It is Tuesday and my FLGS opened at midnight so we could get the new D&D 5.5 Player's Handbook. So here it is!
It is a beast of a book really. 384 Pages vs. the 320 of the 2014 5.0 edition. Most of this though is given over to new art and introductions to the game. This book is trying to set the stage for new players to D&D.
Rules are covered in the first 30 or so pages which works out nicely. You are eased into it. Sure, I like starting with character creation, but sometimes it is nice to know a bit more about what is going on.
Bloodied is back. It is not exactly the same, but it is there.
Creating a character is just 14 or so pages. This includes the mechanics of rolling the dice.
Character classes cover the bulk, about 130 pages. There are the same 12 classes from D&D 5.0 (2014) with their subclasses. Most get four subclasses, some get five. There are a lot of little changes to classes. Fighters get a psychic variant, rangers feel nerfed, warlocks are a little cooler. I'll post more when I have had a chance to get into the details.
There are backgrounds, like 5.0 though these seem to be a bit better defined.
Race is now Species and that is fine with me. We get Aasimar, Dragonborn, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Goliath, Halfling, Human, Orc, and Tiefling. No half-elf or half-orcs, though I will admit they might be taking the Pathfinder route here and folding them into the elf and orc respectively with some mods. This doesn't bother me. If I want to play a half-elf in 5.5 I can use the elf rules. Easy.
There are some feats from Tasha's here that I love, like Telepathic and Telekinetic.
About 20 pages for equipment with great illustrations.
Spells take up the next bulk at over 100 pages. Spells are better explained and if is summons a creature that stat block is included with the spell.
Appendix A covers the multiverse. There are no changes here from 1st Ed.
Appendix B has some creature stat blocks related to class, ie Druid Wild Shape and the like. And YES monsters still have alignment. For example Imps are (still) Lawful Evil and Quasits are (still) Chaotic Evil.
The changes here are less than the changes found between 1st and 2nd Edition. They are more akin to the changes between 3.0 and 3.5. I am going to keep calling this edition 5.5.
Visually speaking, they are closer together than some of the books of the AD&D 2nd Ed era were to each other.
I picked this up just a hour or so ago. So I really have not gone into it in detail. Save to check on the Rangers and Warlocks. They are classes I have heard the most about getting worse and better respectively.
The art is generally better, with some "names" popping up among the nameless NPCs and characters. So that will be fun on a deeper read through.
Overall there is "less flipping" one would need to do through this book while playing.
I am looking for some character sheets so I can make a new version of Johan for this game; Johan VII for the win!
My 2014 PHB is falling apart and I am not 100% sure how much I will play this edition, but I am glad to have it.
2 comments:
I like what I’ve seen so far. I do see some power creep compared to existing 5e stuff, but not too a ridiculous extent.
While the introduction of a Glossary of Terms makes sense and is welcome the failure to include the definition on the text the first time it is met leads to a lot of page flipping from the beginning which is really annoying. In addition, there is already a lot of errata where everything from basic copy/paste errors to simply badly worded rules which mean I would recommend not buying the books until the inevitable 3 book set appears for Christmas 2025. As for DnD Beyond ... given they seem to have issues running the 2014 & 2024 stuff together even in the basic Character Generator ... I will stay well clear for the digital platform which is slowly building up to a shift to micro-transactions for everything which is a big No-No.
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