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I appreciate that they really tried to tone down the rampant bonus accumulation that plagues D&D/Pathfinder once players hit even moderate power levels; they really bring the focus back to die rolls more than bonus-stacking, which is great. And they did a lot to simplify things, some of which worked and some of which didn't so much.
Alright, I'm done making long stories short. Here's the long story, with my remarks presented in no particular order:
Presentation
It does a good job of explaining what D&D is, which I suppose is to be expected. I've tried to do the same on numerous occasions in a number of different ways, but the pros really know their stuff.
They seem to really be taking into account the varied ways people end up playing this game. They even make note that you can use an official character sheet, a piece of notebook paper, or whatever.
Their sample fighter, Bruenor, uses Intelligence as his dump stat. It's nice to see them avoiding the classic adventurers' cliché of not caring about charisma, but I'm pretty tired of seeing the 'dumb fighter' cliché as well. Intelligence should be important for learning fighting techniques (hence my house-rule for determining weapon proficiencies). I heard a rumour once that the game developers were so disappointed that Regdar, the 3rd edition iconic fighter, was the typical big dumb fighter (you may remember him as the one awkwardly holding a longsword and a longbow at the same time) that they tried to make sure he was getting hilariously killed in as many of the illustrations as possible.
Race and class options are presented in 2nd person ('They can do this', 'they can choose that', instead of 'he can do this', 'she can choose that'), eliminating the 'gendered pronoun' issue that D&D has long struggled with.
In general, the organization and presentation could use some work. There were times when a concept was introduced briefly, only for the reader to be told that they would understand it a few chapters from now.
Basic Game Mechanics
The advantage/disadvantage system (wherein you roll twice and take the better result when you have advantage, and do the opposite with disadvantage) is an elegant solution to the persistent problem of 'bonus creep'. This system takes the place of many many various bonuses and penalties that would be applied to your attack rolls or skill checks and just makes things a whole lot simpler. This is one of the crowning achievements of 5th Edition, in my opinion.
Not sure about the simplified skill checks. I can see it working, or being annoyingly simplified. Only time will tell... It seems pretty intuitive, though, which is nice.
The new Saving Throw system is great. Basing saving throws on just your base ability scores (plus a one-time class-based proficiency bonus, if applicable) is so much better than the ever-increasing save bonuses of 3.x/Pathfinder. I think it is better to stick close to your ability scores for such things. I never understood how someone who has a bad Constitution but is very good at fighting could have a much easier time resisting poisons than someone who has a good Constitution but maybe doesn't fight so much.
The Short Rest mechanic is a little overpowered, allowing you to roll up to all of your hit dice (+CON) to regain health after an hour's rest. It's not as harsh as my house rules, but at least it's not as 4th Edition's ridiculous 5-minute rest mechanic.
I know simplicity is key here and all, but the only downside I can find for being grappled is that you can't move (and your grappler can drag you places). Other than that, it seems that a grappled enemy is completely unimpeded in its ability to attack things, which seems wrong.
Character Creation
They've given the option of taking average HP instead of rolling your hit dice to determine your HP when leveling up. It's nice that the option is there, but I prefer dice rolling in my dice games, thank you.
The Backgrounds thing is cool. It basically adds another layer of character customization, but the bonuses are all roleplaying based, not mechanical. For being a 'Folk Hero', you don't get a +2 to something, you get the respect of the peasantry and their support when you're in a jam. For being a Sage, you don't get an extra cantrip, you know the best place to go to research something you don't know off hand. Really, you could easily steal the Backgrounds and use them in any edition D&D game.
I'm interested to learn more about Feats in 5th edition. Too bad this won't tell me about them.
Races
I like having the subraces like Hill Dwarf and Wood Elves available right at the get-go. It adds another nice means of customizing and differentiating your character, without being potentially overwhelming like the big ol' book of alternate racial archetypes that Pathfinder has. At the same time, I wish they had done the same for humans. Humans are always portrayed as the most varied and multicultural of the races, yet they never get the 'subrace' love that elves and dwarves get. Maybe if they ditched the probably offensive 'subrace' terminology.
"Stonecunning: Whenever you make an Intelligence (History) check related to the origin of stonework, you are considered proficient in the History skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus." This is a pretty neat interpretation of Stonecunning, but I wish it included a greater chance of detecting secret doors or the ability to determine structural things (like "That column isn't load-bearing." or "That bridge doesn't look stable.") Determining a dungeon's provenance based on its stonework is cool, but seems of limited use in an adventure. A lot of adventuring parties can spend an entire campaign without even making a single History check (much to my chagrin).
The Halfling's 'Luck' ability that lets them re-roll any natural ones makes them basically immune to critical fumbles (reducing the chance from 1:20 to 1:400). That seems a bit overpowered. But maybe I just like critical fumbles too much.
Humans increase all their ability scores by 1. Hot damn! Why play anything else?
Classes
The classes seem to have gotten the same hit dice boost that Pathfinder gave them (d6s become d8s, wizards get d6s, d4s get thrown away). I know it's nice to give your players that extra boost to hit points, but it really narrows the spectrum over which player classes are differentiated. Personally, I like playing a wizard with d4 health, but again, I am probably a crazy person.
They retained the Turn Undead ability, and brought back the idea that clerics of a high enough level can cause weaker undead to crumble to dust. I still prefer the channel energy feature of Pathfinder clerics, but this one has a nice old-school feel to it.
Cleric domains seem to be a more robust means of customizing your cleric. The only one they include is the Life domain, but it is promising, granting the cleric useful abilities 1st, 2nd, 6th, 8th, and 17th levels. Domains should definitely form the core of the cleric class, not just add a touch of flavor. A cleric of a god of life and health should feel and play a lot differently than a cleric of a god of fire and treachery.
The 'Fighting Style' options available to the fighter (Archery, Defense, Dueling, Great Weapon Fighting, Protection, and Two-Weapon Fighting) are simple, distinct, and effective. They give a fighter an incentive to fight in a certain way without crippling their ability to fight differently.
The frequency of ability score increases are determined by your class, rather than being the same for all characters. This seems to make sense.
Thieves' Cant is back!
The 'Cunning Action' - the Rogue ability that lets them have an extra action in combat to do roguish things. It gives the Rogue a nice, unique flavour in combat.
I really like the Rogue, I'm not gonna lie.
The Fighter's 'Second Wind' and the Wizard's 'Arcane Recovery' abilities are interesting. Second Wind lets you regain some HP, but you can't do it again until you take at least a short rest (1 hour). Arcane Recovery lets you, after a short rest, recover spell slots whose total value cannot exceed half of your wizard level. These abilities seem to aim to bring some of that 4th Edition staying power to those classes, without making it completely ridiculous like 4th Edition was. Conceptually, it's nice to throw out those cookies to keep the different classes operating for longer during a dungeon crawl and help solve the problem of the 5-minute adventuring day. In practice, I'm not sure. I'm on the fence on this one; I'll have to see it in action before passing judgment.
The 'Sculpt Spell' ability for wizards of the Evoker tradition basically removes the consequences of having allies in your area of effect at 2nd level. I know this is limited to just Evokers, but I think it should at least be a higher-level ability. Choosing whether or not to engulf your allies in searing flames is a key strategic decision that all wizards should have to make. Plus, on a conceptual level, I can't imagine a fireball that leaves convenient "pockets of relative safety" for your allies to hide in.
The Evoker also gains the 'Overchannel' ability at 14th level. This lets them do max damage with a spell of 5th level or lower, but if you do it more than once per day you take 2d12 necrotic damage per spell level. Fuck yes, that's awesome! Ultimate arcane power that comes at a terrible physical cost? That's what I'm talking about! Give me more of that! I forgive you for the 'Sculpt Spell' thing, Wizards.
Equipment
I like that heavy armour now only slows you down if you aren't strong enough. But I don't like that heavy armour "doesn't penalize you if your Dexterity modifier is negative." If you are bad at getting out of the way of attacks, but wearing full plate, you are still going to be bad at getting out of the way of attacks. In fact, simplifying all the armours so that how you can apply your Dex bonus is based on the class of armour, not the specific type, just means there is less differentiation between the different types of armour. All medium armours have a max Dex bonus of 2? Well, I guess I'll just wear a breastplate if I like to sneak, and half-plate if I don't. Plus, narrowing the ways in which different armours can be differentiated from each other just means they're going to have to pull some rule-breaking bullcrap when they inevitably release Players Handbook 2 stuffed with fluff, cheese, and power-creep.
I'm not sure what prompted some of the re-arranging of armours between the light, medium, and heavy classes. I totally agree that chainmail should be a heavy armour, because it is, in fact, very heavy. But I'm not sure what makes ring mail 'heavy' while half-plate is 'medium'.
They've toned down the weights of the weapons to be more realistic. Some of them are still a bit heavier than is realistic, but it is much improved overall.
I'm unsure about eliminating Small-sized weapons. From a world-building standpoint, it seems weird that Medium-sized creatures are the only ones crafting weapons, and Small-sized creatures just have to use the ones that aren't too heavy. Then again, it also seems weird for a halfling adventurer to walk into any given shop and expect them to have a Small-sized glaive-guisarme in stock. Hmmm... Yeah, I guess I'm okay with it. I'll hold out further judgment until I see it in action.
The whole short range/long range thing (where you have disadvantage beyond you short range and can't fire beyond your long range) seems a more elegant solution than the range increment thing 3.x/Pathfinder does.
I also like that weapons that can be wielded either one-handed or two-handed (called Versatile weapons in 5th edition) just do a higher damage dice worth of damage when wielded two-handed. This is a more concrete-seeming benefit than adding your STR bonus compared to STR-and-a-half with two hands.
In the adventuring equipment section, there is a table showing the capacity of all the different containers. That is great. Why hasn't every edition had this?
I like that Weapon Finesse is now built into the weapons themselves rather than being a separate feat. I'm just imagining a burly fighter without Weapon Finesse trying to hew through someone with a spindly rapier.
Spells
The new spellcasting system makes everyone spontaneous casters. They prepare a selection of spells from their spell list or book, then choose which ones to cast depending on what spell slots they have available. They can also choose to cast a spell at a higher level by expending a higher spell slot. It's a little harder to wrap your head around, but I like it. It's got a good balance of rigidity and flexibility.
A lot of spells that traditionally granted bonuses now grant advantage or a bonus dice. For instance, instead of giving you a +1 to attack rolls and saving throws, Bless lets you roll an additional 1d4. That's nice. I recall hearing about this in the game developers' podcasts, and their stated reason for the change was that it's a lot easier to remember having advantage or having another d4 in front of you than it is to remember a measly +1. And it just feels better. I tend to agree.
Healing Word - this 5th Ed. version of a 4th Ed. spell lets clerics get some minor healing in on their round as a Bonus Action.
Inflict Wounds is way more powerful than its counterpart, Cure Wounds. It deals 3d10 necrotic damage at 1st level. Seems a bit... overpowered. I thought they playtested this game?
Thaumaturgy - a cleric-y version of prestidigitation. I approve.
Delayed Blast Fireball is way cooler now. It doesn't detonate until your concentration is broken (you can break it on purpose), and every round it doesn't detonate, the potential damage it can do increases by 1d6. I can see some clever players using this as a threat or a sort of magical dead-man's switch.
Creatures killed by Finger of Death rise on their next turn as a zombie under your command(!!!!)
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5th Edition seems to want to provide people with more character customization options, which is indeed a worthy goal. Pathfinder does it really well, though perhaps at the expense of intimidating newer players. But if the goal of the free-to-download Basic Rules thing is to attract people to the game, I'm not sure the best way to showcase your increased character customization options is to include only one option for each of the four classes. Other than that, the classes were the real highlight of the new release for me.
But perhaps the most off-putting aspect of 5th Edition is the price. Each of the three core books (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual) are going to cost Fifty-bloody-dollars. Each. You can get the Pathfinder Core Rulebook (PHB and DMG rolled into one) for $50 and the Bestiary (MM equivalent) for $40 (or both for a lot cheaper on Amazon). That's $60 cheaper just to get started. Plus, while 5th Edition has a watered down version of the rules available for free on their website (and no monsters, so have fun playing!), literally everything in Pathfinder is available for free on the PFSRD.
And, of course, one of the biggest reasons I'll be sticking with Pathfinder is so that I can keep providing all of you, dear readers, with outstanding Open Game Content.
Don't get me wrong, 5th Edition seems like a really fun, pretty internally consistent edition. It might need some house-ruling here and there to make it more playable in certain aspects, but that's generally what happens in any edition. I would really like to play some 5th Ed. games, but it's not going to be my main edition.
-your overchanneling d20 despot
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