Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

They have (some) Character Creation rules in place for the playtest there and so they aren't pre-gens. As I understand it Thursday was the same classes as the playtest but today the Sorcerer and Warlock were added as options. You can roll for stats or take the following array: 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10.

Humans get a +2 to one stat, and +1 to all others. If a Human chooses Fighter as their class they get to add another +1 to STR, CON, or DEX, and you can put it on thye +2 bonus for a +3. The max for any stat is 20.

My session isn't yet so I am passing along shared info.

Thanks for taking the time to post updates dude. Hope you're having a blast!

Unfortunately one of my seminars ran long and so was not able to get to the playtest. I had a few friends get in so I'll pass along their observations when I get a chance. One of them got screwed out of their game as the start time was 7pm with 30 minutes for char creation and an hour to run the adventure, but the hall closed at 8pm...

 Ahtman wrote:
Unfortunately one of my seminars ran long and so was not able to get to the playtest. I had a few friends get in so I'll pass along their observations when I get a chance. One of them got screwed out of their game as the start time was 7pm with 30 minutes for char creation and an hour to run the adventure, but the hall closed at 8pm...

Weird... I did one of the playtest sessions, but it was off in one of the smaller conference room areas. They had two 'groups' as you made characters at one table, then moved to another for the actual micro-adventure (which was a couple combats and some skill checks).

Overall, I like a lot of bits. It's got some modernization over 2nd, but not as fiddly as 3rd or 4th could get. This is, of course, from a preview and brief play with level 1 characters.

I'm just relating the story as told to me by the man on the mountain. When you played were the Warlock and Sorcerer classes available?

 Ahtman wrote:
I'm just relating the story as told to me by the man on the mountain. When you played were the Warlock and Sorcerer classes available?

We had a sorcerer in our playtest group, but i did not read that class description. In an effort to be as cliched as possible, our group had a Dwarf Fighter, a Dwarf Cleric, my Halfling Rogue, a human archer-type fighter*, a human wizard, and I believe a human sorcerer. The sorcerer was a lone player, so we didn't talk to him as much as we did each other (I'm sorry... it was a quick session, so minimal kibitzing!) but he seemed a bit more versatile (some 'at will' casting) and tougher (more HP, at least, and less restricted armor).

Characters currently selecting a 'background' and 'specialty' in addition to race/class. Each class may have some options (Rogue could be either 'thief' or 'thug' I believe) but I found the specialties were really vital ti make the character work. I briefly set up with a fun Background called (IIRC) 'Charlatan' to make my character more of a charismatic dual-identity type, btu found that in doing so I gave up basic thief skills. I changed back to the Thief background to cover the basics.

I'm guessing they want to stick to 4th's "quick character generation" as the playtest docs have a LOT of pre-written material to make quick character creation possible. There's suggested backgrounds and specialties for each class, for example, and these have attached suggested equipment lists. Character creation could be arguably faster than 4.0 due to the lack of power selection.

One bad thing is it looks like there may be 'dead levels' where a character advances but doesn't get anything interesting. I truly hope they can work around this. One big fun part of 4th is every level has something, even if it's a relatively simple power selection, for every class.

My rogue was theoretically a skill-monkey for the group. Instead of more skills or points, rogues get a 'skill mastery' ability so they're competent but not greart at every skill automatically. I'd want to reread this before using it in regular campaign game, though.

*A fighter who used a bow, NOT a ranger. Apparently this is still a bit incomplete (the special ability was described to me was very special-use compared to normal fighters), but they seem to be interested in supporting this option, which has always been kind of fighting the tide in previous editions.