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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greg K" data-source="post: 5924588" data-attributes="member: 5038">Here is an opposite opinion (just mine and not saying it represents anything other than my opinion). While Pathfinder failed to appeal to me, nearly everything about 5e presented in the playtest fails to appeal to me as well. The only decent things I have heard about 5e1. Flatter math2. Backgrounds3. Supporting 2e specialty priests (one of the best things about 2e)4. How starting HP are handled (something I liked about 4e)5. Skills being allowed to be used with different ability scores as applicable (a rules variant that I like from the 3e DMG and used)The above go me to set aside my initial concern about Mearls, Thompson and Cordell heading up the design as major players in the design. The last thing I saw from Mearls that appealed to me was the Book of Iron Might (note: that is not Iron Heroes which I thought was pretty, horrible).  His writings about game design from his blogs didn't thrill me either. Rodney Thompson? Star Wars Saga was okay (I probably would have liked it more if it was not Star Wars and had a different skill system, but his name happens to be on d20 Future and the Future Player's Companion, two pieces of drek that I am sorry to have wasted money on (and I payed less than half price for each).  Bruce Cordell wrote Lords of Madness, but that is the only thing I have liked of his since 2e. As for Robert Schwalb, I am not a fan of some of his blog postings about D&D. and I am also concerned when he says that his favorite 1e class is the assassin. Furthermore,  SOIF for Green Ronin while a beautiful book didn't appeal to me.  On the other hand, I thought his 3e Cavalier and Unholy Warrior Handbook for Green Ronin  were decent and better than average WOTC 3e product (which I found disappointing). I also thought he wrote some decent 4e articles. So, right now, I don't have an opinion one way or the other.The actual playtest arrives and we get the Caves of Chaos, a product Mearls had rippped apart in a review.  Sorry, this is not a module that makes me want to playtest their game (I own the original and while I admire the sandbox nature, the composition of the adventure areas don't sit right with me) .  On top of that, everything else revealed about the playtest, has been a major turn off with the importance of ability scores over skills (one reason that I left pre-3e was the importance of ability scores) and hit points as a spell effect threshold assuring that I will never play 5e as long as they are part of the design.  Other dislikes include skill DC difficulty names (I wish they would go back to the 3e common standard and explain it in the rulebook rather than Dragon which was a mistake), racial immunities, taking damage from failed stabilization and negative hit points, rogues seeing the dark, and a host of other thingsI know this is the initial playtest, but I hope, once we start seeing the modules, we get something different than this initial playtest  and that I find better (based upon what I have read here at ENWorld, at RPG.net, and WOTCs boards).  In the meantime, I am still waiting for something that makes me want to pick up the playtest and am back to being concerned that this design team cannot design a game that I like.</blockquote>

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