I finally got some friends to play the latest playtest. We were disapointed by the first one and nobody wanted to try the other playtests based on quick glance of the changes, but this time we tried it for real.
And we were amazed at how fun we had with this! Comments can be resumed as "if this comes out official tomorrow I'll start playing it right away". And this had come from a player with 15+ more experience who started playing with the 2nd edition. We even agreed to start our new game (which was planned to be a 4E game) with this set of rules and follow the updates of the upcoming playtests.
Healing was fair, level scaling is adequate, character creation and customization is nice and fast, combats are fun and fast. Rules are clear and flexible enough.
My group has a ton things left to playtest, but overall the game is running fine, especially on flexibility. I think this is because of the minimalistic approach to numbers, it makes easy to modify.
My group has a ton things left to playtest, but overall the game is running fine, especially on flexibility. I think this is because of the minimalistic approach to numbers, it makes easy to modify.
I applaud the way it is easy to modify. I've run 4 sessions with the new material, and each time, I have a different number of players so for each session, I have to monitor the encounters and maniupulate the monsters so that the adventure works for 2, 3, 4 or 5 players. Changing things on the fly and adding or subtracting monsters, or modifying monsters to make them more challenging has been a breeze. I've also created a number of original adventures, and making them is really easy too.
I think that it frickin' sucks at this point. Thankfully, it's got a ways to go before release. The classes are so out of balance that it's completely worthless to be a cleric or wizard. They literally can't do ANYTHING better than the other classes. And the monk is king. It can do EVERYTHING better than the other classes. As it stands right now, I would never waste money on it. My group's actually going back to 4e because it's at least mostly balanced (save a few over the top builds)
The parts that I do like, however, are the character building ideas (backgrounds, specialties, ect.) and the advantage/disadvantage system. I've been able to make a lot of use out of those in the games that I've played and hosted.
