A first look at the D&D next basic rules

General/Looking For Group
1

An abridged version of the rules has been made available for free on the WotC website.

Also, here is a video of somebody’s impression about it… (mostly from the perspective of a 3.5 players, although it is not much different from Pathfinder).

Here

All around, I am interested and intrigued. I am not sure if I like the way they handle skills (I really like the 3.finder way). But I am intrigued, and many changes seem very good to me…

2

And another look to the next edition, this time, at the actual starter set.

3

heh, “3.finder” :mrgreen:

…interesting in checking this one out, finally something concrete to look at!

4

So far, it looks pretty good to me.

5

Agreed, the starter set looks surprisingly good. I didn’t particularly like what I saw in the early playtest - DMing excepted, of course - but this seems to be a very solid effort. You could perhaps quibble about the odd detail - fighting with two weapons seems a bit dubious, for example - but on the whole, it looks solid, with a number of nice touches such as advantage/disadvantage. And you have to appreciate the effort that went into it.

The only true shortcoming is that in places it seems, well, somewhat uninspiring. For example, older editions had Gygaxian descriptions of Vancian magic, and while some didn’t like the system, it was certainly interesting, spawning endless discussions about the nature of magic and leading countless players to read Vance for themselves. In this incarnation, “You can think of a spell slot as a groove of a certain size - small for a 1st level slot, larger for a spell of higher level.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a less magical description of magic.

Nonetheless, based on what you can tell from this appetizer, I have little doubt that this latest version of D&D will be extremely popular - and also far less controversial than the last one. I’d be up for giving it another shot.

6

Good news, everybody :exclamation:

https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/496705363048009730

Mike Mearls just confirmed that the basic rules will be updated after the release of the PHB :mrgreen:

7

Indeed, I had heard about that too.

At any rate, I will buy me some sweet, sweet, PHB as soon as it is off the presses…

8

Already pre-ordered mine on Amazon :smiley:

9

Even better news everyone! :mrgreen:

WoTC have released the basic rules 0.2 (now with cool DM stuff, like Challenge Rating for monsters)

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules