D&D 5E Starter Set Character Sheet Revealed!

[Psikerlord#]

HP are cheap. In 1e, Potions were everywhere. In 3e, you had a CLW wand available for a pittance that trivialized non combat healing. In 4e, it's less available than 3e, because you at least have a hard cap instead of wands a plenty.

For the second point, you're the one who brought up chases?

I prefer difficult games with slow/rare healing, perhaps thats where we differ. I only played 2e, 3e with no cure wands and 4e. prefer 2e healing myself, so lots of free healing annoys me I guess.

 

[Obryn]

I prefer difficult games with slow/rare healing, perhaps thats where we differ. I only played 2e, 3e with no cure wands and 4e. prefer 2e healing myself, so lots of free healing annoys me I guess.

If you can run 3e with no cure wands, you can run Next with no chained short rests.

 

[Jack Daniel]

You know, the more that I think about humans getting +1 to all ability scores, the more I think I might just ditch racial traits as a concept altogether and let backgrounds handle that conceptual space for the players. (I think the Dragon Age ttRPG did something similar.)

My "basic D&D" races will probably wind up looking something like this:
Roll 3d6, in order (good old 2e style "Ironman" method of attribute generation). If you want to play a human, you don't have any special requirements. Pick a background and a class and go.
A dwarf requires CON 11+ (all dwarves are known to endure hardship and, paraphrasing Tolkien here, "make light of heavy burdens").
A halfling requires DEX 11+ ("hobbits are incredibly light on their feet"). Small size is one of those blessing/curse things that balances itself out (you can't use big weapons or carry much stuff, but you can squeeze into small spaces and avoid really big monsters more easily).
An elf requires both DEX 11+ and WIS 11+ (to cover both the running/jumping/climbing trees/shooting arrows Legolas thing and the "what do your elf-eyes see" thing), and because of the extra requirement, the elf actually has a unique racial trait: elves are psychically sensitive to magic, so when they enter an area that's filled with magic or evil, they'll feel it (kind of a limited, DM-arbitrary detect evil / detect magic built into the character). This is a blessing and a curse, since powerful evil will make most elves nauseous (disadvantage on checks while in the area). (And now that I think about it, what if a high concentration of magic in an area makes an elf intoxicated​?)

No darkvision, no low-light vision, no sensing secret doors, no sleep immunity, no speaka wit de badgers and moles, no fiddly little bonuses on anything. Mainly because those abilities are all either stupid or a pain in my ass when I DM a dungeon. I expect that when I implement this rule, I will see many human PCs at my table, a good number of dwarf and halfling PCs, and a respectably smallish number of elf PCs. Perfection itself.

Another house rule I can tell I'm going to need to implement: multiply the XP needed to level tenfold, and award 1 XP per 1 SP of treasure recovered in addition to XP for monsters as normal.

 

[Mistwell]

Giving double action burst to anyone, especially the fighter who has the most attacks in the game (and I havent even contemplated two weapons yet, shudder) is just straight broken. It's broken for spells too, but limiting action surge to fighters only doesnt fix the problem, it just limits it to one class. That class will still be OP as a result in any module without a strict timeframe to keep short rests in check (unless there is a rule about you cant take multiple short rests in a row). Action surge would have been balanced as an extra attack only, and would have still been very good for a level 2 ability.

We've been playing with action surge for the fighter for most of the length of the playtest and it hasn't resulted in any problems at all. Hundreds, I think actually thousands of people, playtested it for the fighter and reported no issues. I have never seen any reports of the fighter being claimed to be overpowered. So, where is your evidence, at all, that it results in a problem for the fighter? Where have you been for the past 6 months concerning this issue, and why do you think you see a problem when people actually playing with it for a long time now have not seen any issues?

Let me guess, your amazing powers of insight allow you to predict results better than...actual results?

Also, for what it is worth, our fighter never uses second wind. It takes an action, and he'd always prefer to attack with that action and let someone else heal him. Particularly since the healing from the second wind is often not enough to make up for a round of damage he's going to take from that round anyway, so it's actually worse than trying to take a foe down.

 

[VengerSatanis]

FYI, I've skipped over a lot of these posts because I just don't have the time to read through each one. It seems that a lot of these 3rd and 4th edition design aspects would have been better suited to the PHB and DMG instead of the Basic 5e rules and Starter Set. That way the gamers who want things more old school could just start with old school and slowly, gently ease their game into more Advanced territory with all the newer D&D stuff. 5e was supposed to be heavily influenced by the OSR, wasn't it?

Also, I think the character sheet will be difficult for noobs to understand (wrote a whole blog post on it, see signature). I wish it could have been even more like White Wolf's Vampire: the Masquerade.

VS

 

[sidonunspa]

No darkvision, no low-light vision, no sensing secret doors, no sleep immunity, no speaka wit de badgers and moles, no fiddly little bonuses on anything. Mainly because those abilities are all either stupid or a pain in my ass when I DM a dungeon. I expect that when I implement this rule, I will see many human PCs at my table, a good number of dwarf and halfling PCs, and a respectably smallish number of elf PCs. Perfection itself.

Ok, please don't take this the wrong way...

You are playing the wrong game, seriously you are.... go look at other systems and find one that fits your GM'n style...

"pain in my ass when I DM a dungeon" sets off alarm bells...

May I suggest savage world? or FATE?

again NOT being insulting.... seriously offering some advice.

 

[Sadras]

Just echoing [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION]'s reply above, we did not find a problem with the Fighter's Action Surge class feature.

 

[sidonunspa]

I prefer difficult games with slow/rare healing, perhaps thats where we differ. I only played 2e, 3e with no cure wands and 4e. prefer 2e healing myself, so lots of free healing annoys me I guess.

Psikerlord...

if you want a "tough" game use Wounds/Vitality from Star Wars Saga...

Just change it so any time a player suffers more damage then their con score they suffer a wound, and add a spell level advancement to cure spells where a cure wounds cast at 3rd level or above cures 1 wound.

Also each wound grants a -1 to all attacks and saves..

welcome to hard core................

 

[VengerSatanis]

My "basic D&D" races will probably wind up looking something like this:
Roll 3d6, in order (good old 2e style "Ironman" method of attribute generation). If you want to play a human, you don't have any special requirements. Pick a background and a class and go.
A dwarf requires CON 11+ (all dwarves are known to endure hardship and, paraphrasing Tolkien here, "make light of heavy burdens").
A halfling requires DEX 11+ ("hobbits are incredibly light on their feet").
An elf requires both DEX 11+ and WIS 11+ (to cover both the running/jumping/climbing trees/shooting arrows Legolas thing and the "what do your elf-eyes see" thing), and because of the extra requirement, the elf actually has a unique racial trait: elves are psychically sensitive to magic, so when they enter an area that's filled with magic or evil, they'll feel it (kind of a limited, DM-arbitrary detect evil / detect magic built into the character). This is a blessing and a curse, since powerful evil will make most elves nauseous (disadvantage on checks while in the area). (And now that I think about it, what if a high concentration of magic in an area makes an elf intoxicated​?)

No darkvision, no low-light vision, no sensing secret doors, no sleep immunity, no speaka wit de badgers and moles, no fiddly little bonuses on anything. Mainly because those abilities are all either stupid or a pain in my ass when I DM a dungeon. I expect that when I implement this rule, I will see many human PCs at my table, a good number of dwarf and halfling PCs, and a respectably smallish number of elf PCs. Perfection itself.

That sounds really cool, not to mention efficient. I would play in that game... or borrow your ideas in my own.

VS

 

[Remathilis]

How often do you get Action points though? I'm guessing not every hour.

5 + 1/2 your character level. It refreshed when you leveled, so pcs when getting close to leveling tended to burn them quickly.

So maybe not every hour, but enough to go nova on the boss with.