Our group has been taking the 5e Starter Set adventure “Mines of Phandelver” for a testdrive recently, and I wanted to share some personal impressions on the module and the rules as such. Beware ze spoilers, and gratuitous rambling.
In a word, this is an excellent adventure for new players, and a pretty good one even for experienced ones. We’ve been playing it with the pregens, as an intermission to our long-running but briefly-on-hold PF Kingmaker campaign and were mainly interested in how the new rules work, but the adventure does a surprisingly good job of pulling you in; standard fantasy tropes and all. Btw, everybody enjoyed the narratively rich backgrounds, and how skills and special abilities are less fiddly than in PF/3.x.
The adventure kicks off with a pretty hefty roadside ambush, which killed the party mage before he even got off his first spell, due to a lucky shot, party negligence, and death checks gone wrong - memorable lesson on how HP and dying works in 5e, hehe. As a GM, I liked how the goblins have low HP but some nifty special bonus actions (if this a 4e thing, I’ll for once have something good to say about it) that allow them to hide and jump into and out of melee, with a minimum of mechanical fuss. They’re not tough, but they can put up a nasty fight, which is how I’d always thought goblins should be.
Combat flows smoothly; took us right back to our 1st and 2nd edition games some 20 years ago. It’s also action-packed and a lot of fun. We learned that you have to really pay attention to situative modifiers i.e. through hiding, cover etc, and dis/advantage, as these have a far greater bearing on how the fight goes. Unlike in 3.X/PF, where BAB, attributes, and gear largely predetermine the balance of power, 5e places proportionally more mechanical weight on what the characters do at a given moment. Surprise, cover, and fluid movement (I love that you can break up your move now) turned what could have easily turned into a standard, mechanically predictable slugfest in earlier editions into a varied and dangerous encounter.
As a sidenote, we play PF mostly on maptool and have come to rely on extensive macros to resolve the mathematical side of gameplay. As a result, we’ve also moved from VoIP chat to typing out what characters do, as most of the relevant interaction goes through the chat window anyway. With this session, I decided to try out Roll20 and use the tool as one would a physical gametable, with all the descriptive done through cam and mic. It was an interesting lesson in how the tools, both game mechanics and platform, shape the game: The lighter mechanics of Roll20 worked very well with 5e and the game was more like an FTF-game than any of our online sessions so far. Thing is, I don’t think PF would be as much fun on this setup though.
After the ambush, the party decided to move on to Phandalin, a nearby mining town, to deliver some supplies and meet up with the (conveniently inserted) twin brother of the dead mage. This kicks off a small, dynamic town-adventure that showers you with leads and mini-quests. We didn’t really do this module for the role-playing, but the pregens’ backgrounds are so well integrated into the plot that before we knew it, the party was knee-deep into it. They gathered some info, went back into the wilds and found the goblin hideout, a small dungeon with a good mix of exploration, traps, combat and roleplaying opportunities. Thus, in two short sessions, we’d pretty much got a taste of all the basic food-groups that make up traditional DnD. As a beginning player, you couldn’t ask for a better introduction to FRPGs.
So yes, we like what we’ve seen so far, and I wouldn't be surprised if our next campaign is in 5e. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed the flowing, quirky RPG experience of our early years until we played this. Which is odd, because when 3rd edition came out, I was really happy about the more solid, and extensive mechanics – it was something I thought I’d wanted. Sure, GMing became more of a chore, but with PF we’d come to rely on their published modules (which I think are pretty good) and ignored most of the new classes, feats and other bloat. I wasn’t a fan of PF, but it was “good enough”, and certainly preferable to the mechanics-obsessed approach of 4e.
But this, 5e ... this is proper good.
In a word, this is an excellent adventure for new players, and a pretty good one even for experienced ones. We’ve been playing it with the pregens, as an intermission to our long-running but briefly-on-hold PF Kingmaker campaign and were mainly interested in how the new rules work, but the adventure does a surprisingly good job of pulling you in; standard fantasy tropes and all. Btw, everybody enjoyed the narratively rich backgrounds, and how skills and special abilities are less fiddly than in PF/3.x.
The adventure kicks off with a pretty hefty roadside ambush, which killed the party mage before he even got off his first spell, due to a lucky shot, party negligence, and death checks gone wrong - memorable lesson on how HP and dying works in 5e, hehe. As a GM, I liked how the goblins have low HP but some nifty special bonus actions (if this a 4e thing, I’ll for once have something good to say about it) that allow them to hide and jump into and out of melee, with a minimum of mechanical fuss. They’re not tough, but they can put up a nasty fight, which is how I’d always thought goblins should be.
Combat flows smoothly; took us right back to our 1st and 2nd edition games some 20 years ago. It’s also action-packed and a lot of fun. We learned that you have to really pay attention to situative modifiers i.e. through hiding, cover etc, and dis/advantage, as these have a far greater bearing on how the fight goes. Unlike in 3.X/PF, where BAB, attributes, and gear largely predetermine the balance of power, 5e places proportionally more mechanical weight on what the characters do at a given moment. Surprise, cover, and fluid movement (I love that you can break up your move now) turned what could have easily turned into a standard, mechanically predictable slugfest in earlier editions into a varied and dangerous encounter.
As a sidenote, we play PF mostly on maptool and have come to rely on extensive macros to resolve the mathematical side of gameplay. As a result, we’ve also moved from VoIP chat to typing out what characters do, as most of the relevant interaction goes through the chat window anyway. With this session, I decided to try out Roll20 and use the tool as one would a physical gametable, with all the descriptive done through cam and mic. It was an interesting lesson in how the tools, both game mechanics and platform, shape the game: The lighter mechanics of Roll20 worked very well with 5e and the game was more like an FTF-game than any of our online sessions so far. Thing is, I don’t think PF would be as much fun on this setup though.
After the ambush, the party decided to move on to Phandalin, a nearby mining town, to deliver some supplies and meet up with the (conveniently inserted) twin brother of the dead mage. This kicks off a small, dynamic town-adventure that showers you with leads and mini-quests. We didn’t really do this module for the role-playing, but the pregens’ backgrounds are so well integrated into the plot that before we knew it, the party was knee-deep into it. They gathered some info, went back into the wilds and found the goblin hideout, a small dungeon with a good mix of exploration, traps, combat and roleplaying opportunities. Thus, in two short sessions, we’d pretty much got a taste of all the basic food-groups that make up traditional DnD. As a beginning player, you couldn’t ask for a better introduction to FRPGs.
So yes, we like what we’ve seen so far, and I wouldn't be surprised if our next campaign is in 5e. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed the flowing, quirky RPG experience of our early years until we played this. Which is odd, because when 3rd edition came out, I was really happy about the more solid, and extensive mechanics – it was something I thought I’d wanted. Sure, GMing became more of a chore, but with PF we’d come to rely on their published modules (which I think are pretty good) and ignored most of the new classes, feats and other bloat. I wasn’t a fan of PF, but it was “good enough”, and certainly preferable to the mechanics-obsessed approach of 4e.
But this, 5e ... this is proper good.
Personal Phandelver Playtest Report
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