Jerry's Reviews > Player's Handbook

I’m probably not the real market for this; I’ve already thought a lot about what I specifically want in a fantasy game and wrote it up myself as Gods & Monsters. But as a playable D&D goes, fifth edition is a lot more playable and comprehensible than 3rd edition, the last edition I looked seriously at.

The one thing that is most painfully obvious about fifth edition compared to first and second (I never really understood third enough to make any judgments about it other than that it was too complex to be fun for me) is that there is very little differentiation among characters. Everyone can do pretty much everything: fight, cast spells, pick locks, as well as the more mundane tasks such as research, athleticism, and so on. Even ability checks have been flattened. Instead of rolling against an ability to do something, you’re basically rolling against 5+half the ability, though it’s turned upside down to ensure that high rolls are always better.

Instead of Mission: Impossible teams, Fifth Edition groups are a collection of Armies of One. Even as a ranger, my character can now cast spells at second level, and doesn’t really attack any better than wizards or thieves. Everyone gets better at fighting (or anything else) at the same rate; and “getting better” is much flatter. Instead of a +1 to attack every level (or +2 every two levels) as warriors got in older games, it is more like +1 every four levels; and everyone gets it, for everything. It’s a proficiency bonus rather than an attack bonus. It applies to all proficient actions, including attacks.

The same appears to be true for thieving skills (everyone can do them), although many thieving skills, such as picking locks, are not under any skill but are under tool use, so that only someone with proficiency in thief tools can perform them with a proficiency bonus. If I’m reading the rules correctly, that’s rogues. But it is also any character of any class with Criminal or Urchin as their background, or any custom background with the DM’s consent. And the rules are fairly clear that you can use any tools without the proficiency bonus, which isn’t that much anyway. (Note that for thief tools specifically there are conflicting statements about this, although the statements that proficiency is not required are rules, and the example where proficiency is required is an aside.)

The main differentiation between characters and classes is in hit points, which remain similar to previous editions. Again, though, they’re flattened. Warriors and clerics still get d10 and d8, but rogues have been raised to d8 from d6, and wizards to d6 from d4. So wizards are now as viable in a fight as thieves used to be, and thieves as viable as clerics.

The game thus flattens character differentiation horizontally (among characters) and vertically (across time). Class features do a little to change this, but many of the effects are shared across classes, backgrounds, and races; most classes even get spells of a sort.

While I prefer the team of experts model, there is fun in the way Fifth Edition tries to ensure that every level gives a real bonus. As a ranger in AD&D, while I would get a +2 to attack every other level that I don’t get here, special abilities don’t start until eighth level. Here I get spells at second level (although as a warrior I’m likely to lose concentration as soon as I get in a fight, which makes the combat-oriented spells iffy), an archetype at third level that will probably provide either extra damage or extra attacks, a couple of stat increases at fourth level (which will provide two bonuses because fifth edition provides a bonus on every even stat), and two attacks per round instead of one at fifth level (as well as the aforementioned bonus to hit from an increased proficiency). At sixth level I get a new favored enemy and favored terrain, and so on. Special abilities don’t stop coming every level until ninth, but of course even then there is the every-fourth-level proficiency bonus of 1.

This is also a very playable game, both because it goes back to the simplicity of the older rules (at least as they were played) and because it returns to the freewheeling nature of those rules, trusting more to the players’ imaginations, in my opinion. It also benefits, a lot, from a much, much better organization. It was very easy, at the start of our first session, for me to make a new character without ever having read the rulebook simply by starting on page one and moving forward. It remains surprising to me how few gamebooks organize the character creation rules around character creation. The only trouble was starting money. Most variant rules in the PHB are marked in colored sidebars as variant; starting money is not, and so it is very easy skimming through the rules to think they are a normal rule, which I did. It may also be, of course, that my experience with previous editions helped me make that mistake.

Another exception appears to be the alignment of paladins; you have to read very closely, or already understand what the alignment descriptors are, to realize paladins should be Lawful Good; the assumption appears to be there, but I don’t think it’s ever explicitly mentioned, even as a default. The rules allow for Evil paladins that stand against evil and do justice in the name of good, but without any indication of what that means for the character.

The way backgrounds work make it much easier to create splatbooks and to customize characters, in a good way, in that it is easy to apportion bonuses among class, background, and race. This makes it easy to customize the character by altering a single or multiple aspects. For example, our group is starting out on the Sword Coast, our DM has the Sword Coast guide, and I easily slotted in my background from that guide without reading anything else in the Sword Coast book.

This is by far the easiest edition to understand with the possible (but unlikely) exception of fourth, which I haven’t read. Typos and awkward constructions are rare. I saw only three or four: the conflicts on tool use, probably the variant nature of starting money, and probably the alignment of paladins. There was also one awkward phrasing, “Each class gives proficiency in at least two saving throws. The wizard, for example, is proficient in Intelligence saves.” I found it amusing, because the construction mimics English humor as typified by Douglas Adams. (And in fact, the wizard does have proficiency in two saving throws, Intelligence and Wisdom.)

That aside, the low number of typos, mistakes, and confusing passages is phenomenal for a work of this size. While having a mentor is probably always going to be necessary for getting up to speed quickly in any roleplaying game, this is definitely one of the easier ones. I am unlikely to ever run it. But I will absolutely and without reservation or grumbling play it.

+1 star for the disclaimer, which explains almost everything you need to know to play D&D in one sentence.