing, and were honestly talking about how we hoped "Lingering Wounds" or Slow Healing options in the DMG would fix this at our table. After the second session with the Total Party Kill, our eyes were opened, and we thought "This is pretty well designed." After the third session, where the Cleric went down to zero HP with a blow that took him to -17 without killing him (he was 2nd Level with 19HP), we kind of reevaluated again thinking it would be too hard to kill a character with a death blow (negative max HP) - especially as they leveled and had lots of original max HP. Then, after tonight's session where the Fighter died, we realized that if the characters are pressed, and the situation is tense, its not that much of a stretch for characters to die by failing Death Saves.

Firing into melee wasn't covered in the Basic Rules other than mention of a Cover Bonus to AC. This came up a lot in our games. We hope it is detailed in the PHB. We didn't use minis for positioning, but found that it really was great to have a printed copy of the maps on the table to still kind of guesstimate positioning. The only time our DM gave the Cover bonus to AC was if a creature was in the line of fire from the firer, not simply next to the target in combat.

All in all, we loved that we were able to DO SO MUCH in a single session. With our decade of 3E games, we would try and play every other week, but by the time we had all showed up after work, chit chatted, ate some food, etc., we would be lucky to get to play two-and-a-half to three hours. Most of the time, in 3E, that would be dominated by one of two combats (at most) and some roleplaying. With 14 days between sessions, this pace was just difficult for us to maintain interest. When we tried 4E, we usually could only get in a single combat, or a single large combat and a really minor one (granted, we only played 4E >10 sessions). That said, 5th felt like a pacing similar to our AD&D2E sessions. We were able to get through three or four combats and plenty of roleplaying each session. It was refreshing.

 

[andargor]

Hey Melkor, my first post in a loong time, and you made it happen! Just started looking seriously at 5e and it is getting my interest back (no offense to 4e, but it wasn't my cup of tea). Thanks for sharing!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Sounds like a lot of fun!

Man I wish I could find the time to play that many sessions in a row. And I'm downright "spoiled" (I get to play at work, owning a FLGS). But I've got a wife & kids (oooh when they're old enough!)

I guess I shouldn't complain.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Very glad to hear combats were fast, that is a major issue for me.

 

[MortalPlague]

The game still has a good level of danger.

That's been my experience as well. We've had three PCs die in one of my games, and the other game has seen a TPK, a PC die outright, and we may be about to TPK a second time. Each of these was over ten or twelve sessions or so, mind you.

 

[Nemio]

So what do you do after a death and/or TPK?

I worry about this because I'll be DM'ing for all new players that I will hopefully convince to continue playing with me after the first session.

At low levels getting you character killed pretty much means that you're done for right?
Even if you find someone that can raise character from the dead the gold cost will probably be too high and you don't even have this option in case of a TPK.

Does the Starter Set have a backup plan for this because I want to have one prepared?

For example when a TPK is going to happen time might slow down and there might be a Divine Intervention to save the characters (for a certain price/favour/mission) but I imagine you can only pull that stunt a few times before they start to feel they can't die anyway.

 

[Emka]

When he went to use his Shortsword, the DM asked why he wouldn't simply pick up a light weapon in his off-hand and use it all of the time

I don't understand that. How would the Rogue fire his bow with a light weapon (short sword?) in his offhand?
Not having played 5E yet there's some questions, one of which regarding the sneak attack. If a rogue can ranged SA whenever an ally is adjecent to the target why would he ever go to close range to literal backstab (other than flavor)?

Also re: HD on short rests. What resets the short rest timer? You can use one or more of your allowed HD a day on a short rest to heal but what's stopping you from doing 2 consecutive short rests (2 hrs worth) and pretty much full heal? The limit seems ambigous to me.

 

[Hussar]

Fun read. Keep it up. It's great to see so much enthusiasm.

 

[Sadras]

Now this is the kind of rules discussion that I actually enjoy reading - real discussion of rules as seen in actual play. Cheers! Looking forward to playing, myself.

Agreed. Write-ups such as these are inspirational.

 

[Melkor]

I don't understand that. How would the Rogue fire his bow with a light weapon (short sword?) in his offhand?

I mentioned "when he went to use his shortsword" in my post - My Rogue actually ran out of arrows for the shortbow while exploring one area of the module with nowhere to replenish them. The text states that you can recover half of the arrows you shoot during a combat. That said, if you carry a light weapon in your main hand and one in your off hand, you can take a bonus action each turn to attack with the weapon in your offhand (without the benefit of ability bonus). There is no reason not to do so if your primary weapon is light, and you aren't proficient in Shield. The rogue gets Cunning Action, which also can be used as a bonus action, and you only get one a turn, but carrying a light weapon in the off hand would give you the choice of attacking as a bonus action or using Cunning Action.

Not having played 5E yet there's some questions, one of which regarding the sneak attack. If a rogue can ranged SA whenever an ally is adjecent to the target why would he ever go to close range to literal backstab (other than flavor)?

The running out of arrows situation above is one reason. Another is positioning. We were in a corridor fighting a high AC monster. A couple of allies between the monster and my character. I was able to use the Cunning Action to Disengage (so I couldn't be hit by a Reaction/Attack of Opportunity the rest of the turn), then Move through the space of my allies and the monster (with another Halfling ability - can't recall the name), and end up where firing next to an opponent would have caused Disadvantage, but I could melee freely.

Also re: HD on short rests. What resets the short rest timer? You can use one or more of your allowed HD a day on a short rest to heal but what's stopping you from doing 2 consecutive short rests (2 hrs worth) and pretty much full heal? The limit seems ambigous to me.

A short rest is "one or more hours." Technically, nothing is stopping the characters from doing that except the DM. Mike Mearls even mentioned that in a video before the Starter Set was released. A couple of points though: Our DM simply stated you are taking a short - there was no discussion of hours, or stacking short rests. It was either one short rest or a long one - problem solved at our table. The second point, there was a lot of Hit Dice recovery at second level (where we all had two hit dice), where a 1 was rolled on one dice, and a 2 or 3 on the second. That meant that a character with 20 total hit points who was down 10 or more was only recovering 3 or 4 (+ Con Modifiers) by burning all his hit dice on a Short Rest.

Hope that helps/provides some insight.

 

[Melkor]

Hey Melkor, my first post in a loong time, and you made it happen! Just started looking seriously at 5e and it is getting my interest back (no offense to 4e, but it wasn't my cup of tea). Thanks for sharing!

Glad to hear it! 4E wasn't our cup of tea, either, but we are really enjoying some of the "4E-like" elements of 5E that we never thought we would before actually sitting down and playing the game. I was pretty excited after playing the last for days, and my enthusiasm for the system led me to post. Glad people are getting something out of it.

 

[Ceylin]

Not having played 5E yet there's some questions, one of which regarding the sneak attack. If a rogue can ranged SA whenever an ally is adjecent to the target why would he ever go to close range to literal backstab (other than flavor)?

This one seems weird to me too. I guess maybe the case of the Rogue using two weapons would give them the incentive to get in melee range. Another possibility -- can a halfling rogue successfully hide behind a fighter, move out with stealth and get advantage on their next attack? Obviously they get the sneak attack damage regardless, but advantage on the roll is also nice.

 

[Melkor]

So what do you do after a death and/or TPK?

I worry about this because I'll be DM'ing for all new players that I will hopefully convince to continue playing with me after the first session.

At low levels getting you character killed pretty much means that you're done for right?
Even if you find someone that can raise character from the dead the gold cost will probably be too high and you don't even have this option in case of a TPK.

Does the Starter Set have a backup plan for this because I want to have one prepared?

For example when a TPK is going to happen time might slow down and there might be a Divine Intervention to save the characters (for a certain price/favour/mission) but I imagine you can only pull that stunt a few times before they start to feel they can't die anyway.

For the Starter Set, we all went into it knowing that it was going to be a chance to learn the rules, and maybe play a character class or two we normally don't play to try them out. Our goal of a long-term campaign with Tyranny of Dragons with be a bit more serious. That being the case, we 'cheated' by rewinding after a TPK and starting the battle over. That's definitely not practical or not something that you can do in a serious campaign.

But, one thing we learned is that while character's do drop, and the game felt dangerous, it took a lot to actually kill a character. If the whole party was in danger and being pressed (especially after moving from encounter to encounter with no time for short rests), the game really got dangerous as major resources were expended. If the combat had fewer opponents, it was usually easy for at least one person to get to another and stabilize.

I think the key is going to be learning the system and knowing the limits of your parties abilities. We all agreed that the mechanics for Second Wind, Hit Dice, and full HP recovery overnight really benefited 'Story' type games where the characters were meant to be heroes. Our DM mentioned how many times he fudged rolls in our old AD&D 2E games for the benefit of the epic campaigns we played where we really got into our characters over the course of playing them for years and were involved in "War of the Lance" style campaigns with lots of roleplaying. He said the mechanics of this edition meant he wouldn't have to do that nearly as often.*

The DM mentioned that in the Starter Set module, they do mention that even character death is not necessarily permanent, so just play it out, see what happens, and maybe (for new players) even mention that the first couple of sessions are to learn the rules, so if the party gets wiped, you might want to do what we did: Rewind, and try it again.

*He is a DM that has no problems killing off characters (especially ones that do something stupid), and all of the rolls while playing 5th were out in the open and straight up, but he does play with a DM screen at times, and will fudge rolls for the benefit of the story.