Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Sines Aug 14, 2014 14:20:28	So, I've taken a look at the basic rules, and mechanics wise, I'm pretty happy. Almost everything I really like, with my only real concern being the low value of proficiency increasing the random factor of rolling a 20 sided die. When you can have +10 to something, your skill modifier plays a bigger role in the roll, but when it's a mere +5, the roll itself is more important. This is true even with adjusted DCs. But I'm willing to play to see how it turns out.   However, this isn't about that. I'm in the products section, not the mechanics. And I'm rather concerned about the writing of the book in many places. Now these are just the basic rules, but the complaints seem to be about things that will carry over to the PHB. If they don't, disregard the rest of this post :D First and most notably, was the spell section. The spell index does not list school (even for Wizards, the class for which this disinction is important) or give a short description of the spell. Likewise, the spell entries themselves do not describe WHO can cast them. This results in a LOT of flipping back and forth I never had to do with 3rd Edition books. It's not exactly a huge problem, and it'll go away once I know the spells better, but it also wouldn't have been hard to fix. Even without short descriptions or a page reference on where the spell could be looked up, simply listing spells by school (at least on the Wizard list where it's relevant), and then listing allowed casters on the spells themselves would have made things simpler.   There are lot of other areas where things are left particularly ambiguous, and with players often wanting to know exact details, it's not exactly ideal, especially where the rules deviate from 3rd Edition.   For example, the rules for Grappling. The rules for grappling imply that you don't need to spend an action maintaining the grapple, and that you can still act with any non-grappling limbs as normal. However, it doesn't make this clear. In older D&D rules, grappling meant you were wrestling with a person, and were both tied up in combat. In this game, it seems it takes the road that you're grabbing a guy with one arm and holding him still. Which is fine, but clarity is always nice in a game where stretching the rules is the fun part. I've run into quite a number of these cases where a simple clarification on what the RAW above mean and don't mean would be nice. However, in the case of the Grappling combat action, I am questioning whether the RAW of not having to spend actions to maintain the grapple (and then being able to attack with your free hand as normal) is really the RAI. Perhaps these issues have already been attended to in the PHB, but I'm worried they haven't been. I believe copies of the book were sold early at conventions, can anyone say if these problems persist? And if they do persist, has Wizards confirmed that they'll release a better spell index and some eratta to clarify, or at least that they'll correct the issue in further reprintings?
#2 mellored Aug 14, 2014 14:39:08	The biggest bonus you can get is 5 (stat)+ 6 (proficency)+6 (expert)= 17 Which means someone with no bonus can still beat you, but rarely.   The spell index isn't the best.  Though they are relasing spell cards.   You do not need any extra action to keep something grappled, and you can act with any non-grappling limb as normal. It ends when they escape, you are incapacitated, or something pushes you apart. It's actually useful that way without any extra feats needed.
#3 Sines Aug 14, 2014 16:07:39	Well, my point on the stat spread is similar to the concern I've had in 3rd Edition, where a man with 1 strength could occassionally beat a guy with 22 strength in a single contested strength roll. The strong man has +11 to his roll over the almost paralyzed guy, but because of the size of the die, it's not unreasonable for the paralyzed man to beat out Mr. Universe every now and then (I don't have the math, but I think it's about a 5-10% chance, about the odds of threatening a critical hit). The +5 vs. +10 I mentioned is the relative starting values for skills. A 3rd Edition Rogue could reasonably start off with +10 to Stealth (4 ranks, 20 dex, and small size), whereas a 5th Edition Rogue will start off with +5 (17 Dex, +2 Proficiency). In 3rd edition, you get safely out of the realm of luck dominating success fairly early on, but it takes much longer to get out of there in 5th Edition. Still, the bigger concern wasn't that, but the quality of the book itself. If it has the same abiguity as the basic rules, I'm not terribly interested in owning it. Half the point of owning an RPG book is to be able to flip through it for confirming little details, or to browse the spell list while relaxing on a comfy couch. Saddly, it seems this book doesn't do that. The spell section in particular was what got my concern up. It wouldn't take much time at all for them to have simply sorted even only the Wizards spells by school. And really, short spell descriptions should have been there too. It just kind comes off as being lazy about making a good book.   It's a "Good Enough" book, most of the time. The sections on roleplaying are GREAT, but the sections on mechanics never really seemed to go above and beyond in explaining the rules. And some parts were just obscure and hard to find. I couldn't find where the book listed what packs included. I asked a friend who got the PHB at a convention to look it up for me (In case it wasn't in the base rules)... the packs were not mentioned in the index. Now, they're not THAT hard to find, I was just having a brain fart and looked over them. But of all the details they list in the index (Tiefling Names has an entry in addition to the Tiefling entry itself), they don't list the packs of items every character gets on character creation? It's not really any one detail, it's just that the book comes across as slopilly edited at times. And it's not like Wizards is some indie developer that can be forgiven for missing small details. Still, I do really love a lot of the stuff. Even if it turns out I hate the Proficiency system, I can work around that. I'd still house-rule my games starting from 5th Edition, rather than starting with 3rd edition and putting the 5th Ed stuff I like in. But unless a later printing of the PHB fixes those concerns, I'm just not interested in buying it. I'll read my friends copy when I need it.
(Reply to #3) JC999	Sines wrote:
#5 Sines Aug 14, 2014 16:47:30	JC999 wrote:
#6 FallingIcicle Aug 15, 2014 2:10:17	Sines wrote:
#7 mellored Aug 15, 2014 6:16:20	Sines wrote:
#8 kev777 Aug 15, 2014 6:50:10	FallingIcicle wrote:
#9 Tony_Vargas Aug 15, 2014 11:51:32	kev777 wrote:
#10 marius4 Aug 15, 2014 17:45:43	Sines wrote:
#11 dmgorgon Aug 15, 2014 20:47:12	Tony_Vargas wrote:
#12 FitzTheRuke Aug 15, 2014 23:17:36	I honestly don't mean any offense, and I'm not saying you're an example of this, but I've found that most complaints I've read regarding "rules ambiguity" usually (IMO) stem from poor reading comprehension.   In many cases willfully poor.  I've got one player (who usually plays Pathfinder) who is CONSTANTLY complaining that he doesn't understand rule A or can't find rule B in the PHB.  In nearly all cases, I've found that the answer to his problems are usually perfectly apparent or easily found with the smallest ammount of page flipping.   I'm not saying the book is perfect, but it's far better than most books of it's sort.