{"id":77,"date":"2014-07-18T23:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-07-19T03:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.sharzusrealm.com\/tn\/?p=77"},"modified":"2014-08-11T19:39:39","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T23:39:39","slug":"5e-or-not-to-5e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/?p=77","title":{"rendered":"5E, or not to 5E!"},"content":{"rendered":"

That is<\/span>\u00a0the question a lot of Dungeons & Dragon’s fans are asking themselves.<\/p>\n

Just to give you a little background about my gaming history I\u00a0started really<\/strong>\u00a0playing D&D with the 2nd edition rules\u00a0and embraced 3rd edition when it came out. I do admit grumbling pretty loudly when they decided to release 3.5. I mean it did fix a good deal\u00a0of the issues with 3rd edition,\u00a0but I had just bought the core rule books and found it\u00a0pretty frustrating.<\/p>\n

So when Wizards of the Coast\u00a0announced 4th edition a few\u00a0years later I was pretty peeved, I had spent hundreds of dollars on books they were no longer going to support. I felt betrayed and angry and that is the truth.\u00a0Like so many others D&D fans I kept on playing using\u00a03.5 rules and purchased 3rd party content from companies that loyally supported\u00a0it. I looked at the 4th edition a few time but I just was not feeling it. I am sure it was\u00a0due to me\u00a0feeling resentful that\u00a0WotC was trying to force me\u00a0to buy new set of\u00a0books.<\/p>\n

When WotC decided\u00a04\u00a0years after 4th editions release they were once again going to develop\u00a0yet another version I thought to\u00a0myself. “Man I’m\u00a0happy I did not buy into 4th edition!” But\u00a0the more I heard how they were going to go about creating 5th\u00a0edition the more intrigued I became. I took it as a good sign they were going to allow the public to play-test it\u00a0and take the feedback and create a system the public wanted to play.\u00a0I casually looked at some of the play-test content over the last couple of years and saw that it was given some nods to the earlier versions. I was pleased to see they were listening and acting on what the public was asking for.<\/p>\n

I downloaded\u00a0D&D Basic Rules<\/a><\/em>\u00a0the day they released it. It is free<\/span> by the way! I also went to my local gaming store and\u00a0picked up the D&D Starter Set<\/a><\/em>. Having both\u00a0allowed me to look at character creation,\u00a0the campaign construction, and creature stats blocks. I am not going to bore you with all that\u00a0was in the box or or page count.\u00a0I am pretty sure most of you already know that information. If not please check out the links above.<\/p>\n

Basic Rules:<\/strong>
\nMy first impression… \u00a0Basic Rules<\/em> are\u00a0devoid of customization. For example\u00a0if\u00a0you have a level 20 fighter he or she is pretty much the same as any other level 20 fighter. The only difference is what\u00a0“racial increases” your chosen race gives you,\u00a0the extra ability score points you earn as you advance\u00a0in levels, character background, and the spells you choose (if you choose a caster class). The races you can pick from are\u00a0dwarf, elf, halfling, or human and classes are cleric, fighter, rouge,\u00a0wizard.\u00a0The Basic Rules<\/em>\u00a0contains\u00a0everything you need to play any race\/class combination up to level 20.<\/p>\n

It is a great introduction to Dungeons & Dragons but the\u00a0rules\u00a0are so basic it is vanilla. For those of us that love to customize our characters we will have to wait until the Players Handbook<\/em> is released next month for Feats and Multiclassing.<\/p>\n

\"D&D<\/a>
D&D Basic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Starter Set:<\/strong>
\nThis box-set is even more basic than the Basic Rules<\/em> and only gives you enough information to level a character up to level 5. The set of dice are pretty nice… I mean what gamer will complain about having more dice? The most important items in the box (yes over the dice) are\u00a0the adventure book Lost Mine of Phandelver<\/em> and the pre-generated character sheets. With those in hand you can sit down with some friends and start playing in a matter of minutes. I do reiterate that this is just as vanilla as the Basic Rules<\/em>. However the adventure is pretty\u00a0cool and will take a party of level 1\u00a0characters up to\u00a0level\u00a05.<\/p>\n

I am sure the Dungeon Masters Guide<\/em> will lend some new and interesting rules to make game play even more interesting.<\/p>\n

\"D&D<\/a>
D&D Starter Set<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Conclusion:<\/strong>
\nAll in all the rules felt very familiar to me and any kept from 4th edition are hardly noticeable. Yes both the Basic Rules<\/em> and Starter Set<\/em>\u00a0are very basic but they allow you to do one very important thing. They\u00a0allow you\u00a0test drive 5th\u00a0edition without throwing a bunch of money at it. For that I say well done WotC!<\/p>\n

So back to the question at hand 5E, or not to 5E? I have not made my mind up\u00a0just yet but you have my attention WotC. I will need\u00a0to look at\u00a0the Players Handbook<\/em>\u00a0at the very least before I make my final call.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In closing\u00a0s<\/i>eeing the two big Ds with the dragon headed ampersand in between them\u00a0brought back some very fond memories of friends\u00a0I have had the privilege to sit around the table\u00a0with.<\/p>\n

Will this post is for you… I miss you… Branko on the other hand… well, maybe a little.<\/p>\n

Later Nerds!
\nRichard Keen, Jr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That is\u00a0the question a lot of Dungeons & Dragon’s fans are asking themselves. Just to give you a little background about my gaming history I\u00a0started really\u00a0playing D&D with the 2nd edition rules\u00a0and embraced 3rd edition when it came out. I do admit grumbling pretty loudly when they decided to release 3.5. I mean it did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,4,14,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-review","category-rpg","category-tabletop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":379,"href":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/talkingnerdy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}