Okay, here are my experiences in going to the game demo in my city...
I will try to focus more on the stuff that I *didn't* know about before going, rather than stuff that is easy to figure out.
First thing: there were some interesting things with line of sight and moving around to be able to affect others, that I dont see in my games, since we don't use minis, really.
Also, the paladin's marking ability specifically said it worked regardless of a creature's language, but it seems that the fighter ability didn't specifically say that...?
Also, the reactionary actions seem to stack like in Magic the Gathering (which I don't play), with various things interrupting other things... though I am not 100% sure on this.
Player characters take damage VERY easily. They are hit quite easily too! Things are freaking DEADLY. The idea is that *any given combat* can KILL you now... and that is very different for me. Maybe I don't have DM's that challenge me in 3e, though. So I don't know. I would have to play under different DMs, maybe. It certainly seemed deadlier, with enemies lasting many more rounds than they do in the home games I play. I dunno.
It would be a very very good idea to have both a cleric AND a paladin, IMO... two sources of healing will help a LOT...
I noticed one interesting metagame option: Take, say, four 5-minute rests. Have the Cleric use his per encounter ability to trigger higher-quality healing surges once every five minutes, so people use fewer healing surges to heal a higher number of hit points.
We couldn't figure out if ranged attacks done in melee range actually caused potential opportunity actions or not...
We also couldn't figure out if a character, once downed and unconscious, could trigger their own Second Wind or not.
We also didn't have a lot of information on how prone actually worked.
The DM told us something I didn't know-- for at least some types of reach, a monster's reach is only active on their turn, ie, when they are reachING.
The DM said he was ruling that, you saved for each of your ongoing effects in a turn, but if you rolled a 20, all of them went away.
It seemed like a lot of characters, if they didn't have to move, didn't have a whole lot of reason to NOT use the basic attack (ie, the ranger didn't have lots of reasons to not do a normal longbow attack).
One thing that I didn't know that, with regards to a character's list of "Per Encounter" abilities, they can generally use EACH ability once per encounter, and can sometimes use some abilities twice per encounter, or sometimes choose from a "list of two or three" abilities to use once per encounter... so that was a bit new. I didn't know that, as a default, you can flat out use EACH of your /encounter abilities once per encounter.
We also didn't have exact rulings for bull rushing, which would've helped a lot.
Also, I would've liked to be able to have a higher crit range, heh... not many players were rolling 20s, but we rolled plenty of 19s.
One thing that was new to me, was a large focus on "stacking a bunch of abilities in one turn", where the abilities affect each other, IE, you could use, say, two free, two minor, and one standard in a turn, and all those abilities could help you do some really AWESOME stuff... which wasn't really focused on in 3e.
So there's my thoughts!
As far as my feelings about this? It is an interesting, fun game. I still have to see how well it works without minis, it will certainly be a very different game than I've played before...
I will try to focus more on the stuff that I *didn't* know about before going, rather than stuff that is easy to figure out.
First thing: there were some interesting things with line of sight and moving around to be able to affect others, that I dont see in my games, since we don't use minis, really.
Also, the paladin's marking ability specifically said it worked regardless of a creature's language, but it seems that the fighter ability didn't specifically say that...?
Also, the reactionary actions seem to stack like in Magic the Gathering (which I don't play), with various things interrupting other things... though I am not 100% sure on this.
Player characters take damage VERY easily. They are hit quite easily too! Things are freaking DEADLY. The idea is that *any given combat* can KILL you now... and that is very different for me. Maybe I don't have DM's that challenge me in 3e, though. So I don't know. I would have to play under different DMs, maybe. It certainly seemed deadlier, with enemies lasting many more rounds than they do in the home games I play. I dunno.
It would be a very very good idea to have both a cleric AND a paladin, IMO... two sources of healing will help a LOT...
I noticed one interesting metagame option: Take, say, four 5-minute rests. Have the Cleric use his per encounter ability to trigger higher-quality healing surges once every five minutes, so people use fewer healing surges to heal a higher number of hit points.
We couldn't figure out if ranged attacks done in melee range actually caused potential opportunity actions or not...
We also couldn't figure out if a character, once downed and unconscious, could trigger their own Second Wind or not.
We also didn't have a lot of information on how prone actually worked.
The DM told us something I didn't know-- for at least some types of reach, a monster's reach is only active on their turn, ie, when they are reachING.
The DM said he was ruling that, you saved for each of your ongoing effects in a turn, but if you rolled a 20, all of them went away.
It seemed like a lot of characters, if they didn't have to move, didn't have a whole lot of reason to NOT use the basic attack (ie, the ranger didn't have lots of reasons to not do a normal longbow attack).
One thing that I didn't know that, with regards to a character's list of "Per Encounter" abilities, they can generally use EACH ability once per encounter, and can sometimes use some abilities twice per encounter, or sometimes choose from a "list of two or three" abilities to use once per encounter... so that was a bit new. I didn't know that, as a default, you can flat out use EACH of your /encounter abilities once per encounter.
We also didn't have exact rulings for bull rushing, which would've helped a lot.
Also, I would've liked to be able to have a higher crit range, heh... not many players were rolling 20s, but we rolled plenty of 19s.
One thing that was new to me, was a large focus on "stacking a bunch of abilities in one turn", where the abilities affect each other, IE, you could use, say, two free, two minor, and one standard in a turn, and all those abilities could help you do some really AWESOME stuff... which wasn't really focused on in 3e.
So there's my thoughts!
As far as my feelings about this? It is an interesting, fun game. I still have to see how well it works without minis, it will certainly be a very different game than I've played before...
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![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
