I think we should cut Jaine a break - she's a little rattled and out of her comfort zone.
I am on the horns of a mild dilemma: My gaming group has finished their first adventure on the high seas in the Lhazaar Principalities and have managed to wrangle themselves a ship and a bare bones crew (I almost said "Skeleton crew", but this being D&D, that could have been taken literally). On top of that, I now have a copy of the new Player's Handbook for D&D and I really really want to run that system instead of 3.5, which is what I'm running now. Usually I'd say, "hey folks, let's try this instead," and most people wouldn't have a problem with this. The thing is, I have not one, not two, but THREE new players in this group. Not "new to this group" (although that certainly is true), but new to D&D period. One of my new players just bought her own copy of the 3.5 Player's Handbook, which is not cheap. I don't want to make everyone buy another book. Given that one of these new players is my sister, I'd never hear the end of it. ;)
Another thing preventing me from switching over to the new D&D (or 5th edition, or D&D Next, or whatever you want to call it) is that I use the Eberron Campaign Setting and I have the following in my group: a warforged barbarian named Shrapnel, a Changeling Sorcerer named Moorea Rea, and a gnome artificer named "Gears" (think a very short Kaylee from Firefly). None of these options (except the gnome racial writeup) is provided for in the new D&D and there is no word on when Wizards is going to release any campaign sourcebooks for the new game. I know I could just make it up myself (imagine that!), but I already have one world that I'm making up (a.k.a. this comic strip) and I'm just lazy enough to not do that. At least, not yet.
What do you folks think?
Take care,
~Rob
You could have them download the free rules pdf and run a short side campaign when you’re ready for a break from your current campaign. I would think that would give everyone enough of a taste to find out whether or not it’s worth jumping editions.
I would also recommend there downloading the free PDF from the D&D website, let them read it and decide if they want to switch. Honestly there aren’t enough changes to confuse anyone and they might decide the like the advantage/disadvantage mechanic better. If they decide to switch to the newer version it is on them, not you this way.
Fred Flintstone must not have a good hand at that poker table…must have a garbage hand judging by his facial expressions (7-2)
Scrap going with anything after 3.5, it’s all junk beyond that.
Personally, I’d go back to using 2nd ed with just a few tidbits of 3 and 3.5 thrown into the mix, such as ditching the old THAC0 and ‘lower is better’ AC rules for the 3.5 rules.
Given a rather dismal record in predicting public demand, you might want to check elsewhere, but for what it’s worth, I would say…
5e is designed to be the most boring version of D&D to date. Of course they call it keeping the low level monsters relevant, but it still amounts to “we have to fight orcs again? Why can’t we try something new.”
There are very weak incentives for the player to want to come back. There is nothing worth buying after a very low level, so your gold becomes useless, and you are seriously restricted in the amount of magic you get.
I have not checked the combat math, but there are claims it is insane. The fact they are willing to say the math is not affected by magic [which means considering 2+2 to equal 2+2+1] gives me no confidence.
Eberron is a high magic setting and 5e is a low magic system, in which they talk of making magic optional. That is apples and oranges. You are a very poor candidate to switch to 5e.
You can start an alternate campaign; our DM has a few running, depending on who shows up & what the prevailing mood is. The free PDF could be used to get folks started.
When pathfinder first came out I was very excited about it, but we were using 3.5 at the time and my fellow gamers weren’t as enthused as I was. When I finally got them to adopt pathfinder, we did it slowly. Keeping many of the Forgotten realms/3.5 content while using the Pathfinder core systems. We had to make adjustments, but mostly anything fell into one of the two categories. Today we are fully pathfinder (with the exception of very few things.) My advice: buy the book and start small.
I appreciate the allure of a shiny new edition (particularly one that gets a lot of it right from my perspective), but unless your players are already chomping at the bit to try the pentastic edition, stick with what you have for now. If folks are happy with 3.5, keep rolling with it. You can always look at an edition shift when you wrap up this campaign, or you hit a natural shift point.
Best argument to hold: In order to get a lot of the setting to work, you are going to need to covert a lot of material. So everyone switches up using your kit-bashed 5e Eberron rules… and then you turn right around and retweak everything you didn’t cook up the same way WotC does when you get the DMG and the Warforged rules contained therein (though it’s not like you can’t find it online now), and again when the setting material comes out, which is where your shifter and artificer info will come in.
I’d suggest doing a one-off so everyone can try it out, then see where the group interest lies.
Stick with D&D 3.5e. I was not at all impressed with 4e (I skipped it completely), and I’m not impressed with 5e, either. I’m not sure what the heck is wrong with WotC, but they’re off the rails. Stick with the good stuff – D&D 1e through 3.5e.