Café de Nuit

I am just wondering if anyone is play testing with the play test pack currently. The pack was posted on wizards on 3/20. I have no group to play test with. Here is the link to the play test page.

http://dndplaytest.wizards.com/

I'm currently looking for a playtest group so I can try it out. I want to thoroughly vet this before I jump on the bandwagon. After all, 4E seemed promising at first, but after playing it for a while it was a mediocre experience.

I had a lot of fun with 5e. It's not 3e and I don't think it will be my go-to system but it's still fun. Great for any 1e-2e modules including Castle Ravenloft. It's actually great for I6.

It seems to me simpler than 3rd edition, without losing the D&D feel nor feeling like playing a board/miniature game with RP elements.

I'll probably play both 3rd and 5th edition, with a bit of 4th edition for a quick game.
Now that other D&D editions, closer to 4th and what I want from D&D are out there, I feel more... positively inclined towards 4th edition. I'll probably make 4-5 characters, bump them in levels with the character builder for levels 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and just use them for random fun like a board game that takes a couple of hours.

I found a random dungeon generator, I'll throw in some random room tables and have fun.

Well, one thing which definitely appeals to me is divorcing skills from character class. I always found that incredibly constricting and wanted to see a D&D edition where they cut the ties completely. I much prefer the idea of Backgrounds or being able to choose your own skills rather than being tied to specific skills based on class. One example of this is the Fighter. By divorcing skills from class you make it possible to make Fighters who are Nobles or Knights and have appropriate skills, rather than being limited to being grunts who only have access to things like Climb, Ride, and Intimidate.

Not to mention that a mage noble would have access to the same skills as a fighter noble + some esoteric knowledge. Which, to me, makes sense.

What I don't like is the skill dice. I would turn it to a flat bonus, and I plan to as soon as possible.
Yet, both people I playtested with said "No, we want to roll the dice" instead. So... bad luck for me I guess.

Yep. Two aristocratic brothers raised in the same environment should have similar skills with a minor difference or two to account for the fact that one is trained as a Fighter and the other is trained as a Wizard, while a Fighter who grew up as a peasant would have a very different skill selection. So that's one plus, at least. And I'm certainly happy to see that we've seen the back end to At-Will, Encounter, Daily, and Utility power mechanic. Playing 4E started to feel way too much like playing a card game.

Well, as some of the players I played with said, per encounter/per daily/at will seemed fine (although not D&Dish) for magic, since magic could work in any kind of way.
However, as they pointed out, the once/encounter for certain powers seemed to break believability. A player asked me once "Why can't I try to attack with my two weapons effectively again for 5 minutes?"

What I don't like is that the promised "feats to lose spell slots to have at will powers instead" are not in the game yet and probably will surface in a "complete arcane" book that I'll have to buy seperatedly while they could put it in the main game.
I may actually put some house rule like the reserve spells or the Archmage prestige class abilities.

Yeah, the A/E/D/U mechanic was terrible for martial classes. It made no sense why a Fighter could only make a certain kind of attack once per day. I also despised Martial "healing" courtesy of the Warlord. You essentially have a guy who just suffered a sucking chest wound and is bleeding out getting up and acting like he's a-ok because somebody gave him a pep talk. I liked Rocky, too, but Mickey saying "Get UP, you son of a bitch! Cause Mickey loves ya!", as inspiring as you might find it, doesn't change the fact that you're unconscious and bleeding out. It's certainly not going to staunch the bleeding and reknit the wound.

As for those feats, at least they do have Cantrips, which are spells which can be cast At-Will. That's one change 4E made which I appreciate being carried over to 5E. I never liked the idea of a Wizard running out of spells and then spending the rest of the day shooting a crossbow. It's nice having access to some kind of magic all the time, even if it's not very powerful magic. At least my Wizard will no longer be reduced to becoming a crossbowman in a dress once his spells run out.

Lord Soth wrote: At least my Wizard will no longer be reduced to becoming a crossbowman in a dress once his spells run out.

Five words: pre-3rd edition low level wizard.

OMG. I still remember with dread the days my char had like 4 or 7 hp, 3 or 4 spells in his spellbook and could cast 1 or 2 spells in the whole day. And no crossbow for us back then. Daggers with dreadfull attack roll or stones

Kinda sounds a bit like a step in the direction that Pathfinder went. With the Zero level spells being At Will spells. Even the skill part, any class can take any skill and at level twenty the only difference between someone who has it as a class skill and someone that doesn't.

This case we'll take Stealth. Assuming same dex of 18

Fighter Lvl 1 = 1 Rank + 4 Dex = 5
Rogue lvl 1 = 1 Rank + 4 Dex + Class skill bonus 3 = 8.

Kinda seems like a large difference right?

Now we go to level twenty see how it looks

Fighter lvl 20 = 20 Ranks + 4 dex = 24
Rogue lvl 20 = 20 Ranks + 4 Dex + Skill bonus 3 = 27

So as you can see both the rogue and fighter aren't that far off in skills even if the fighter doesn't have Stealth as a class skill. This is of course assuming no magic items to buff or debuff or feats of the sort to edit these.

That is one reason I like pathfinder is that I can make a wizard that's good at sneaking or a flipping through the battlefield with acrobatics.

So far in the playtest packet they havnt really done anything wrong that i can see. Whether or not it will win me over from pathfinder is a different story all together. But it has a lot going for it, i like that my character sheet fits on one page and they strive not to overcomplicate things. And it looks like they learned what people like and dont like from their previous editions. But it looks like a monster hybrid between 3e and 2e with some number tweaks. I really like the way skills are handled and the backgrounds how they give an RP bonus. Feats how they can be chosen or a GM can opt to say pick one of the progression things. I dont know but to me it seems like if their final execution is well balanced, it might indeed be the best d20 fantasy game on the market.