This is basically exactly why I am liking 5e. I liked 3e's rules at first, but they got overwhelming. 5e is a lot more like 1e, only with many fewer complicated and subtly varying tables.

I think you're confusing the "starter set" for the "basic rules". The basic rules are a free download:

http://dnd.wizards.com/article...

Yeah, 4e is an amazing tactical combat game. I quite like it.

Doesn't matter how many advantage/disadvantage you have. If you have both, you have neither. If you have only one of those two, then you roll two dice, no matter how many things are giving you advantage or disadvantage.

There are still numeric bonuses, but a lot fewer of them. I think the ones that survive all stack.

But for an example, monks and mage armor. In 3e, the monk got to add their wisdom modifier to AC when unarmored, and mage armor gave a +4 armor bonus, so they stacked. In 5e, mage armor sets your armor class when unarmored to 13+dex, and being a monk sets it to 10+wis+dex, and you can take whichever one you want, but neither is "a bonus" so there's no stacking to resolve.

In general, the net effect is slightly "shallower", but the flip side of that is that you don't have parties where one player has +42 on a check and another player has +3. So you can set DCs that are actually meaningful and interesting.

In epic-level Pathfinder, it takes our party samurai 5 minutes or so to finish a round of full attacks, which can do ~1350 damage. Also lots of die rolls. In 5e, so far as I can tell, nothing takes close to that long.

I have basically liked all the D&Ds, so I'm a little biased. I even liked 4e, although I recognize that it was a very different kind of game in a lot of ways from the others.

But basically, if you liked D&D pre-4e, and hated 4e, 5e may be what you were looking for. It's a much cleaner system than 3e/3.5e/PF; simpler and clearer. It's not as complicated in some ways. It doesn't have nearly as much detail in the rules, it doesn't have as many formal definitions. But it's clearer and easier to read. And before you dismiss "easier to read" as unimportant, consider: I spent about 10 years on an ISO language standards committee. I assure you, I'm not afraid of formal language. But I like 5e's system better.

Most of the bonus stacking rules are gone, replaced by a mechanic called "advantage/disadvantage". If you have advantage or disadvantage on a roll, you roll 2d20 and take the higher or lower respectively. If you have neither or both, you roll normally. Most things that used to be +2-+4 bonuses of various types are now "advantage", and most things that used to be penalties are now "disadvantage". In practice, you get similar results with a lot less addition, and without having to check the bonus types of 8 different modifiers to figure out which ones stack.

Everyone I know who's played it has been really happy with it so far. The system is much less focused on trying to resolve every possible question; instead, the assumption is that the DM is not an idiot and is not playing maliciously. If you tend towards adversarial player/DM relationships, avoid 5e; it's not designed for that, and it would be horrible. But if you are playing with people who are basically clear on the idea that games are meant to be fun, and who can cooperate without epic rules battles, this is probably the best D&D ever.

The anon coward's "MMO Crap" comment is well past "baseless" into "completely incoherent". 4e had a few traits that sort of, if you squinted just right, looked like it was MMO-oriented, but mostly it was more like wargames than like any MMO I've ever seen. 5e is pretty much like a cross between 3e and Rules Cyclopedia D&D, with a much cleaner and simpler rules set, and a lot more interesting flavor to things.

Other things:

Lots of the "missing" complexity is rumored to be in the DMG as optional rules.

Casters as a whole are significantly nerfed compared to 3e, or for that matter compared to any previous edition. (Max-level caster? You get a ninth level spell per day. Use it carefully.)

There's some really crazy Internet drama about some of the consultants, which is best ignored, and has no basis in reality.

There is, but it doesn't change anything, because you're still providing absolutely no evidence to support the claim. And it's still a good example of blaming people being "lazy" for a thing without any evidence. Just-world fallacy; insisting that all the problems are caused by people behaving badly, who therefore somehow deserve it.

Yeah, I know what the allegation is. Where's the evidence? Where's the clinical studies?

People love to assert that someone with a cognitive disability isn't really disabled, just "lazy". But that people enjoy asserting it doesn't make it true.

I'd be interested in the basis for the claim about misdiagnosis being "common". I have known a number of people with ADHD who were misdiagnosed with something else. I don't think I've ever met anyone who got a misdiagnosis of not having ADHD.

The quality of the anti-ADHD-diagnosis rants can be pretty much summed up by the fact that people are claiming that a stimulant drug which makes people twitchy is going to "drug people into zombified submission". It really is that blatantly stupid; there is nothing remotely like "zombified submission" on the table.

I am pretty sure that that is exactly the wrong thing, then, because the entire point of "business apps" is that people are supposed to be able to build a stable operation on them. If you are changing things so much that you have to rewrite the documentation entirely, that means you are changing them so much that anyone using the software must completely redo their entire process, retrain anyone using the system, and so on.

That's way too much change. If you are changing things enough that you are rewriting documentation every release, then you are not "evolving".

If you have to rewrite all your documentation, you've done something horribly wrong.

Suggestion: Consider focusing on stability for a while, because stability is a huge win for user experience.

So there's this project which anyone can contribute to which doesn't have a thing I want. But unlike many things, this one doesn't require nearly as many specialized skills to produce, so the chances are pretty good I could make it if I cared to spend the time.

WHAT SHOULD I DO!?!?!?? Please help me, Slashdot. I need a way to feel like this is someone else's fault and I can't do anything about it. ... I guess, Slashdot being what it is, I should point out that the above does not actually reflect my feelings on the topic. I actually do contribute documentation updates to projects sometimes.

Greenpeace is to the ecology roughly what Autism Speaks is to the autistic community, or what Bennett Haselton is to articles that aren't painfully stupid.

This is not news, and it does not deserve attention or reporting.

Well, one option would be to actually make friends with enough people that you could collect your own data.

I mean, it's an Internet comment thread. People are just reporting what they've encountered. It's just that I've consistently found that what they report is wildly different.

I suspect there's not much actual wanting to kill, just wanting to threaten. And why? Because there's a lot of guys who are very threatened by the idea that women could be as good at stuff as they are.

Oh, he was totally planning to prove a predetermined point. He was going to write about how women were just whining and it wasn't a problem.