D&D (2024) What's Your Experience Like with '24?

[Mistwell]

I don't get to play much (forever DM mostly), but next opportunity I get to play, I'm definitely trying out a World Tree Barbarian!

Agreed. All the barbarians are rad now. I can't wait to try out a Zealot Barbarian. By Crom I shall slay my foes with divine fury!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Just so it doesn't sound like I'm only participating in side-discussions - on the subject of 2024 D&D.

As many of you know, I have a FLGS, and as part of such, I teach people to play D&D. As part of THAT, I make Pregens. And People actually play them. I would guess that I've made about 20 or so 2024 Characters (not counting playtest characters, which would be dozens more) that have been played in actual sessions. Nothing above Level 10 (Yet) and mostly 1-5, but they've been made and they've been played.

And again, IMO, 2024 makes fun to play characters. Yes, they're pretty darn "good" right out of the gate - I've made some pretty tough low-level characters, and I'm not any sort of optimizer. But everyone feels like their character is awesome. That wasn't always the case.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Agreed. All the barbarians are rad now. I can't wait to try out a Zealot Barbarian. By Crom I shall slay my foes with divine fury!

Agreed. So are Monks. I remember playing a 2014 Monk, many years ago, and being mostly frustrated by how much better everyone else in the party was at... pretty much everything.

Monks are probably one of the most fun classes to play now. But yeah, I'm playing a Barbarian in a campaign right now, and he's a helluva lot of fun.

 

[Oofta]

I don't get to play much (forever DM mostly), but next opportunity I get to play, I'm definitely trying out a World Tree Barbarian!

Same! Actually getting a chance to play, only second level.

 

[Azzy]

But, you know - no one cares about what I want. And that's fine.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Really? The bastion rules are available for free?

That's a good question, I don't consider them to be base rules so I kind of forgot all about them. I'll amend my statement to "all of the new rules in the 2024 PHB are available for free"

As far as I can tell, the complete Bastion rules are available for free in Pack Tactics' youtube video, but I don't care enough about Bastions to do a close enough comparison to tell whether the video is missing anything important.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For me, Level-Up has areas where it's drastically better than WotC 5e, and areas where it's not (that is, better for me). Primarily that area would be the "Advanced" part of A5e. I would actually personally prefer slightly-less-advanced 5e. Something more akin to Shadow of the Weird Wizard, maybe, but slightly more-like D&D than that, if you get what I mean. Something a bit toward Shadowdark, but again, still a little closer to 5e than all the way to Shadowdark. I think I've said before, that 5e is pretty close to the maximum complexity that I'd like, but I'd like the complexity to be in very different places than it is. Certainly, I'd prefer Spellcasting to be utterly simplified. I'm barely even interested in anything over level 12 in D&D, for example.

But, you know - no one cares about what I want. And that's fine.

I don't really see anything in D&D 5e, or Level Up, as more complex than I want. Usually the opposite.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The Bastion rules aren't very good, so it's not a big deal. A5e's Strongholds are probably better (though I haven't read them in awhile, and I can't remember specifics). I suppose you could homebrew a hybrid of them. (If anyone out there does that, please send it to me.)

They are better (I've read both), but I thought there was some stuff in the bastion rules I could adapt to Level Up

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's OK. There are some really troubling design choices that I think work against some of 5e's great strengths (2024 has more complexity, more decision points, more "game logic"), but it's not a revolution or a totally different game or anything. A little slower. Some moments of "this is a dumb change and we are going to ignore it." A handful of "oh, that's better, yes."

 

[Retros_x]

We finally had our session 0 for new 2024 campaign (me as a player, not DM). Only created characters, but the creation was fun, although not so different. New background and ability system was greatly appreciated. At our table it made much more sense to have get bonuses for ability scores based on actual working and life experience. The illustrations also had a bigger impact than I thought on imaging the character and incorporating the background into the roleplaying information. Its a shame though that ideals/bonds/flaws were cut, but its easy to use the according ones from 2014 which some of us did.

Starting equipment was also a bigger decision than usual due to weapon masteries our barb and ranger player seemed to had lot of fun to skim through the equipment section and decide on their weapon.
Our ranger player had one weird observation though: Appereantly the recommended starter weapon for rangers is the longbow, which has the heavy property, which requires the character to have STR of 13+ - but the recommended STR score for rangers is 12. So appereantly if you stick to the recommendations in building a ranger you end up with a weapon you can't use RAW. Seems like a typical small error that gets fixed in an errandum, our DM just allowed him to use the longbow anyway.

Really looking forward to the first session in 2 weeks for some actual gameplay!