Players Handbook

I had better luck with the Player's Handbook early release than the Starter Set - Pandemonium had them early, and now, so do I!

I'm very happy with it. The book itself is nice - the art is respectable - the prose reasonably well done. So far, the rules have made sense - haven't found any ambiguous workings, etc. That seems good. The organization is pretty good, though I sometimes get confused about where skills and feats and equipment are tucked in, relative to one another. Little things. It has an index - 3-4 pages of it, which may be very useful, though I can't read it without a magnifying glass... Lots of interesting material in the back - planes and gods, and a bunch of gods - different fantasy worlds, historical pantheons, and so on - a section on conditions, with helpful illustrations (in case you wondered what "unconscious" looks like) - even a set of beasts and undead, with their stat blocks - all of it pretty impressive.

But what really matters are the rules. The game looked promising from the starter set and basic rules, but they were missing a lot - this was the moment of truth. And I'd say - it works. In the broad sense - I already knew it played pretty quickly and easily - that still seems to be so. Even the optional parts run easily - there are quite a few classes with "dice" of some kind - inspiration dice for bards; superiority dice for fighters - but this is a reasonably obvious mechanic, and easy to keep track of. If you have 6 superiority dice, you can just lay out 6 dice, and play 'em as you go. Easy enough.

The options are key: the basic version of the game is okay, but would tend to go rather flat, I think, over time. It's nice to build some variation among characters - feats and 4E powers give you some of that in the old versions. Do they here? They do - I paid most attention to the fighters and rangers (sure that comes as a surprise) - and like the way they work. Fighters in particular have real choices - they may be something of the backbone of the game - but they can take on a lot of specific forms here. I like the way the game handles maneuvers - and seeing their feats, I think they have done that well too. Both often seem to be replicating 4th Edition powers (and some 3rd edition rules) - there are feats and maneuvers that replicate cleave (take an extra swing at someone else; or an extra swing if you drop someone), shield bash, powers to knock people prone or move them around, even features like charging - which is given some bite. Other feats replicate things like taking extra proficiencies - usually with a minor ability boost as well. (You give up your 2 points of ability boosting for a feat - though many of the feats give you one of the boosts, to a specific ability.) They're well done - they usually give you a fairly defined ability that has quite a bit of use. I like them. I'm not sure there are enough of them - but I imagine the splat books will take care of that when they start coming out. And frankly - I don't think they would be hard to make up for yourself - the principal seems pretty clear.

I found one of my hobby horses, too - Pole Arm master - for the halberd fans among us. which does 2 things, basically: 1) it gives you an extra bonus attack if you are using a reach weapon - you get to whack the guy with the butt end of the halberd for d4 damage. 2) And you get to make opportunity attacks against people entering your reach - now that is what a pole arm is for: keep people away from you. I am very happy, and intend to play a glaive or halberd wielding brute as soon as possible!

Going back - the book includes the stuff you would expect - the importance races are there (Goliaths might be the only one people played very much that isn't); the classes you would expect - bards and barbarians, druids, monks, paladins, rangers, sorcerers and warlocks, along with the basics. All of them seem to work the way you would expect - though I haven't really read through the warlock and sorcerer. They seem a bit complicated - we'll see. The options for the classes are fine - though some of them struck me as rather bland. Though most classes have an option or two that looks like it would be particularly appealing to play.

And finally - to go back to the game as a whole - I played around with some of this, played a little fight - and the more I play with it, the more it seems to be really easy to work with. It seems very easy to work out how to handle an unusual situation - the advantage/disadvantage rule is a godsend. I played a little fight, with my new rangers and pole arm fighters and what not: a simple brawl, 5 characters vs. 3 orcs and a bugbear in a tavern. The monsters were in a back room - I brought the PCs in, rolling for perception and so on until they found each other. The Orcs came out - they set to. The ranger and a magic user were on a balcony, shooting; the rest on the floor - the fighter charged, the orcs charged - the bugbear went around and went for the second line (cleric and thief). They all whack and shoot away at one another... One of the orcs charged the ranger, who was on the second level, at the top of a ladder -I had the orc char gem and figured he'd try to fight from the ladder. The ranger responded by trying to push orc and ladder over.

That's the sort of thing that would have taken half an hour to figure out how to play in 3E, and 4E too - what penalties does the orc have on the ladder? what check opposes what to knock the thing over? But here - easy: give the orc disadvantage. Disadvantage to hit; disadvantage when the ranger made a push check against his strength. Worked well. Then I tried having the orc do some derring-do - jumping off the ladder onto the thief: simple enough, jump check - he failed and fell, and so on. And again - all of this played quick and simple. It wasn't a big battle, but it was reasonably elaborate - PCs and monsters moving around the room; opportunity attacks with that pole arm; business on a ladder; attempted jump; a character 0'd out and healed (then 0'd out again), before the orcs were finished off - all of it done, though, in, oh - half an hour, including all the set up and fights with the cat? It was a fairly rewarding little encounter, that didn't drag, offered chances to experiment - I think it works well. The non-combat stuff too - I didn't emphasize that, but tried to think about it - and it should work well.

In short - the more I see of DD5, the more I like it. I think they have succeeded.