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I love seeing references to visiting the local library for more information, and the comparison of various character classes to figures from myth and history. I think a big part of it is that it feels friendly and conversational, with the occasional asides and jokes. I'm seeing it to a greater degree in the DMG, but even here, there's just something great about the tone and writing style of the text. Which is probably my biggest takeaway from reading this - reading this book is just fun. I'm curious to read the priest book sometime to learn more about how the game handled making specialized priests, and what sort of examples the writers gave.
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The nice thing is they probably wouldn't be too hard to adapt to later editions, and I like the idea of priest spheres. And while it does still mean that wizards have umpty million options and a huge chunk of the rule book, at least many of these spells were fun to read. It doesn't hurt that there are a lot fewer damaging or save or suck spells than in 3.5, making me feel that playing a mage would be more of a lateral thinking problem than a power trip. And the fighter is quite well balanced in this version, having many attacks and a strong ability to shrug off malevolent spells. I do like some of the ideas, like non-weapon proficiencies, which feel like a surprisingly elegant way to handle skills. For all that 5E doesn't satisfy my craving for a million books and options in the way that previous editions have, it also doesn't have racial level limits, percentile strength, or the constitution score effectively acting as a video gameesque extra lives counter. I approached it in part with the thought that perhaps this could be a fun version of D&D to play, but having now seen the elegance of 5e's core mechanics, I found myself somewhat turned off. I never actually bought the print edition of this premium rerelease, but I did pick up the PDFs when they became available, in part to have a high quality digital version of the Monstrous Manual, a book I hope to finally tackle soon.Īs for this volume, I admit I had somewhat mixed feelings revisiting it. Even the somewhat baroque nature of the rules appealed to me, making me feel like one of the game's magic users decoding some arcane text. As I learned more about the prior versions of D&D I was able to find a number of old 2e books to page through and the sheer amount of imagination and number of cool ideas leaping off the page enthralled me. I never actually bought the print editio While D&D 3.5 was the first edition I encountered, I've been really interested in second edition for a long time. While D&D 3.5 was the first edition I encountered, I've been really interested in second edition for a long time.