Have not played it. Have some friends who have* and they seem to like it with some unspoken reservations.
Frankly, I’m not so keen on most of the stuff I’ve heard. It sounds like they’re going in all the wrong directions.
3e completely reinvigorated my love of the game and I still consider it the best version even if I haven’t played it in two years. 4e sucked the wind out of me, but I’ve gotten used to it and enjoy it - even if I consider it a completely different game than the D&D I prefer.
and aren’t getting the clues that all of the people they talk to about it would really like to try it as well.
The bestiary doesn’t have one-hit mooks like in 4e, and most of the low-level monsters seem to have 3 hp. Once you factor in the stat bonuses, which I was ignoring previously, the average 2.25 damage per could be useful. This utility will fade as you start facing badder-assed enemies, of course. If you had a starting attack stat of 18, like the pre-gen archer provided, you could expect a higher hit rate and damage modifier. By the way, that archer doesn’t have the dex mod applied to his arrow damage, as per the rules. He also uses his Str mod for his finesse weapon, which is silly for a Dex-based fighter in a system where Weapon Finesse comes free with weapon proficiency.
Anyway, running the same tables for a +4 bonus, I find that the average damage per round jumps to 6.025. Now, halve this between two attacks (again, let me know if my mathematical spitballing goes astray), this does look like a potential bug squasher right at the +4 level – vermin and low-level monsters like goblins and kobolds are generally 3 hp. So, okay. It is a potentially useful ability at low level against multiple mooks so long as you have 18 in the attack stat.
Slight update: I forgot to add the damage bonus also to the criticals. That brings it up to 6.425 and so still requires at least a +4 bonus to be averaging about 3 points per arrow.
Again, a correction. I forgot that the rule specifies “all damage” gets halved. So, adding only half your bonus, so the average split between two is actually not enough to take out 3 hp mooks, and that’s the minimal number of hit points anything seems to have in the sample bestiary. Now, if you have a +6 stat bonus, requiring an attack stat of 22 which will take several levels to build, then you can average mook-slaying damage between two attacks.
Ok so we played our first session last night, by the time we sorted out the characters, did a quick rules walkthrough etc we only had time for a couple of hours play but it went well.
Basically we did an opening fight, some roleplaying, exploration and got to the start of another fight.
Thoughts and impressions so far.
We had two fighters in the party, everybody loves the combat superiority burn a dice for bonuses rule.
Spell damage still seems high, the orc champion in the first fight got curbstomped by a 20 point Ray of Enfeeblement, on the other hand the fighters with deadly strike were hitting hard too.
Advantage and disadvantage seems to work really well mechanically and speed stuff up without having to worry much about bonuses and penalties.
3 Skills seems a bit limited, but they are only 1st level.
Were using the slow recovery rules, as slower hit point recovery just feels more old school dnd
House rules and changes we came up with or decided on the fly.
We have one finesse two weapon fighter. Rather than doing half damage were playing it as both attacks are made with disadvantage. I'm not sure how this works out mechanically but *it feels right* which doing half damage doesn't. We haven't tested it properly yet as the fighter in question went down really quickly to co-ordinated hobgoblin spearthrusts.
Natural 20 dodges completely save for half damage spells.
Natural 20 on inititive gets to go first regardless of totals.
A cleric can *counterspell * channeling divine power with his own channel power and roll against each other in dramatic clash of powers.
Double criticals or fumbles (on Disadvantage of Advantage rolling twice) will result in somthing awesome/very bad happening.
Overall there was a very positive first impression, my Pc’s thought it was very promising so far.