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Does anyone have the playtesting packet? I really want to try it but I can't find it will someone help me out?

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dndnext.aspx

It's not very good. I've lost hope for D&D; it turns out there are much better tabletop RPGs out there if you know where to look.

(Shadowrun/Earthdawn, Exalted, World of Darkness, D20 Wheel of Time (if you can still get your hands on the rulebooks), D20 Star Wars, Dogs in the Vineyard...The list goes on)

I like D&D better than most of those. Mechanically it's a lot more sound than WoD, and a lot quicker and smoother than Shadowrun/Earthdawn. DitV is a totally different kind of game. If you like Star Wars, I recommend the old West End Games d6-based version over the d20 version.

I've played a bit of the playtest 5th and it feels like a pretty good, pretty streamlined mix of 4th and earlier editions.

 Mannahnin wrote:
I like D&D better than most of those. Mechanically it's a lot more sound than WoD, and a lot quicker and smoother than Shadowrun/Earthdawn. DitV is a totally different kind of game. If you like Star Wars, I recommend the old West End Games d6-based version over the d20 version.

I've played a bit of the playtest 5th and it feels like a pretty good, pretty streamlined mix of 4th and earlier editions.

Get out of my head. There is already space problems for the three that are supposed to be in there. Can't have you muckin about setting up shop either.

I've heard of some good and bad from the playtest. Right now, I'm wishing they would realize the whole "modularity" thing is probably going to crash and burn and try to start settling on some good, functional bits.

They seem to be going with the idea that a character has a class which is mostly "what they do in combat" and backgrounds are "what they do out of combat" but the two definitely and intentionally overlap.

I like that they're stepping back a bit from large, complex combat encounters and encouraging some more player/GM interaction/creativity. This is, to me, good. Focus on stuff a tabletop game can do better than stuff a MMO can do.

On the bad side, they're still fumbling with ways to make non-magic-users interesting. The new Fighter dice system is intersting, and I'm hopeful they're going to right a lot of the usual spot rules (for grappling, disarming, etc.) such that anyone can try to do them, but fighters and such will be better at them. However, with this they have to also avoid making it a 'I Win' button such that a specific feat/tactic is used every turn in combat because it's a better option than anything else.

One idea I really liked to combat this was making Fighter Critical hits awesome-cool explosions of status effects based of character creation'advancement choices. And, importantly, everything is additive. So a wizard crits and does some extra damage which is fun but not amazing. When a fighter crits it's extra damage plus a knockdown, weapon disarm, or other cool trick.

A related negative is they've said Paladins and Rangers are probably getting their spellcasting back. I never liked the spellcasting from these classes. It, along with spell lists from various prestige classes in 3.0, always felt like the designers were getting lazy. If they're unique and interesting powers that make sense and have value, that's fine. If they're jsut low-level spells the party's real casters have probably already gotten bored with, that's not interesting.

Still, I'm interested in how it develops. I'm hopeful we can combine the fun 'big fights' of 4e with more interesting smaller fights (common to previous editions, not worth pulling out a battle mat) to make everything interesting.

I liked the latest playtest. We didn't get to play very long; a lot of the time was spent wrapped up in character creation, but I like how streamlined the system is without me feeling like I'm playing a board game/WoW.

 daedalus wrote:
I liked the latest playtest. We didn't get to play very long; a lot of the time was spent wrapped up in character creation, but I like how streamlined the system is without me feeling like I'm playing a board game/WoW.

Yeah, 3/3.5 was annoying in that way at times.

 Ahtman wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
I liked the latest playtest. We didn't get to play very long; a lot of the time was spent wrapped up in character creation, but I like how streamlined the system is without me feeling like I'm playing a board game/WoW.

Yeah, 3/3.5 was annoying in that way at times.

Well, 3.5 was the most recent system they've produced (other than that slew of specialist games like Castle Ravenloft and Gamma World). Of course that would be the one to compare it to.

It will have to be freaking amazing to convince me to even buy it. Pathfinder really is a fantastic system, and about what I hope for in a fantasy RPG.