Okay,
just started a test-run of 5E yesterday. We had a great time. The session was spent for the most part on character generation, but we played out a few encounters. We have a Forest Gnome Cleric, a Woodelf (Cumasti) Ranger and a Human Fighter. One more player may be joining later.

Character generation was a bit more time consuming than I thought it would be, but I expect this will be quicker once we get into all the options. Also, we only had one PHB around. Just having the PDF on Pads will help alot. Should have thought of that beforehand.

I love how this edition is closer to the feel of TSR era D&D when it comes to combat, spellcasting etc. Character generation is still complex, but at least distributing skill points and selecting feats are no longer part of the core rules. I like having Feats in the optional rules, but we aren't using them for now.


-Havard

I find it very friendly to run. Character generation is a bit bumpy, but nowhere near as involved as, say, Alternity ;)

The encounter building is quite a bit easier than 3e, too.

The thing for me is that my players don't mind taking a little extra time to create characters as long as they have fun, and 5E has supplied a lot of fun for my group.

One of the big plusses for us has been those wizard cantrips, so that a magic-user isn't so "one and done" as in previous editions. While that doesn't sell the game by itself, it does help.

Also, power creep has been cut back. A +1 weapon means a lot more and is harder to acquire. Bonuses are smaller and the scale of the game just seems a lot better than in 3E/4E.

Our experience has been good and I've been running a weekly game of 5E local game store since September.

One thing to add, however -- my gut feeling is that the "non core" classes don't seem as well balanced (playtested) as the core four. If the party is all fighters, rogues, MU's, and clerics it seems to work well, but when you add bards and rangers and monks and so on those classes seem to be a little too cool and can do too many neat things. Makes the core class players feel cheated a little, I think.

We've found the character generation really shines when we do it as a group, with backgrounds that tie the characters together somehow beyond the old "you all meet in a tavern". Not sure how long we can keep it going, as we've all lost a few characters already, but it's quite a fun new wrinkle to add to the old game.

This kind of character generation complexity doesn't bother me - ex-Traveller player here ... :wink:

I have found the class's pretty well balanced but in weird ways. For instance the Barbarian,Ranger and Paladin all seem stronger than the fighter under 11th level. Once the fighter hits 11th he catches up and soon outshines them all. The Wizard and the Sorcerer are each pretty kick arse but the lack of options in the book give the advantage to the Wizard after a bit. it took me about 15 minutes to add other options though that balanced the two back out.

I think that is a major telling thing about the game. It just doesn't take long to add small things to the game to make huge differences.

Also the gap between class's when there is imbalance isn't that big. Heck even gaps in level ranges between characters isn't that big. We had a party death and our 3-4th level group had a level 1 join and it wasn't a big deal.

To each his own and I certainly can understand why in Classic-2nd edition one would want to play mostly a lower level game. in 5E however(in my experience) the higher levels don't play out that much different.

I think one of the things they set about doing is stretching out that golden level range of 1-9 to 1-20. I'm not going to say they completely succeeded but I think they mostly did.

I am a huge fan of BECMI. One of that editions many strengths was how smoothly it ran at the higher levels. The DA modules (BECMI) were all written for the Companion Level range, so Blackmoor should lend itself very well to high level play.

Can't wait to see how 5E handles it :)

-Havard