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Here's a rough shot of the developing IA storage foam.

5e is pretty easy and fun. I got all 3 books but pretty much only use the PHB and the MM. I'm happy to have all 3 though.

I've run a few friends through part of the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign and we've had a grand ol' time with it.

I got a copy of the Goodman Games free one-shot that they put out for Free RPG day. It's a 5e one-shot for 12 level characters. I may run it at the shop one weekend.

You can still use maps and minis if you want to but you don't have to.

I hope you do it just so we can hear about it!

http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/trpg-resources

This link allows you to download the basic bestiary and DM advice. It is not as complete as the MM or the DMG (treasure is fairly absent) but it is good enough to start off with.

The online players rules are there, too. PHB is probably the best purchase to start with.

Great link there Da Boss.

Skimmed it quick and this caught my eye.

Giant Goat

D&D has had a plethora of giant animals over the years, but I can't say our adventurers have ever come across a giant goat.

I am definitely going to terrorize my players with herds of giant goats now.

Phb came in today, wee.

Painted an adventurer too, still needs washes and highlights.

The adventurer is looking good!

bravely bold Sir Robin strode forth from Camelot

Looking good so far!

Cool, thanks. I'm thinking perhaps a paladin for this guy. Not an especially religious one, necessarily, but a somewhat foppish rich lord who thought he could be doing something more important. Still haughty and disdainful of common things like road dirt and poorly cooked meals around the campfire, he still gird himself for battle and rode out looking for adventure. Little did he realize that he was inadvertently following a higher calling.

I'm thinking for added interest, if I end up making these characters for others to run through a megadungeon or something, that they'll each get some kind of useful trait/skill/gear/item to make them unique (and to give the party a little boost...as they're gonna need it with 0% kid gloves from the get-go). I need to think of a suitably haughty name for him, but I'm thinking his purple cloak to be one of charisma, or perhaps leadership... he can probably command peasants to do stuff and just the imperiousness and confidence that they will do as he says simply pushes them into it. So I'm thinking he can take along free porters, or potentially a lesser NPC sellsword who will likely get thrown under the wagon if things go bad (but not on purpose, just because he isn't adventuring material, honest!).
Think prince charming from shrek, but slightly less of a dick. But just slightly

Got my 5e PHB today, pretty interested to see the minor (and not so minor!) changes to a lot of the core classes. I like the smaller bonus amount, +20 was just getting silly to a point, and that whole 5 attacks per round too. Definitely seems like an 'everything is awesome' approach, inasmuch as all racial ability scores are bonuses with no penalties. Dwarfs still have the best constitution boost, but no longer get a charisma penalty, though if you liked that you can certainly still dump your worst stat there.

All of the classes seem to have two or more paths as well, something that seems to have come from 4e but it's not a bad thing. It kind of integrates prestige classes into the core class progression, and helps make two of the same class able to distinguish themselves. Like you can be a open handed monk which more or less works like a 3rd edition monk, a shadow monk with some stealth and shadow walking abilities, and an elemental disciplines monk who's basically a bender from Avatar

Multiclassing seems alright. If you were a 5/5 cleric/wizard in 3rd edition you'd get two separate lists of spells and casts per day, but both lists would be totally separate and at caster level 5. In 5e, you'd be a 10th level caster. You would still only have access to level 3 or so spells from each class, even though you'd have 5th level spells slots. But you can use the higher level slots to cast lower level spells, and some spells get a decent bonus when cast at a higher level. You can also freely mix spells from your two classes as far as I can tell. So if you had a party cleric who suddenly dies or perhaps their player moves away, I think you'd be able to have your wizard take a level of cleric, and suddenly you'd be able to cast level one cleric spells out of all of your wizard spell slots to supplement healing as necessary.

Healing surges didn't survive 4e but they sort of did in the form of Hit Dice (one per level) allowing you to roll your HP dice after a short rest to heal damage. Overnight rest restores half of such points so you can get a bit more staying power inbetween big fights on the same day. Several class features seem to reset after a solid hour of rest too. Take a little siesta and you can fight a bit better again. Also HP are completely restored after a long rest (8 hrs, basically resting/sleeping) which is new to me, though it may have been in 4th. Seems like a big deal, used to take days to get back on your feet at level one, and healing up after adventures around level 5 was just depressing without a healer around.

The skills seem cool, basically you're good at it or not, and if you're proficient you get to add your generic class bonus (which increases with level, but only ever up to 6 instead of something like 20 from 3rd). Your class usually gives you a couple of skills from a short list, and your history/background/upbringing will give you another couple, and often proficiency with a set of tools (like thieves tools, metal working tools, scribe stuff, poison tools, etc). The bond/ideal/failing/whatever system seems really nice to help new players try to build a framework from which to start roleplaying, and if it's too rigid for experienced players, I'm sure the DM can swing something.

A lot of things seem simpler. Light armor, sets armorclass to 11 or 12 + dex mod. Medium has a set ac and adds up to 2 dex. Heavy armor has no dex mod and has a set ac bonus. All shields are +2. Weapons are largely the same, seems some of the extra/wonky special traits were thrown out in favor of simplicity.

Oooh, armor disables spells only if you aren't proficient with it, meaning certain multiclasses will see your wizard throwing fireballs while wearing plate mail

Certain spells can be cast as rituals, they take at least 10 minutes longer but don't cost spell slots. I think you need a feat or class feature to do so but.. could provide a lot of utility, especially if any healing spells are on that list.

Cantrips seem to work more like they did in 4th edition, basically give you something useful to throw around all the time instead of being stuck out of spells chucking darts or cranking a crossbow.

Bah there's a lot to sift through, probably going to be a fair amount of inspiration synergy between D&D and the bones minis.

My 2 cents regarding 5e is that it reminds me of what running D&D for my friends when I was a teenager was like (20+ years ago). I have very fond memories of those days, but there are a few improvements that I wish they had kept in, namely a few more skills like Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, and Engineering. Otherwise it's a fantastic edition.

I like how simple it looks. Make a perception check goes from having to scroll down on your big list of skills and looking to see if you have it, and what the bonus is as those tend to vary *widely* sometimes, then apply it. Now you just glance down to see if its one of your maybe 4-6 skills and if it is it's stat plus level based bonus (which only ranges from 2-6). I mean I guess it's not THAT much easier, but still seems a bit streamlined. Combat's the same way, less crazy modifiers in play from what I can see.

I think a lot of improvements have been made to spells, too. In 3.5/Pathfinder, you have the problem of players spending a lot of time layering buffs and recalculating all their bonuses from buffs, and lots of discussions about whether things stack.

5th makes most buffs simply set a score or value at a set number, and most buffs are also "Duration: Concentration up to X" which limits the number of buffs which will be in play at any time. Combine that with fewer spell slots at higher levels and mages are useful and needed but not overpowering and difficult to manage.

There's a lot to like about it. I've introduced lots of new players to it recently, and they've all grasped it very fast, much faster than they would have with 3.5 for example. Us hoary old Grognards sometimes forget how overwhelming it is to have so many different subsystems and derived values, 5th does a great job of stripping that out while still keeping the game interesting. The more I play, the more I like.

Yar. I like simple rulesets, they're easier for new players to understand and often faster to play even for vets.

I ran my first 5E session last night. It ran very smoothly. The rules felt like a blend of the best parts of 3E and 4E, without the drawbacks of either edition.

As a DM I appreciate all the fidly bits being reduced to fewer modifiers. There is no nearly infintie list of positive and negative modifiers. Most situations can be handled by awarding advantage or disadvantage, and the target numbers being reduced eliminates the powercreep of skill levels.

What suprised the hell out of my group was how deadly things were. Addmitedly we had 4 1st level characters, but defeating a Bugbear, a wolf, and 2 goblins in a single encounter felt heroic. The encounter nearly resulted in team wipe and they had to cautiously make it through the rest of the mission with injured members and no healing to back them up. It made for a very rewarding session, knowing that it wasn't a guarenteed success.

Only used the PHB and starter set adventure book. The starter set was very well designed. I expect to get through at least 4-5 gaming sessions before exahusting the material in the adventures book.

Thanks for the report! Makes me a bit more interested in the starter to hear a good review like that.

I hadn't looked to see how string monsters are but some of the level one spells do like 4d6 damage... That's up to 24 which could one shot and catalog wound even tanks..


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Thanks for the report! Makes me a bit more interested in the starter to hear a good review like that.

I hadn't looked to see how string monsters are but some of the level one spells do like 4d6 damage... That's up to 24 which could one shot and catalog wound even tanks..

well, as most skeletons are less than that, you usually see a horde of them come at the party

Sorry guys been moving house. Wife and I decided to buy a neat house in town instead of renting. May or may not have been wisest idea, time will tell. Also prepping for new baby. I suspect that 365 challenge is going to be a bust but I'll wait to confirm in December.

Here be photos of game room.

A new house, and a baby? Congratulations!

Home yes, baby is still cooking but its only a couple of weeks now...

Congrats! Good luck with house and the bundle of joy!

Thanks I don't expect I'll be getting much done for awhile... but I think I may get *just* enough time to set up my office/hobby cave and the game room. That's right, not only do I come out of this deal with a computer/painting/whatever room.. that happens to be in the much-cooler-than-the-rest-of-the-house basement, but I also get a spare room off of the main garage in which to keep my game table and display shelves Shelves included too!

It'll cost a bit more a month due to those fun homeowner things like property tax and home insurance... but at least a (relatively small) portion of that high monthly expense will be going into the home as some kind of investment in the future.

Plus it has a comparatively giant back yard and porch/patio for the kids, win-win!

Unfortunately it's not all roses, since it took so long to close on the house the obscenely wet summer we've had (maybe close to record for our area) combined with the dehumidifier that went unused cause a bit of a mold issue in the basement. In my glorious mancave/familyroom basement! Curses! We're working on it though, the first day I get off of work and I'm not half dead (stupid 90+ fahrenheits...) I'll try to tackle what we haven't already gotten in the office, and then I think it's just the utility room (which wasn't bad) and whats left of the basement bathroom (and a bathroom with mold isn't that surprising really). I've been running the dehumidifier continuously so a recurrence shouldn't be an issue.


But yeah, hobby budget is pretty much nixed for awhile. Between moving expenses (relatively light, but we painted a couple of rooms and I wanted a better router for the larger house+ basement situation) and anticipation of incoming baby costs... yeah.. can't really spend anything on minis for awhile. Fortunately, I've got too many anyway Plus there's KoW coming (which is really more an excuse to repurpose my old models than an order for new ones), Dungeon saga before x-mas (bucketload of fantasy minis), the last of my dreadball xtreme, and deadzone infestation..eventually.

Ok time to get out of here, i'll see about more pictures than text next time

Busy, but very exciting times on the GrimDork homefront. Envious of the hobby setup you have bought yourself. Looking forward to seeing some photos of your completed setup. But family comes first and look after that wife of yours.

Congrats on the house and upcoming baby!

Congrats sir on both event .

Home ownership is so much better than wasting your money on rent.

So congrats with the house and kid #2 Grim .

Baking soda hits mold with a Ph change it hates, once cleaned up, I suggest sealing the areas with Marine coat for warding off future mold growth along with desiccant to help the dehumidifier.

Good news on the house, and even better news on the pregnancy! I hope the move has been as stress free as possible, as it is never the easiest of times, but at least you have a new man-cave out of it. I say you save the 365 challenge until the time that the kids are old enough to paint, then you can try and knock out 1000 miniatures in the year .

Triple congrats on the newses, mate! I'd been wondering why your blog turned so very D&D-discussion based recently. Now it all makes sense.

 Azazelx wrote:
Triple congrats on the newses, mate! I'd been wondering why your blog turned so very D&D-discussion based recently. Now it all makes sense.

because he's been cave exploring and fighting off slime

That made my morning Theo

Partially I just like dnd, but yeah scheming up adventures and reading manuals is easier to do while caring for the little ones, so long as this one doesn't have the projectile vomiting skill.

Thanks for the kind words folks . I'll keep you updated with what scant progress I do manage to make.