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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6573717" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm not a HUGE 5e expert. I've quickly read through a lot of the PHB and some sections of the DMG, and played in a campaign run by [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION], where we've almost reached 5th level, and played a few other misc games. I will just say this here, the wizard I'm running ROCKS. I by no means optimized my character, almost the opposite, but I did pick the most effective spells I could find, just to see how potent they are. Plenty is my answer. The thing is, you can cast any spell you have memorized as many times as you have slots at that level or any higher level, which is VERY flexible compared to 2e. You may not have as many slots, in theory, but at low levels you actually have more slots, and even the high level slots will be more useful. So far my wizard is clearly the dominant force in combat, that which turns the tide. The fighters are tough and dish out fine damage, the rogue can gank people with surprise very effectively and fight credibly even face-to-face without advantage. The cleric is a very good healer and can at least do SOME damage (and has some other reasonably useful spells, again with flexible casting from slots). Still, the wizard has put the hurt on every big bad, and done things like hold 2 owlbears largely at bay for a couple rounds so the party could take them out piecemeal etc. I'd say if they had another fighter they'd be OK, but we're still at low levels, it only gets better for me while the fighter may get some more maneuvers and feats he's not going to gain any radical new capability, just basically moar damage.Yeah, the monsters, so far, have been pretty vanilla. Humanoids with basically just a weapon attack, and lower level monsters with perhaps a single shtick. My impression is they are almost straight out of 2e. The otyugh we fought the other day, and the owlbears before that seemed totally bog standard 1977 Monster Manual fare. Not bad, but 4e did way better.I don't know, but I've heard that too.They aren't as robust as 4e PCs and they very much lack the deep reserves. The healing model is basically straight out of 2e, the cleric is a battery. Hit Dice give you a modest amount of additional healing, but it can't be deployed outside of a 1 hour long rest, making it much less useful than 4e HS. In any case the total amount is far less, many 4e fighters have 16 HS, and they may well be worth 8 hit points each, whereas the same PC in 5e would have something around 20 hit points and 1d10 of hit dice (roughly 5 hit points total of self healing). Characters are definitely tougher than in 2e by a bit, but if you get beat up in the first encounter of the day due to bad luck or poor tactics, you're done, pack it in, the cleric is spent and maybe you can take one more encounter, but best not push it, basically the old time formula. OVERALL characters will likely last better than in 2e, but its very different from 4e where you'd really have to step in it to get into trouble in encounter 1 of the day.Yeah, the skill system really is pretty incoherent. Its totally unclear when you would use a skill or a tool, and just generally the skill rules are murky. Many common situations don't precisely match with ANY skill, and then you have things like 'investigation', which MIGHT be handy in something like an abstract skill challenge, but has literally no use in 5e because the game focuses on means, not ends, and 'investigating' isn't a means, there's no specific ACTION associated with it. There are many other such oddities. Still, its a better  skill system than 3e offered, for what that's worth.definitely true, though I tend to think there isn't a huge variation in classesThis is true, no such mechanic/advice exists. Without any sort of SC framework there's nothing much to hang it on either.Hmmmm, not sure. I think my character has a lot of 'stuff' on his sheet. I am not entirely sure what exactly 5e is pushing for action. I guess it wouldn't be as mechanically INTRICATE as 4e. Combat is less tactical, though you can of course still have interesting combats, it is just much more on the DM to engineer the pieces of that.Well, 99% of all saves are against 3 stats, so in a sense they have 'solved' the issue of having too many defenses by just ignoring 3 of them. Of course the problem is just WORSE then in a sense because some classes get their bonuses in some useless defenses. Still, 4e had 1 or even 2 'off' defenses per character and it still worked.I'm not sure how Turn progresses. It is fairly weak but usable (once a day) at low levels. Its helped us several times. The movement changes are a mixed bag. Coupled with the once-per-round OA they create some very weird and artificial tactics, potentially, though if you don't play on a grid then its probably abstract enough that nobody will get away with it. The rest of the action economy changes are OK. I think they're more really a design philosophy change cloaked in a change in mechanics (denigrating but not really REMOVING the minor action).</blockquote>

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