D&D Next

[FuzzyDan]

I'm kinda shocked that nobody has discussed it on the forums yet.

Despite people hearing me complain about Next being unnecessary (I still support that 4E was fine for Fantasy Combat Role-playing) throughout reading the playtest materials, I did pick up the PH this week and have been thumbing through it. 

I will say that I hated running 3.5, and became incredibly "MEH" about playing it.  Even with Pathfinder, I was more okay to play, but needing a high-degree of system mastery to read a stat block and run an encounter was still there so I didn't want to run it.  Right now I am leaning on Next being okay for me to play, but depending on how much effort it takes to build and run combat encounters, I'm not sure I want to invest the brainspace into writing campaign notes.

Anyone else's preliminary thoughts on D&DNext?

[Mckma]

I think I share a lot of the same thoughts with the layering that I just don't have as much time to play (specifically run) games anymore.  Most of anything I would do would be one-shots anyway, and I think that those are much more intriguing as investigative horror.  All that put together, I haven't bothered to look at it because I don't think I will be running or playing anything in it anytime soon....

[D6xD6 - Chris]

I've read through the basic rules and have the starter set.  I like it.  It's a D&D I will enjoy playing.

But I probably won't play it much.  There are too many other games I enjoy, and I'm too busy playtesting other games while writing and playtesting my own.  The new D&D is quite good, but it's not something that jumps to the front of my gaming queue.     

[SageNytell]

For a variety of reasons I will not be purchasing D&D Next / 5e / 3.5harder.

The information I've seen in the previews and the various playtests does not appeal to me, it's 3.0/.5 all over again. Today they previewed the Spinx, which has a busy statblock and 15 various wizard spells from the PHB, none of which are listed by level but instead alphabetically in the back of the PHB. It's lousy, it's lazy, and it fetishizes the use of 'natural language' to the exclusion of ease of use, and it brings back the old reality that player wizards have the ability to do literally everything magical in the world and monsters can do nothing but cast the same PC spells.

Add in the fact that WotC's being fucking awful outside of the game with some of their recent decisions (which can be found with a cursory google search and should not be further discussed here for fear of bringing something truly... awful here), and it's a clusterfuck that I want nothing to do with.

[Flawless P]

I'm down for a rehash of 3.5. I liked it, and even though the balance could be awful I played some great games in that system.

Magic is inherently broken as we know, so we shall see how it goes.

Cautiously Optimistic? Call me that.

[trinite]

I'm currently happy playing Pathfinder, so I don't think I'll be needing 5th ed. From the little that I've seen, it does seem like a pretty good version of the basic d20 mechanical system, and I'll be happy to pillage its better aspects for house rules (yes to combat advantage/disadvantage!).

I agree that the complexity of 3.5-style d20 makes it really hard to design your own material. Fortunately, Paizo publishes so much stuff that I can always just steal and reskin anything I need stats-wise. And since Pathfinder is all OGL, I can just download it all for free. Not sure how available the 5th ed. rules are going to be outside of the physical books. Not to start an Edition War, but unless 5th ed. D&D has an awesome rules wiki like this one (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/), I don't think it'll catch on.

[SageNytell]

Magic is inherently broken as we know, so we shall see how it goes.

Here's my problem. Magic is broken in D&D, and really only in D&D, and it doesn't fucking have to be. Unknown Armies has an in-depth magic system, Mage gives all the players the same set of tools, FATE and other modern games allow the emulation of magic within a mechanical framework that's on par with other, non-magical characters. 4th Edition, not to argue edition wars, had magic which was balanced against martial characters and what magical characters could accomplish had reasonable limits on par with other characters.

Only in 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder/Next is a wizard a fucking superhero capable of goddamned anything, with abilities and powers completely different than any martial class in the game. Wizards in stories and folklore had limitations, specific narrow powers, and weaknesses. Wizards in D&D are slowed down by the rest of the party.

Yes, magic in D&D 5e is inherently broken. What frustrates me is that it didn't have to be. The broken state of the magic system in D&D 5e was a deliberate choice, and 'because it is tradition' should not be an excuse.

edit: i am frustrated with elfgames 

[Lordsloth]

I'm going to hold off on my opinions of the game until I get my PHB(hopefully this week), but I did get interested enough in the previews to do a little more research and it looks like I will like it. A few of us that started playing again in 3.0/3.5, grew real disillusioned with 4E after a couple years(even after helping playtest it(insert side story here)), and now I'm interested again.

We thought 4E was well-balanced, yes, but we got the feeling that everyone's practically the same, just in different ways.    I like what I've seen of 5E in the different character builds, and we'll see what 5E character balance will be like at higher levels. We'll see...

[Flawless P]

Magic is inherently broken as we know, so we shall see how it goes.

Here's my problem. Magic is broken in D&D, and really only in D&D, and it doesn't fucking have to be. Unknown Armies has an in-depth magic system, Mage gives all the players the same set of tools, FATE and other modern games allow the emulation of magic within a mechanical framework that's on par with other, non-magical characters. 4th Edition, not to argue edition wars, had magic which was balanced against martial characters and what magical characters could accomplish had reasonable limits on par with other characters.

Only in 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder/Next is a wizard a fucking superhero capable of goddamned anything, with abilities and powers completely different than any martial class in the game. Wizards in stories and folklore had limitations, specific narrow powers, and weaknesses. Wizards in D&D are slowed down by the rest of the party.

Yes, magic in D&D 5e is inherently broken. What frustrates me is that it didn't have to be. The broken state of the magic system in D&D 5e was a deliberate choice, and 'because it is tradition' should not be an excuse.

edit: i am frustrated with elfgames 

It sucks that the game is imbalanced in such a way, but honestly I don't think weakening magic is the answer, buffing the enemies and other classes is the real balance point.

Some people want to play a mage who can alter the world and has virtually no weaknesses. That's does not make them bad people, it just dictates that the system needs to be altered to compensate the martial classes with cool abilities too.

Tome of Battle was a dabbling in the idea of giving martial characters more options than just the "attack" action from the Final Fantasy Action Bar but it too was woefully under powered compared to the Holy Trinity.

Basically if you use Martial Maneuvers that impose status effects and ongoing damage were a great idea in 4th edition, but they watered things down just a little bit too much in my opinion.

Either way I think that this kind of magic user has a real and viable place in gaming, it's just a shame it comes at the price of the other classes being awful.

[beej]

I've played D&DNext and it doesn't seem all that bad to me.  Granted, it's not Dungeon World. 

I like where they've gone with Feats.  They give a nice bump and aren't necessarily class specific.