5e basic and Starter set- what do people think?

[hawkwind]

Being in the UK I have yet to see the starter set but I have spent the weekend looking at PDF and vaguely planning a face to face game for a few weeks time. I like what I see but its not going to make me stop playing Pathfinder on Fantasy Grounds any time soon

[Griogre]

5E basic seems solid, I spent part of a couple days looking at it and ran a 5E game Friday night when we didn't have enough to play in my normal game (the 5E ruleset is still a work in process but serviceable). I don't think its going to change anyone playing other games over to it unless they want something fast and simple, but I don't think it was meant too really. I think its mostly aimed at new players and people teaching new players and the fact it eases people into 5E is both intensional and a bonus.

Personally, I'll run the Tyranny of Dragons modules before come to any final conclusions one way or another on 5E.

[dr_venture]

I'd be curious to see a comparison between Castles & Crusades & 5e - I have seen a few cool features that 5e has that C&C does not, but there seem to be a fair number of overlapping features. I would think that Griogre is correct, though: it's mostly just a battle for new players or the undecided at this point. There are so many game systems out there, it's hard to imagine a new system sweeping through the gaming community and making people change their habits.Still, 5e seems to be a move in direction of the style of gaming I enjoy, so I'm curious. too.

[Griogre]

dr_venture, from what I have seen Basic D&D is still more complex than C&C, though not much for veteran RPGers. Primarily because of races and subraces, clerical domains, and clerics and wizards having the same spell preparation rules. Of particular interest is the front and center adding of roleplaying hooks like backgrounds, flaws, bonds, trinkets and Inspiration. These parts could be easily lifted and dropped into C&C though the backgrounds add complexity and are limited.

Basic D&D uses a race + sub-race system to customize the character bonuses towards a specific class/build. IE Elf gives you +2 to Dex plus other general elf abilities and then you choose to be a Wood Elf or a High Elf which gives you a lesser stat bump to different stats depending on the sub-race and other sub-race specific abilities. There's nothing earthshaking here but it does allow an extra customization option for each race other than Human.

Clerics and Wizards follow the same rules for preparing and casting spells in BD&D. Its a hybrid system of spell preparation and spontaneous casting of *prepared* spells. Based on level you have so many "spell slots" to cast spells. At the start of the day you prepare a number of spells dependant on character level, class, domain, etc. Then the character can cast any one of his prepared spells that will fit in a spell slot and expend the spell slot. IE you can't cast a 2nd level spell in a 1st level spell slot, however you can upcast spells in higher level spell slots with many spells becoming more powerful when cast in bigger spell slots. Casting a spell doesn't erase the prepared spell from memory.

Those are the things that stick in my mind right now.

[Irondrake]

I've been running 5E since the early playtests. The Basic D&D PDF was a very pleasant surprise actually. Most of what I didn't really care for seems to have been alleviated. It runs closer to 2E/3E...while still being a newer game. I am one of those who played 4E but didn't really care for it as much as all of the other editions. That just didn't scream D&D to me. 5E brings it back home for me while still having some innovative newness. I've tried other systems, but I always keep coming back to D&D just because that's what I grew up on...despite having worked with TSR back in my GEnie days as a TSRO heh. Ok, so I may be a little biased, but anyway...its all my opinion.

[leozelig]

Yeah, I agree. I ran a 4E campaign for a couple years and enjoyed it, but it was different. I will definitely play or DM "Tyranny of Dragons" when it comes out. It's looking like the talented folks here at Fantasy Grounds will have the ruleset polished up by then

Specifically, I like that they trimmed the level max to 20, and I really like what they did with wizard (what happened to calling that class "mage" btw?) spells and how you can use a higher-level spell slot to prepare a lower-level spell, in some cases to greater effect. I also like how saves/skill checks are based on ability scores - kind of a solid common-sense move, I think.

To put my opinion in perspective, I tend to like OSR-type systems. DCC RPG is my favorite right now, but I have played Labyrinth Lord and AD&D (1st and 2nd Edition) pretty regularly over the past couple years.

[GunnarGreybeard]

Honestly, I have never played any version beyond 2e AD&D so I cannot really comment in detail beyond that point but the kids and I rolled up characters yesterday and ran through some check situations and encounters to give a it go. It was really smooth and reminded me a lot of the old school versions (OD&D and 1e) and what I think they could have been with a little tweaking (I'm looking at your THAC0).

At first I was just going to stick with the free Basic Rules and go with those, and convert my stacks of 1e and 2e stuff to it on my own, but after re-reading the docs and that little playtest I am seriously leaning towards getting the 3 main books when they are released.

[dr_venture]

There is still a part of me that wants to be excited about a new version of D&D, but I just don't want to invest myself into a system that will almost certainly be abandoned by WotC in a few years. At this point I just see all of their new versions as sort-of dead men walking as soon as they're released, as their profit model has been based on repackaging the core books every few years. Which is too bad, as I think all their systems have had merits. So I think I'll be sticking to C&C for the foreseeable future -- it's as close to a lasting version of D&D that I'm likely to find, I think... other than just playing an old version of D&D

[leozelig]

Honestly, I have never played any version beyond 2e AD&D so I cannot really comment in detail beyond that point but the kids and I rolled up characters yesterday and ran through some check situations and encounters to give a it go. It was really smooth and reminded me a lot of the old school versions (OD&D and 1e) and what I think they could have been with a little tweaking (I'm looking at your THAC0).

At first I was just going to stick with the free Basic Rules and go with those, and convert my stacks of 1e and 2e stuff to it on my own, but after re-reading the docs and that little playtest I am seriously leaning towards getting the 3 main books when they are released.

I must say, they did a good job of creating incentive to buy the 3 books with the free basic rules.

dr_v, I was checking out C&C the other day. I could definitely see myself playing that. The best thing about the latest D&D release is that they are actively releasing products for it, but these days, there are so many quality alternatives. But I tend to pick up the latest version so I can play the latest adventures from WotC. It seems like it's easier to find a group for that, too.

[Griogre]

There is still a part of me that wants to be excited about a new version of D&D, but I just don't want to invest myself into a system that will almost certainly be abandoned by WotC in a few years. At this point I just see all of their new versions as sort-of dead men walking as soon as they're released, as their profit model has been based on repackaging the core books every few years. Which is too bad, as I think all their systems have had merits. So I think I'll be sticking to C&C for the foreseeable future -- it's as close to a lasting version of D&D that I'm likely to find, I think... other than just playing an old version of D&D

dr_venture I totally understand you. However, what *is* interesting about this release is you get the vive its not going to be a 5 year project. Its too early to tell for sure but the way they are doing things this time around seems different. 1) They are going to update their rule book printings with a process that takes at least a year (D&D has not had printings with updated content since AD&D). 2) They did not hire a bunch of designers to dump at Christmas, and let a third party do their first adventure path. IE they have a small sustainable team. 3) They are giving away the basic rules to grow their number of players (and help market their core books).

These are all interesting differences from the way they released 3.x and 4E. The life cycle might be a long time on this one. Regardless, in you case I think it would be worthwhile to read the parts of the basic rules that interest you since you should be able to drop them into low level C&C verbatim should you wish. The things that are going to be different is C&C characters are going to be more powerful at higher levels because Basic D&D doesn't do per level bonuses to hit. They do have proficiency bonus but particularly before they changed that to start at 2 it was a mirror of the old AD&D expected magic bonuses per level table. In other words their is not any requirements to give out magic items at all in Basic D&D.