Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition

Koraph heard that the book of "V" is currently being written by the "Wizards by the Coast"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/arts/video-games/dungeons-dragons-remake-uses-players-input.html?_r=1

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109


Your opinions on the subject?

Myself? I'm still plowing through the set of 3.5 books I just bought, and feeling so lost you'd think I'd never played DnD before. Not exactly in the best mood to try and get a grip of yet another one! But that's just it. I'd need to have played through at least two different editions before I get perspective for a new one.

Personally? I think player input is crucial, but it's not exactly a new idea. We'll see how it goes.

Things I've learned by comparing 3.5 to 4th:

- The skills on 3.5 are convoluted as all hell, and the simplicity of selecting skills for 4th is a huge relief. I'd go with 4th edition skills for the most part, but at least add a few more, specially Engineering and Craftsmanship, which are sorely absent.

- Removing the Chaotic Good and Lawful evil alignments from 4th does not make things more simple, since their absence is pretty obvious even for someone who had never been acquainted with the alignment system before, and do they really think players are so dumb that they can't make sense of both concepts? Bring them back.

- Race builds for 3.5 are more sensible, since they are not afraid of working with penalties. It's just hard to accept the idea from 4th edition that gnomes and dwarves start off with similar STR. That being said, I still find 3.5 races more frustrating to work with. It's hard to make a halfling character that isn't completely useless unless it's a rogue, for instance, and even then, the slower speed is very crippling. Why is it so hard to imagine a small creature being speedy?

- Spells are terrifyingly complicated on 3.5, but at least you can do a lot with them. They're not all combat oriented, and the rituals on 4th edition don't seem to be that much fun in the lower levels.

- Half Orcs are too butt ugly on 3.5, and too tame-looking on 4th. What has happened to the fine DnD tradition of stealing from other source materials? Go rip off Blizzard and make the half orcs look like their orcs. Imposing, beastial and sexy.