D&D 5E What's one thing that pleasantly surprised you, and one thing that disappointed you about the PHB?

[GlassJaw]

Surprise: Pretty much everything. I've been on D&D hiatus for the past 3-4 years and stayed out of the Next playtest loop. However, after looking over some of my friends' copies, I've been blown away so far. They knocked 5E out of the park. It's both streamlined and elegant with a focus on gameplay at the table while offering a lot of player choice.

I've only gotten through a few of the classes and races. I really like how they integrated subraces and my favorite race - halflings - got some really nice abilities!

Disappointment: My biggest so far is they went too far in simplifying the weapons. There is no mechanical difference between a lot of weapons like spear and trident for example. I'm not a fan of the flat crit ranges and multipliers either. Certainly easy to house rule though.

 

[TwoSix]

Er, no, not even slightly.

It's 1d4 on EVERY SINGLE attack roll and save whilst it's up for 3+ people. Potentially dozens of rolls.

Bard gives you 1d8 to ONE ROLL for ONE PC. Also EACH d8 requires your Bonus Action, so you have to give them out 1/turn at most, and pre-emptively.

Bless is wildly better.

Okay, let me stick up for the bard for a minute. (Please don't eviscerate me, I have children!)

1) Not all actions are created equal. Saving against the baddies high-level effect is more important than saving against the little guy's piddly poison damage. Landing your paladin's smite nova is more important than landing the grapple from your Tavern Brawler attack. When I know I'm doing something important, I want as big of a bonus as possible.

2) There aren't that many rolls during a combat. Combat in 5e is intended to be short and sweet. From the little I've played, that's certainly true. Bless impacts more rolls, but it's not 20 times as many, unless your party is all dual-wielding action-surging fighters.

3) If the encounter is strongly skill-dependent, you want the Bard over the Cleric.

4) If you really want to buff, go Lore Bard, take Bless as one of your bonus spells, and give Bless + Inspiration.

Now, none of this is to say that I wish the Bard hadn't gotten a few more options to be more combat relevant, and less "other pillar" relevant, but it's still a pretty useful class right out of the box.

 

[sunrisekid]

Pleasant Surprises: Diviners are worth playing (per OP), Paladins became interesting, Warlocks remained cool, Fighter maneuvers made the cut, "optional" races are literally optional, most of the art is great, downtime for characters and cost of living (finally the players have something to spend gold on).

Unpleasant Surprises: Halfling macrocephaly included as art, Monks powered by ki, Tiefling still have tails, no mention of Nerath, excessive Forgotten Realms references,

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Pleasant Surprise: Most classes have multiple pieces of art with different takes on the class.

Disappointment: Drizzt as the iconic elf, and the sheer number of drow in the art and references to Drizzt in the text.

 

[Lalato]

One more thing I was pleasantly surprised by... That piece of art for the Warlock where it looks like she's trick or treating... It looks 1000% better in the book vs the jpeg we saw before.

 

[Fishbone]

The Bard change is radical to finally give them full spellcasting progression and keep abilities. Just off of fullcasting they went from weak or misunderstood to an obvious top tier power play pick.

The Rogue is also a big step up in potency and tactical ability from 3.5 and Pathfinder and can credibly do 100 plus damage.

I dislike the loss of Dexbarians and the weakness of Rngers and Paladins. Ranger was my fave fighter style class in Pathfinder and 4E and this is a step backwards from even what they did in 3.5

 

[Li Shenron]

Having followed the entire playtesting process, and all the L&L articles and previews, it's a bit hard to decide where I should consider "this is where my knowledge of the PHB started..."

Compared to the playtest, there are many more disappointments than pleasant surprises.

I can certainly count the artwork to be a positive surprise.

Can I count the full-spellcasting Bard and the traits/ideals/flaw/bonds as positive surprises? At least those were announced quite a lot later than the last playtest packet.

Some nice unexpected (to me) inclusions such as the Hermit background, Monk of Shadows, and Great Old One Warlock, also came so late that they effectively count as "PHB surprises".

Pretty much every other change since the last playtest packet is either neutral or a disappointment to me.

Especially disappointing the exclusion of material that seemed perfectly fine in the last packet (or in previous one). Why did we have to lose the Bounty Hunter and Guide backgrounds? Why they never tried to bring back all the nifty Rogue subclasses?

The final version of 5e D&D still rocks big time, but it also gave me a huge feeling that half of the bravery of innovative mechanics and grand ideas was washed away by reality checks, and became missed opportunities, such as:

- they announced the grand idea that there were no saving throws in 5e, just 6 equally good ability checks! a few playtest packets later, and here comes the old level-based saves progression, then lack of spells with Str/Int/Cha save, and finally let's go back to practically 3e saves
- they presented a cool and powerful system for round-based (i.e. at-will) maneuvers that would make the Fighter finally both highly tactical (if you want) and the actual best in combat; then it was washed down to encounter-based, and guess what we got to compensate? good-old multiple attacks
- we started off with Clerics having weapons & armors proficiencies totally dependent on the chosen religion, finally we can have some variety and even Clerics in robes! Two years later, we're nearly back to 3e, only Heavy Weapon Prof is actually variable.

These final decisions are not bad. But they give me the feeling of missed opportunities.

 

[Mercurius]

Having only flipped through it at a LGS, mine are entirely aesthetic and structural:

Pleasant Surprise: the whole physical presentation, from the font type and size to the color of the pages, to the layout and (mostly) the art. It is a very, very handsome product.

Unpleasant surprise: The copies I looked at had minor damage, thus my not buying one and waiting for my Amazon pre-order.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Edit: not easily house ruled disapointment: I hate the layout of the spells section. Adding to that, the fact that each spell entry does not have the associated class(es). The constant flipping back and forth is really annoying!

*cough*

Spell Sorter spreadsheet.

I don't have the PHB but it does seem that the 20 attribute limit is not as much of a rule as I was hoping it was. That disappoints me.

How do you mean? The only exception is the barbarian 20th-level capstone.

Pleasant surprise: I dunno if I can narrow that down. I skipped the playtest, so most of this is surprising to me. I love the feel of the game itself, so many cool/flavorful options...

Minor disappointment: I'm not crazy about how the game handles familiars, animal companions, steeds, tc. Though I'm hoping that'll change with the DMG. I wish there were more summoning options, too.

 

[Crothian]

How do you mean? The only exception is the barbarian 20th-level capstone.

Which is one more then I wanted to see. It means that the cap is no longer absolute once we see one exception it is easier for game designers to decide to bring in more.