You'll understand why I'm starting a new thread instead of one of the flamewar threads, right?

Anyway...I barely looked at the first playtest packet, just read some back-and-forths that soured me on it...decided to dig deeper into this one, and made my first character tonight, a (re)creation of my first RPG character ever.

Did some random rolls and made my Wood Elf Fighter who was known for three things, basically: His bastard sword, his longbow and being the party cook. This proved quite easy, as I took the Artisan (Cook) background, the Archer Specialty and the Slayer Fighting Style and boom. Largely rebuilt my AD&D2e character and did it in about 10 minutes.

I like the Glancing Blow ability (in theory, if not practice, since I haven't played), as it isn't just "You missed, you still did damage", it's "If you missed and rolled high enough, spend an Expertise die and do less damage than you would have". Similarly, Rapid Shot (like two weapon fighting) at least starts off as "You wanna attack twice, you're doing less damage". I have a hunch that folks that take Archer or Two Weapon Fighting at lower levels will later find them scaling up to full damage.

Anyway...I'm probably going to play around with it some more, see what kinda characters I can come up with from the documents, but as a guy that digs mechanical distinction in stuff, I like how easy it is to make characters with variance, and doing it quickly. Specialties and Backgrounds feel a lot like 2e Kits, but more mechanically coherent.

Excellent idea with the recreation.  I'm going to recreate one of my first characters that didn't die before level 3.

Merdock, human fighter  (originally AD&D, created in 1982, retired at level 14)
Status rolled from here and this was first roll, no joke.  

Lawful-g
Str: 19 +4
Int: 14 +2
Wis: 11
Dex: 14 +2
Con: 18 +4
Chr: 13 +1

Observation: much higher than original character, especially with human and fighter ability adjustments

HP: 21     AC: 17 (chain mail and shield)

Fighting Style: Protector
Skills: protect, deadly strike, parry
Combat Superiority dice: d6

Background: Commoner (farmer)
Skills: Animal Handling (CHA: 4), Local Lore (Int:5), and
Professional Lore (Int: 5)

Specialty: Survivor (+7 hp from toughness)

Weapons:  Long sword +7 ATK (1d8+4), 4ea throwing daggers +6 ATK (1d4+2)

Quote from: Sacrosanct;572863Excellent idea with the recreation.  I'm going to recreate one of my first characters that didn't die before level 3.

Merdock, human fighter  (originally AD&D, created in 1982, retired at level 14)
Status rolled from here and this was first roll, no joke.  

Lawful-g
Str: 19 +4
Int: 14 +2
Wis: 11
Dex: 14 +2
Con: 18 +4
Chr: 13 +1

Observation: much higher than original character, especially with human and fighter ability adjustments

HP: 21     AC: 17 (chain mail and shield)

Fighting Style: Protector
Skills: protect, deadly strike, parry
Combat Superiority dice: d6

Background: Commoner (farmer)
Skills: Animal Handling (CHA: 4), Local Lore (Int:5), and
Professional Lore (Int: 5)

Specialty: Survivor (+7 hp from toughness)

Weapons:  Long sword +7 ATK (1d8+4), 4ea throwing daggers +6 ATK (1d4+2)

Very nice. Outta curiosity, how long did it take you to slap the guy together?

Doh!  I totally was going to post that very important piece of info.

With the caveat that I hadn't created a character yet, and I had only skimmed the material.

About 7 minutes.  Which is very good.  Of course, I used a dice roller, so it did it all at once instead of rolling them by hand.  And I didn't buy all my gear or supplies.

Although, I have to say, I feel like I cheated even though I didn't.  I am not used to seeing attributes that high, especially on a level 1 character.  I could have had a 21 strength.  Natural 18, +2 for human, +1 for fighter.

Insane.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;572884Although, I have to say, I feel like I cheated even though I didn't.  I am not used to seeing attributes that high, especially on a level 1 character.  I could have had a 21 strength.  Natural 18, +2 for human, +1 for fighter.

Insane.

Yeah, I can see that...but a) random rolls are random rolls and b) without a strong context for the scores, it's hard to say just how high they are. I mean, compared to anything pre-3e when scores almost never advanced, that would be HUGE.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;572884Doh!  I totally was going to post that very important piece of info.

With the caveat that I hadn't created a character yet, and I had only skimmed the material.

About 7 minutes.  Which is very good.  Of course, I used a dice roller, so it did it all at once instead of rolling them by hand.  And I didn't buy all my gear or supplies.

Although, I have to say, I feel like I cheated even though I didn't.  I am not used to seeing attributes that high, especially on a level 1 character.  I could have had a 21 strength.  Natural 18, +2 for human, +1 for fighter.

Insane.

Remember ability scores are capped at 20 even with adds. I assume magic will get around that at least for a temporary duration.

Quote from: Marleycat;573020Remember ability scores are capped at 20 even with adds. I assume magic will get around that at least for a temporary duration.

Good catch. Good reason to, in that situation, unload that +1 from Fighter onto Dexterity instead.

I figured that I might miss something since it's my first time

Actually, I had a natural 18 in strength and 15 in Con if I remember, and allocated 1 point to strength (for being human), and 3 points to Con (2 for human +1 for fighter)

I playtested it with my group last night.

It didn't seem terrible, but I didn't really get a look "behind the screen" so it's hard to tell.

First of all, I rolled the best attributes I've ever rolled in my life. I rolled the kind of attributes that people lie about rolling. I always expect fairly average ability scores when I roll up a character, but here I wound up rolling like 14,15,17,16,12,18. The funniest part is that rolling a bevy of high scores made my LESS enthused about the character than I would have been if I rolled mostly average scores and maybe one high score and one low one. I wound up trading the DM's girlfriend, who was a first time player, my 18 for one of her 9's.

This of course doesn't have much to do with the actual rules, except that even getting rid of my 18, I still wound up with a 20 in my primary attribute through racial and class-based ability score adjustments. So that will probably need to be toned down.

So of course Paladins weren't available. The first time in my life that I legitimately roll Paladin worthy scores, and the class isn't out yet...so I chose a Sorcerer instead.

Sorcerers in 5E are kind of supposed to be the default Fighter/Wizard type character, since they have proficiency in all weapons and armor. They get their magic from magical bloodlines and instead of using classic vancian magic, they instead have a spell point system which I typically hate...but this wasn't too bad. Could have been better but it wasn't BAD. In addition to spells,

Sorcerers also get special abilities from their bloodlines. My guy was a dragon sorcerer, meaning that he got dragon-y type things. He could spend spell points to do extra damage with melee attacks, and apparently at higher levels can grow scales and get a breath weapon.

On paper the class looks really powerful...but in play it didn't feel too much more powerful than the thief and fighter. Especially since I got creamed by an orc in the very first round of combat...karma for rolling high ability scores.

I'm not into the uber-cheese character build culture that is so pervasive in D&D these days, so for simplicity's sake I decided to just play a human which are no longer simple. They get bonus adjustments to every score...so what the fuck is that shit? I guess if you really want to promote human-centric settings then that's the way to do it.

Then came backgrounds and specialties...which are packages that do the same things as feats and skills in 3/4E. Basically the DM rattled off options from the list of background and specialty and I basically said: That one. That one. This was a reaction to listening to the younger guy ponder his options outloud for 15 minutes before settling on something, and from arguing with char-oppers in another thread yesterday.

I chose the Charlatan background, and the Jack-Of-All-Trades specialty without knowing what they give you exactly.

Charlatan gives you grift-y type social skills like bluff and sleight of hand. Btw, I hate social skills in roleplaying games...but I digress. The cool part though, and this is something I might steal, is that the backgrounds also come with an extra story thing that's not just some boring ass skill bonus. The charaltan background gave me an assumed identity with all of the relevant paperwork. Also, it came with a pre-fab set of specialized gear...disguise kit, two sets of clothes (noble and peasant), loaded dice, deck of cards, 10 vials of colored water. That was actually pretty awesome.

Jack-Of-All-Trades gave me training in an extra skill, which is good because I don't really want to deal with a bunch of fiddly feat bullshit.

The good thing is that I made a handful of quick decisions, basically choosing my shit on a complete whim, and the process only took maybe 10 minutes...which is a first for any WotC version of D&D...and it all worked. So character creation is definitely improved over 3/4E in my opinion.

The gameplay itself was pretty fun. It went by fluidly, there wasn't a lot of fiddly bonus tracking or bookkeeping, combats only took a few minutes to resolve and ran just fine off the grid.

All in all it was pretty good. I can see playing D&D Next again, though I doubt it will supplant any of my favorite games.

That seems to be the general consensus wherever I look though. "D&D Next is okay...but it's no _____". I wonder if WotC's goal is to make everybody's second favorite game?

QuoteThat seems to be the general consensus wherever I look though. "D&D Next is okay...but it's no _____". I wonder if WotC's goal is to make everybody's second favorite game?

The wouldn't be the worst result they could have given the impossible goal they set themselves.

Quote from: Marleycat;573050The wouldn't be the worst result they could have given the impossible goal they set themselves.

Agreed.