DavyGreenwind
Just some guy
General Impressions: I've read the thing cover to cover now. The highlight of the book is the layout and user experience (best of any PHB I ever read), and the art (fantastic). The core philosophy of the book seems to be filtering more things through key words and named actions, like Influence, Study, Search, Utilize, etc. It is (slightly) more gamist. That being said, I do believe the PHB leaves plenty of room for common sense. I get the sense that this PHB is telling the player the minimum they need to know to start playing, and is saving more things like detailed rules for skills, exploration, social encounters, and other things for the DMG. I think the new DMG will probably end up being vital to actually make rulings and playing the game.
There's a few funny things I noticed that haven't gotten a lot of attention online yet.
1. Goliaths have a speed of 35 feet now, and are the only PHB species to have a speed that is not 30 feet (edit: besides Wood Elf, thanks Melored). I think power gamers will delight in the Hill Giant, who can give any Large or smaller creatures the prone condition when they hit with an attack roll that deals damage. (Ray of Frost, anyone?).
2. Monsters have Initiative scores, so you only have to roll initiative for them if you feel like it (sort of like how HP currently works).
3. The rules glossary is awesome, and made the little Q&A I did much easier than it would have been with the 2014 PHB.
4. The "Skills with Different Abilities" sidebar explicitly permits the DM to let players make an Intimidation check using their STR score.
5. The opening chapters are filled with play examples from Curse of Strahd. I like that.
6. A sidebar for post-level-20 play gives characters a feat every 30,000 XP after 355,000 XP, which can include epic boons.
7. Artwise, each class even more art than advertised: one full pager, four subclasses, and 1-3 additional illustrations. The Rogue has the most, including a piece of art that was used in the promotion for Golden Vault but was never actually in that book.
8. Speaking of art, we get a look at some monsters in the spell and class art. Black dragon, Brass dragon, gnolls, trolls, sprites, mezzoloths, umber hulks, vrocks, etc.
9. Dark Sun is mentioned a few times, and is in fact the only setting mentioned in the PHB that hasn't been published for 5e yet.
10. Many of the Species descriptions call out how they are presented in specific settings, like sun elves, silvanesti, grugach, kagonesti, and tairnadal.
11. Generally, more of D&D's cosmology is baked into the rules. There's so much feywild in spells and class features, that a setting without a feywild would need some serious reflavoring.
12. Edit: one more thing. You can cast multiple spells on a turn now if one of them does not use a spell slot, but is instead a class feature or something like that. I think this ends up helping the Paladin and Ranger quite a lot.
Overall, it is an improvement over 2014, in my opinion, fiddliness with some rules notwithstanding.
There's a few funny things I noticed that haven't gotten a lot of attention online yet.
1. Goliaths have a speed of 35 feet now, and are the only PHB species to have a speed that is not 30 feet (edit: besides Wood Elf, thanks Melored). I think power gamers will delight in the Hill Giant, who can give any Large or smaller creatures the prone condition when they hit with an attack roll that deals damage. (Ray of Frost, anyone?).
2. Monsters have Initiative scores, so you only have to roll initiative for them if you feel like it (sort of like how HP currently works).
3. The rules glossary is awesome, and made the little Q&A I did much easier than it would have been with the 2014 PHB.
4. The "Skills with Different Abilities" sidebar explicitly permits the DM to let players make an Intimidation check using their STR score.
5. The opening chapters are filled with play examples from Curse of Strahd. I like that.
6. A sidebar for post-level-20 play gives characters a feat every 30,000 XP after 355,000 XP, which can include epic boons.
7. Artwise, each class even more art than advertised: one full pager, four subclasses, and 1-3 additional illustrations. The Rogue has the most, including a piece of art that was used in the promotion for Golden Vault but was never actually in that book.
8. Speaking of art, we get a look at some monsters in the spell and class art. Black dragon, Brass dragon, gnolls, trolls, sprites, mezzoloths, umber hulks, vrocks, etc.
9. Dark Sun is mentioned a few times, and is in fact the only setting mentioned in the PHB that hasn't been published for 5e yet.
10. Many of the Species descriptions call out how they are presented in specific settings, like sun elves, silvanesti, grugach, kagonesti, and tairnadal.
11. Generally, more of D&D's cosmology is baked into the rules. There's so much feywild in spells and class features, that a setting without a feywild would need some serious reflavoring.
12. Edit: one more thing. You can cast multiple spells on a turn now if one of them does not use a spell slot, but is instead a class feature or something like that. I think this ends up helping the Paladin and Ranger quite a lot.
Overall, it is an improvement over 2014, in my opinion, fiddliness with some rules notwithstanding.
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