5e - views from people who share my tastes?

Ages ago I bought the D&D5e PHB. I liked the look of it, more or less. Over the intervening months - in which I haven't played it, but have played Classic D&D (and OSR variants) and Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2e - I've reconciled myself to some of the bits and bobs that turned me off. Quick levelling? Well, lately I always cut the requirements for the early levels anyway, given the shorter, less frequent sessions we play as adults. Hard to kill PCs with rapid HP regeneration? Well, I long ago turned hitting 0 HP into something other than straightforward death - roll on the Death & Dismemberment table anyone?

And there is quite a lot to like about 5e. For one, it seems pretty streamlined, and the skill system doesn't seem too intrusive (at a read through), more like a codification of the mix of d6 rolls, reaction table/morale rolls, ability checks and Saving Throws by which I tend to adjudicate non-combat situations requiring a dice roll.

I'm not sure if I am going to pick up the DMG and the MM. I am certainly tempted. It is D&D after all, and to me it *feels* so much more like D&D than 3e or 4e ever did (in my limited experience).

One thing still worries me. 

Cantrips. At will. No preparation required. Damage dealing. 

I get the idea of giving low level Wizards something meaningful to do in a combat encounter. I get the idea of trying to provide narrow balance *within* a combat encounter, even though I am comfortable with a more broad based balance, as a game of D&D ought to be about far more than combat. Avoiding combat, for one thing. I also take the point that has been made to me that a Wizard with a crossbow (and decent Dex) will do more damage, on average, than he or she will by casting Fire Bolt each turn. 

But.

But a crossbow can be taken away. It can be left in a room as the adventurers attend a feast or explore a town. It can run out of quarrels. A Wizard who knows Fire Bolt never, ever runs out of Fire Bolts. Every. Single. Round. Plus they can set things on fire. Do they count as magical attacks against otherwise invulnerable creatures? And in that bar brawl? Have you met my little friend the Shocking Grasp? Electrocution damage by touch attack. At will. Every. Single. Round. That Wizard just became a master of unarmed combat, with no question of managing resources.

 

It is not just a case of narrow balance within the combat encounter, even if I like games in which, once the steel is drawn the Fighter class is undoubtedly superior. It is also a question of what kind of game world do these rules imply, in which damage dealing magic is an unlimited resource for even the most modest of 'magic users'. Has questions of this sort figured in your games? 

I asked the O5R Google+ group, but what I am really looking for is answers from people who share my tastes. Do you like Classic D&Ds and their clones and variants? Have you played (or more, run) 5e? The opinions of people who hated 'old school' Magic Users are no good to me in this context. Yes, I get it that this game is fun for you, but I want to know how it plays for someone with a taste in D&D that instinctively sees these things as problems, rather than features.

I want to be reassured that my prejudices are misplaced. I want to like and play the new D&D. I want to spend my money.

[Next: is it true what they say about those Dwarven Wizards in armour, eh?]

This is not an argument for balance

Sigmar no.

Erik Tenkar posted a few days ago suggesting that running a skill-based RPG demands greater system mastery on the part of a GM than a class and level-based game. I thought of D&D and OpenQuest, and AD&D and RuneQuest II, comparing the two families of games. My intuitive response was; ‘No, he’s wrong. What can be easier than running a game with a unifying mechanic such as ‘roll under skill’? A GM can be up and running a game of, say, OpenQuest in no time at all. The eccentricities written into the variety of systems used to resolve character action in D&D demand that the GM doesn’t only have a feeling for the system, but real knowledge’.

But Tenkar is right, of course, to say that character generation, getting *players* up and running, can be far quicker in a system such a D&D. A player rolls stats and chooses a class, and away they go. Okay, they still have to buy equipment, but it is possible to streamline this process, with the help of a few dice rolls. A player rolling up a character in a game of OpenQuest or RuneQuest II has to assign skill points, choosing the abilities that are either class-based, or universal, in the simpler forms of D&D. Of course, that too could be streamlined by bringing in archetypes – kind of like proto-classes – in which all the starting skill points are assigned and a set of equipment allocated. Similar to the way careers work in WFRP1e/2e.

But there is one area in which an A/D&D-based system trumps a RuneQuest-based system in terms of ease of GM system mastery. Encounters. A RuneQuest-based system allows for pretty open-ended character advancement. Great. This supports the mechanical resolution of non-combat situations and encourages ‘gaming’ playstyles that emphasise those situations. Combat is ‘realistically’ deadly. Several adventures into a campaign, and two similar starting characters might be very different mechanically. By contrast, a 3rd-level Fighter is a 3rd-level Fighter is a 3rd-level Fighter. Boring?

Well, maybe. But if you want to run a free-wheeling on-the-fly sandbox campaign, that a GM can easily have a very clear idea of the capabilities of a 3rd-level Fighter makes judging the threat level of an encounter fairly straightforward – you know the abilities and levels of the PCs, and can, at a glance, measure this against the hit dice and abilities of the monsters. Note, I didn’t write, ‘makes balancing an encounter fairly straightforward’. By contrast, you have to have some experience in running a BRP-derived system to understand the interplay between outnumbering, skill levels, and equipment, before you even add magic into the mix.

It's not about finding a perfect balance, just understanding the relative weight.

I know that OpenQuest/RuneQuest are explicitly not games of ‘killing monsters and taking their stuff’. This is built into the system. And this is why, if you want to run quick, episodic games, I think that they are far more difficult games to prepare for as a GM, though they are potentially far more rewarding for everyone involved.

As you might read into this I’m still stuck on the system of the sandbox campaign.