D&D 5E Sell this 3.5 grognard on 5e

[Jester David]

You don’t have to calculate DCs as a DM, building the difficulty based on a chart and list of modifiers. The world is not built on the rules of the game, and the players can’t correct you about what DC something should be.
Instead, you decided what the challenge should be.

There are fewer rules in the book. There is not a hard rule for everything. As a DM you can decide what happens, checks required, and the like.

 

[GlassJaw]

I've played all the editions since the Red Box with most of the my playtime with 3ed. 5E is my favorite edition by far.

It's SO much easier to run as a DM and it's not even close. I couldn't even with 3ed monster stat blocks anymore. Aside from bounded accuracy, the best thing 5E has done is give the power back to the DM. Monsters don't follow the same rules as PCs, and thank the heavens for that!

The barrier to entry is fairly low but still preserves enough crunch to sink your teeth into.

That said, as someone who likes some crunch, I definitely want more character options. The feat system is highly flawed and the weapon and armor selection has been overly simplified.

However, the good thing is that the balance across the classes and abilities is really good so mixing and matching is super easy. It's very difficult to break the game.

What I really want as both player and DM is 5E core mechanics, bounded accuracy, and balance but with some 4E/PF systems for character options sprinkled in.

The 5E core mechanic and playability are so good though that it has easily become my favorite edition.

 

[prabe]

I think what's been said here just about covers it. I played and ran a lot of 3.x and adjacent games, then got kinda burnt-out. My wife picked up the 5E books for her own reasons, and flipping through them I saw stuff that I liked and that made sense. In 2+ years of intensive play (primarily DMing) I've found that the game almost always behaves the way I expect it to--and if it doesn't, it's easy to houserule so it does (though it's worth considering the unexpected behavior to be maybe a feature instead of a bug). Switching back and forth between a PF1 game I play in and 5E just makes all the 3-dot-Pathfinder bonus bloat more obvious, and kinda obnoxious to deal with.

The biggest selling point for me was that it's not necessary to use a computer to keep track of the character sheet. Going back to pencil-on-paper helped get my brain back to a place where I could enjoy the game. YMMV, here, of course.

 

[ccooke]

D&D is the 2010-ish Apple of RPGs.

It's not revolutionary. Pretty much everything in it is inspired by something from another game. However, what it does is take a lot of innovative ideas, get them to work in harmony and polish them and present them to the mainstream (of RPG players), often for the first time. It does that while also remaining deeply familiar so that basically none of the audience say "That's not D&D". What's more, people who liked 3e say there's a lot of 3e in it. People who liked 2e say there's a lot of 2e in it. 4e... well, that's more complicated. I personally liked 4e, and I see a lot of 4e in it. But I liked 3e and 2e too, so...

Basically, 5e is a game that works better than any previous edition, and in more scenarios. It has its faults, and it definitely has people who dislike it for various reasons, but it's the most popular edition (almost certainly ever, but certainly since the 80s) for a good reason.

(... one of these days, I will make a proper post about this; I've seen a lot of discussion about 5e not being innovative because it's got a lot of ideas derived from other games, but it is innovative in putting them all together for the mainstream, in a polished form.)

 

[Gadget]

Well, simply put, it isn't nearly as broken as 3.x. While class balance isn't the main focus there is generally more parity among classes, less 'trap options' (though after 5 yrs, some options are...kind in that category), and far less fiddly bits. Far less "process sim," by which I mean the rules take on the role of physics sim for the fantasy world, and a little more focused on the story of the feature or mechanic. Leaning more on DM rulings.

That said, it does not have nearly the crunchy bits of 3.x, particularly near the end of its run with a plethora of splat books and options. They have consciously tried to tone down the flow of splat and errata to keep the product more evergreen. When given an honest try, many will find that they don't miss much of the crunch and find it liberating in some ways. Though there is a lack of mechanical depth in some areas. Pathfinder 2 is a good alternative I hear, though I have not tried it.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Don't do it! 5e is all about the "primacy of magic", so the only purpose of your martial character is to inflate the casters' egos. Plus there's no Warlord.

0/5 stars

 

[ccooke]

Don't do it! 5e is all about the "primacy of magic", so the only purpose of your martial character is to inflate the casters' egos. Plus there's no Warlord.

0/5 stars

You realise that this might be a positive argument for someone who loves 3.5e, right?

 

[Charlaquin]

You realise that this might be a positive argument for someone who loves 3.5e, right?

I think that’s the joke.

 

[ccooke]

I think that’s the joke.

I was hoping so

 

[Guest 6801328]

D&D is the 2010-ish Apple of RPGs.

This puzzled me at first, but I think I see the parallel: in both cases (Apple computers, and D&D 5e) insecure guys who derive their self-worth from their expertise in some form of gaming feel that anything with ease-of-use that lowers barriers to entry threatens their imagined hierarchical dominance, so they respond with derision and mockery.