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I love dis/advantage rules. Also that Inspiration thing seems pretty neat. A tangible reward for your players keeping in character, even to their faults.

I've done big and little battles with and without miniatures. I'm a wargamer as much as I am a roleplayer so my preference is generally for minis. But if it's late, or I'm winging it, or whatever... we just kind of figure out where everyone is in relation to everything else and go from there. In small parties it works really well, with bigger 6+ character parties, probably helps a bit to at least have some kind of token or somebody sketching relations down.

Done the measuring tape thing too, works ok.

I'm finding that I prefer the career paths available to players more than 3rd/pathfinder's multitude of prestige classes, or 4ths normal/heroic/epic paths/destinies.

Character generation in general. The background thing is slick. Not only do you inject some easy roleplaying cues, but you can better represent characters that you've seen in books and movies. When they used Artemis Entreri as an example, that's what I mean. A character who's called an assassin but who's a fighter. But a fighter that can sneak and pick locks with the best of them. In 3rd edition you'd be trying to multiclass into a rogue to figure it out. But with 5th you just make him a fighter with the street urchin (or criminal, or even just use the human skill, etc) background and suddenly you're basically at your destination. Good stuff.

I love 5e. I was working my way through reviewing the core books, then life got really busy just as I was going to do the DMG, so I never finished. I should reboot that thread.

On the minis thing, 95% of gaming I have done has been without minis, but sometimes I like to break them out for a bit of a laugh. Recently I have been running intro games for kids in my school and I used minis because the kids really liked the tactile element and it sped up combat for us. We did lots of stuff minus minis of course, but we did use them. But I didn't bother with a grid, or even with particularly accurate measurements - we just eyeballed stuff and moved stuff as we felt appropriate. Fussing over 5ft here or there is not needed- a general idea of the positions of combatants is useful. Even when we didn't use minis I would often sketch a map onto a chalkboard and show where people were and so on, and this is much the same - I even used the little portable whiteboards that are popular in schools these days for it.

5th is definitely easier to run sans minis though, and this is a great thing, because not everyone is into minis, or has the space or money for them. Also, if you get too caught in that mindset it can slow down and limit the game.

For me, I learned to play without minis, so I've never felt I needed them, in any edition. In all honesty though, I felt 4E tried to be the most miniatures friendly, but we play played through 2 seperate 4E campaigns, never using any minaitures. I've only started using minaitures again in 5th because I have a few players that confused easily when I don't, and it's just easier for them to see 5 skeletons on the board than me having to remind them every round exactly what's in the room with them.

Plus, miniatures are cool, and this totally gives me a justification for the large collection of miniatures I have.

I don't know when the party if going to fight 7 bullettes at the same time, but I have those minaitures, just in case....

Damn that's a lot of land sharks... Maybe a not-tremmors campaign?

That would be an awesome short adventure. Going to have to do that now.

Make sure to include screaming halflings.

Having played every edition of D&D, I would never willingly play 5th ed again, but as for the miniatures, reapers bones are pretty good and you can get good 2nd hand D&D/Pathfinder battles minis on miniature market or nobleknight.

thekingofkings wrote:
Having played every edition of D&D, I would never willingly play 5th ed again

Outside of not wanting to play 5E again that doesn't say why you wouldn't play it again. There is nothing wrong with liking bad systems, if there was people wouldn't still like 3E or Pathfinder, but it would be more useful if you would tell us the reasons for the dislike.

 Bottle wrote:
Hello everyone, I'm looking to get started with D&D 5E and get some discussion on here going. As there doesn't seem to be a current general discussion thread I thought this could be it!

I bought the Player's Handbook and I am looking to make a Druid character.

3. Back to miniatures, I'm looking for a Druid miniature, but one that is - Male, Human and Primordal/Feral looking, perhaps one with Native American qualities rather than being an old hermit with a big bushy beard. Anyone have any recommendations?

Looking forward to chatting with other Dakkaites about D&D!

Pricey, but worth it:

https://www.heroforge.com/

Used this site to create two extremely-custom NPCs for my Fallout: Dark Heresy game, and was rather nicely surprised at the results.

A lot of the reviews I saw said they were incredibly brittle so I have been apprehensive about using it.

Incredibly brittle may be pushing it, but they will break when polystyrene would bend. As long as you don't do anything stupid like crush them under foot, they should survive the tabletop just fine.

My biggest issue is the frosted texture you often get on printed miniatures.

Mine didn't have texture issues, though the un-primed surface did look frosted... but that was a non-issue after priming and painting.

 Bottle wrote:


Like these sort of guys:

I would be inclined to find a GW chaos cultist or marauder miniatures as the base human, possibly even from 40k shave off any chaos iconography and mutation and add weapons and tribal gear you like. Instant amerindian druid.

There is a lot of conversion room in stock GW plastic figures.

I'm a little confused as to why the need to pull out rulers or measuring tape. Wouldn't that slow things down? I would figure the best thing to do is to use the miniatures to give people a rough idea of how things are like, where their characters are, etc.

Do you really need to measure to see if you are within range of someone? That seems more of a wargame to me.

But then again, I am not familiar with the D&D5e rules and solely speaking from what my group does for Star Wars. The distances in SW are fairly relax.

Redeemer31 wrote:
I'm a little confused as to why the need to pull out rulers or measuring tape. Wouldn't that slow things down? I would figure the best thing to do is to use the miniatures to give people a rough idea of how things are like, where their characters are, etc.

Do you really need to measure to see if you are within range of someone? That seems more of a wargame to me.

But then again, I am not familiar with the D&D5e rules and solely speaking from what my group does for Star Wars. The distances in SW are fairly relax.

No you don't need to do it. Yes It slows things down considerably. I find combat without miniatures plays about twice as fast as with miniatures on a grid, and even faster than those using war game style measurements.

That said some people prefer the style. Generally speaking the pro of a minis and grid or ruler setup is it makes things feel concrete. "Where is that Orc?" he's right there, you can point at him. With a more abstracted approach there has to be some translation and agreement between what the GM thinks and describes and what the players perceive in their heads this is necessarily kind of fuzzy, imprecise and subjective. It can also be a good thing too since it fuzzy edges can leave more wiggle room, and a less concrete approach can often make on the fly embellishments a bit easier and more natural. Also miniatures are tactile and maps are nice look at a lot folks just enjoy picking up their dude, knocking over enemies when they're defeated, pushing their mini behind door or making stack up on dice while it's flying.

Nothing in D&D 5e especially requires miniatures, or even makes miniatures combat all that elegant compared to systems more directly geared for it. The default design assumption for 5e was no minis.

MIniatures are absolutely not neccesary, and I've never used them for any RPG other than D&D and Neccesary Evil. I only used them in Neccesary Evil becuase I had paper minaitures for everything in that game.

I've found that miniatures make keeping track of position easier.

Important to me, while playing D&D, because otherwise I'll end up with players arguing about being in position for sneak attacks, how many targets a burning hands can hit, attacks of opportunity, etc...

In the same campaign of 5E we've gone back and forth between using minis for some fights and not using them for others. It certainly isn't necessary.

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That's how it would have been for any previous version of the MM I've seen (well, that uses positive scores and not THACO lol...), the MM is meant to give you something quick to reference and use so they wouldn't want you to add things up. Most character sheets should have a section where you add any bonuses together and denote the regular to-hit bonus on the sheet too though.

I don't have the MM in hand and I only read through the PHB in the most basic terms, but again, anything in your MM stat block should be game ready unless they took a big step back. The game allows for average damage which is why they have both 5, and the roll that averages to it (1d6+2). Typically the +2 is what the monster gets from ability scores or whatever, but in this edition they may just be figuring things to where they ought to be, dunno.

Yeah though, shouldn't be any saves or rolls to wound for regular attacks, if you hit in D&D you get to roll for damage (or just take the average pending what you've chosen to do).

But anyway, whatever is in the stat block on the MM page should be the only thing you need to look up, shouldn't have to add. Should be spots on the character sheets to do this math ahead of time so that players don't have to add up mid fight either. Makes it nice and quick.

If I'm wrong, please correct me folks

You have two choices for damage in the MM: average or rolled.

If you want to hurry along you just take the average damage, which is 5. The average roll for 1d6+2 is 5 (3+2).

If you want to roll for damage you do 1d6+2.

And no, you don't add from the stat block as the totals for to hit and damage are already figured in.

I acknowledge it's an old question now, but if you didn't find a mini you like for your druid, have a look at the Witch from Frostgrave....

http://www.darksphere.co.uk/p.php?p=63801&c=1665

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I learned the rules through play. It meant I got lots of stuff wrong at first but as long as it's consistent inside a session that usually doesn't matter- stuff can always be hashed out later.

An important thing in roleplaying games like D'n'D is feeling confident about making rulings as the GM which make sense within the game world. Not everything will be expressed in the rules and it's not really expected that it will be.

 Bottle wrote:

Do you guys have any tips for learning the rules?

When in doubt roll a D20 and add the appropriate modifier.
very easy task ? 5+
Is it easy ? roll a 10+
Is it difficult ? roll a 15+
Is it very hard ? roll a 20+
Opposed D20 roll, if someone else is involved

 Bottle wrote:
Awesome guys thank so much for your help! I already understood that the two damage amounts were an average or an exact roll for the DM to choose between, the thing I didn't understand was if the ability score was added to the damage roll of not.

I now see it is added mechanically, but it's already there for you. The thing that threw me was the skeleton shortsword is a finesse weapon and so uses the dexterity score + the weapon damage (so 1d6 + 2 or 5 average) not the strength score (which is 0 for a skeleton).

I also see that the +4 a skeleton gets to its hit roll is just that +2 dexterity score and a +2 proficiency bonus.

Do you guys have any tips for learning the rules? I think I'm just going to play through a few battles with my Warhammer miniatures with the stock NPCs and Monsters in the MM first, because creating a character seems like a very lengthy process to begin with.

@Crispy78 brilliant! Those models fit just the style I was looking for, my only qualm is they are a bit cartoony looking.

Finesse weapons can use either Strength or Dexterity. Bear in mind proficiency bonuses only add to 'To Hit' rolls, not damage rolls. Ability bonuses add to both. Current thinking with this edition of D&D is to make things easy to hit, and to compensate, increase their hit point totals.

Play is the best way to learn the rules. But don't get too hung up about the rules. There is no 'wrong' way to play any rule. Just like the old days

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Best thing you can do is read it cover for cover, but don't agonize over points or anything, just read it through. Then play. Reference the b ooks as you need while you play (it will slow you down, of course), and as you get more familiar you will have to reference less often.

I've always found that if you're GMing and you get stuck, make something up rather than de-railing the session to hunt through the rulebook. If you can't find a particular application of a skill or whatever, follow adamsouza's rule of thumb. There's nothing worse than killing the mood like that. You can always look it up between sessions, and explain to the players what happened.

Bumping this a bit. My group is foraying into 5e sometime in the near future and I was wondering if there was a character generator somewhere? I have all three core books, and naturally I can do it by hand, but I was hoping for something a little more automated.