D&D 5th Edition

I suspect the DMG will have that info DJ.

You’re probably right (part 2, chapter 7) but November 28th is so far away…

I found my old set of Encyclopedia Magicka and have been scouring them for items. I have been sticking to items that don’t give +'s to hit but rather have neat effects to them.

This is a bit off topic, but I have to bring this up. I’ve been playing a lot of Magic the Gathering lately with my sons, and we love it. My sons are ages 5, 7 and 9, so what they love to do is build decks using the most powerful creatures and planeswalkers. They could care less about the backstory behind the cards.

But as I play along with them, I like to check out the story behind the cards. I have read a bunch of the background information for both the Theros world from last year, and the Khans of Tarkir for this year. In both cases, the ideas are phenomenal!

If you wanted to play a Clash of the Titans style campaign, here is everything you would need for the campaign setting:

and more here:

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/262c

Places, people, monsters, myths, magic items, and adventure seeds galore!

If you wanted to try something a little more barbaric, closer to a Conan universe, you could try the Khans of Tarkir. Read about the Sultai Clan! How cool would it be to fight against such fantastic villains!

There is so much here, such fantastic support for the card game of Magic. And that’s it.

There is no crossover support for 5E D&D.

I’ve read that the developers of Magic do not want to worry about D&D screwing with their perfect product. I believe the guys in charge of D&D want to promote their precious D&D universe, which from where I’m standing appears to be the Forgotten Realms. But the opportunity to crossover is THERE! They own both properties!!! Someone at Hasbro could COMMAND that they cross the streams.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be the DM of a game with a Planeswalker superhero. Screw that. I just want a campaign book that converts the Magic settings into 5E D&D numbers. I can do it myself, and maybe some day I will, but I would pay them money for them to do it for me. And I bet I"m not alone.

“neat effects” items are wonderful because they can be so flavorful and because players almost never seem to get them in “mathier” games in favor of the strict boost items. Something 4E did very well was make it so there was no real reason to have a +3 Greatsword rather than a +3 Soulblud Nightmare Greatsword. In 3.5/PF, you want to maximize (as a fighter at least) your to-hit, flat bonuses to damage, AC, and saves. Doing so with the well-calculated wealth-by-level charts meant you might look at the goofy robe that turned you into a rabbit when you took fire damage, but realize you “needed” the +2 AC Ring at that level more. . .

Anyways, I love using “goofy” or effect-based magic items as loot; then the players don’t always feel like they’re losing out by using them. . . at least until they can turn around and sell them to craft a +2 AC ring, instead ;)


Edit: Rob, I agree wholeheartedly. If I could run a crew of players through the entire “Weatherlight saga” (or maybe just the entire Urza Saga from start to finish, but that would involve a reboot about halfway through) from the old Magic sets of yesteryear, I’d be over the moon. I love the flavor of MTG settings, and almost all of them would make for incredible campaigns.

I have the worst luck, I finally found a few people to play D&D with and we finished the Lost Mines of Phandelver module (albeit with a lot of house rules; why the fuck can’t people just try a game the way it was written first?), but they still think AD&D is the best version of D&D and want to play that next, whereas I think 5th edition is by far the best edition yet. Shit, I’d rather play 3rd edition than AD&D. But I’ll play it, because AD&D is better than no D&D, I guess.

Try to wheedle them into playing Adventurer Conqueror King instead and remind them how much cooler it is to play B/X OD&D than that AD&D tripe ;)

Looks like Fantasy Grounds is the choice. Very smart move by Wizards.

In more personal 5e news, I’m DMing my party’s tenth session today. We’ve been doing pretty well. I’ve been miserly with experience and wizz-bang magical items, but I think my friends are having a good time. I’m having a great time when I’m playing, but I never feel as if I’ve prepped enough. We started with an extensively modified playtest adventure called “Rats in the Sewers”, then we took on an updated version of the 3e adventure The Sunless Citadel. That’s winding up. Next, depending on what the party wants to do, and after they level up to level 3, they’ll either find themselves in a sort of homebrewed mess or an adaptation of what is supposed to be a classic module, “Against the Cult of the Reptile God”. People on Reddit and ENworld and other sites have come up with some lifesaving game aids (especially this 5e rules cheat sheet (the players and I both rely on this) and this encounter worksheet).

Can’t say I’m super thrilled to see it go somewhere as crazy-expensive as Fantasy Grounds (and I say this as a GM reluctantly tied to Hero Lab for his Pathfinder adventures), but eh, I guess WotC has to prove D&D is profitable before Hasbro just axes the whole shebang one day.

$50 for core + classes, $50 for monsters, $20 for a L1-5 adventure. So $240 to get the 3 books and their FG equivalents for a DM. Ouch. Oh how I wish they would release PDFs of the books!

They did recently mention that they’ll be doing two adventures per year, and will shy away from tons of splat books. All the “extra” content will be in the adventure books themselves, which I like.

Play-wise, my group is probably 2-3 sessions away from finishing Lost Mines of Phandelver. I’m DMing. We LOVE the mechanic changes of 5th (and the art). I do miss the “openness” of Pathfinder, though, with all its PDFs and 3rd party websites. But I definitely don’t miss the crunch. At this point in my life I’m more looking for a relaxing game than a number cruncher, and 5th fits the bill.

I’m sorry I am a month late to this news, but I just have to say that I am HORRIFIED by this decision. I spent a lot of time running D&D on Fantasy Grounds, and then a lot of time running D&D on Roll20, and I would never, ever go back to that clunky, expensive, needlessly complex program that is fantasy grounds. OH MY GOD I can’t believe Wizards chose Fantasy Grounds. I do like the guys who run fantasy grounds, and i like their community, but that program is terrible.

And the price, my GOD the PRICE!!! WHY??? Why is it so damned expensive?? How can Roll20 do everything for free, in a cleaner, faster, intuitive manner? Playing an RPG is a frugal hobby! All you need is a pencil, paper, dice, a book! There are no cutting edge graphics when you are playing these games! A virtual dice roller is not an expensive thing!!! All the Pathfinder rules (ALL OF THEM!!!) are on a wiki for free!!! Wizards and Fantasy Grounds want us to pay hundreds of dollars to play 5E online? WTF!!! It is like they NEVER want anyone to play online!!! GOSH DARRRNNNIIIIITTTT!

Playing online is easy in some ways and difficult in other ways. What you gain in flexibility and connecting far flung interested people, you lose in the intimacy of playing around a table, the reading of body language (a MUST for the DM), and the happy, subdued banter of the players who are sitting back while the spotlight is on someone else. People who want to play D&D online need help from the companies that make D&D, not ridiculously dated software for overpriced digital tools.

Looks like some of the books are on sale at Amazon, including a few of the adventures. Qt3 Link here.

I picked up most of the Fantasy Grounds modules for 5th Edition and Jesus it’s expensive. I’ve been using to to DM via a network and using my TV for maps, etc. It’s pretty cool, but the price tag is a punch in the nuts.

I do like 5e a lot, though

Only highlighting how bad of a deal the Fantasy Grounds nonsense is :(

We use roll 20 in my session. We looked at the new Official stuff and passed due to price. The only advantage to the official system is tracking your characters a little better. If it was 4e, which was a bitch to level up without the character builder, we’d move.

Since 5E is much easier to level, we just use Roll 20.

I wish there was an easy way to print out the 5e sheets from Roll 20.

What electronic sheets do folks use these days?

Apologies for the cross-post from the Bargain Thread:

A lot of the Dungeons and Dragons 5E books (including Core, Player’s, DM Guide, Monster Manual) are approximately 50% off on Amazon…most books are under $25.

-Todd

A preview of the new Monster Manual. In this edition, it’s called “Volo’s Guide to Monsters” and features a lot more fluff, which is part of Mike Mearls design strategy.

[quote]
“It’s risky,” Mearls said. “In the end, it’s still a giant book full of monsters. No one would argue with that. But I just think that if that’s all the Monster Manual is, then we’re selling ourselves short. So the idea was, the kind of genesis of it, was that want to do something that’s more story oriented.”

Volo’s Guide will have a narrator — two actually. One will be Volothamp Geddarm, an over-the-top, braggadocious explorer. The other will be Elminster, the wise Sage of Shadowdale. And the two will often be at odds with one another. Their differing accounts will be scattered throughout the book, and take the shape of comments scribbled in the margin.[/quote]

[quote]
“I have this pet phrase I use,” Mearls said. "I like to say that we’re living in a post Game of Thrones world. Fantasy has changed.

“If you look at science fiction follows, I think an arc that fantasy is following now. In the 50’s, science fiction was very iconic, and at least in movies, very much templated. You had the flying saucer, or the rocket ship, you had either the aliens who were clearly monsters — like the guy in the deep sea diving helmet wearing the gorilla coming to eat people or whatever. Or they were people in funny outfits who were very inscrutable and so much more advanced that we were, and that was your pantheon.”

Later, as science fiction entered the ‘60s and the ‘70s, it began to be entrusted with more serious themes and dealt with issues of change in modern culture as a whole.

“So you have this new wave of science fiction coming through and science fiction grows up,” Mearls said. “It became Alien — a horror movie in outer space. It becomes Soylent Green, which is kind of like this social commentary on science fiction. It’s Rollerball, right? This entire thing about what’s it really mean to have free will, and can there really be freedom in a technological society? But it’s still science fiction.”

Mearls sees Game of Thrones as evidence of the same kind of evolution in the fantasy genre, and it’s his hope that Volo’s Guide can become a new kind of sourcebook to help bring about new kinds of stories.[/quote]

I was actually reading that earlier today, and I love it.

Don’t get me wrong–I’m by and large a “make it all up on your own” kind of GM, but when it comes to splatbooks, I will absolutely take a thoughtful, interesting, flavorful book of ideas and inspirations over a powercurving list of new OP feats for already-broken characters coughPathfindercough.

Amazed that FR is still milking Elminster, though. Hasn’t that guy died like, 8 times, by now?

So, how’s D&D 5th Ed doing? Well, if you go by Roll20’s data, pretty darned good.

http://blog.roll20.net/post/163190312610/the-orr-group-industry-report-q2-2017

Once again, Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition activity has increased on Roll20! 52% of all Roll20 games are 5E games, and 62% of Roll20 users actively joined in a 5E game this quarter. The gap continues to widen, ever so slightly, between 5E and Pathfinder and 3.5E.

https://twitter.com/Alphastream/status/888093898978992128

Also,

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?496562-D-amp-D-product-sales-numbers-on-Amazon-etc

5th Ed is selling like crazy and leading a massive resurgence in paper RPG product. I’d love it if DriveThruRPG would release exact figures someday, as I get the distinct impression that the PDF/print-your-own RPG market is also enormous.