It’s probably my preferred system.
It’s simple, but it retains the math side of PnP that I also tend to enjoy.
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I love D&D and 5e but man I’d like to broaden my horizons and try out another game. I’m itching to play Vampire the Masquerade, for example.
I actually got to try out Cyberpunk 2020 recently. Didn’t understand the combat mechanics so well but it was fun nonetheless.
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For me, it’s Shadowrun that I’d like to try out, but I’m not comfortable DMing for systems I don’t have atleast some experience in and haven’t had much luck finding one that is experienced in it.
I’m much the same but since I run my own D&D campaign as a DM, I really just want to be an actual player for once. I’d DM more than one game if I had the energy/time for it. Alas 
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I’ve a beautiful synergy going on with a friend of mine, where he runs friday games where I get to play, and on sunday, I DM a game where he gets to play.
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Shadowrun can be great fun but character creation makes MY head hurt and I’m usually the group’s number loving munchkin. It pretty much requires a character builder to help make sense of it. Not to mention the laundry list of stuff pretty much needed for a starting character’s inventory that isn’t seemingly recommended in the rules and yet is borderline necessary to not get screwed over in some way.
Remember kids, if you’re gonna do illegal stuff (in Shadowrun ofc), get about five cheap burner phones and chuck 'em after using them once.
It’s a super engaging setting though, but I’ve wound up preferring the RPGs with mods over the tabletop. Not many play it and those that do have achieved some kind of enlightened state that makes me feel like a big dumb dumb.
Can always give the basic rules a shot. It only includes a handful of classes and races but it’s enough to get a good adventure I say (Though I find the human-y races to be meh but whatever floats your boat).
Failing that you can always look for some slightly grey area sites that host basically all the content for free like 5etools. Where literally everything is listed, like… right there. I’m honestly thinking by now Wizards of the Coast know it exists but choose to not bother. But do buy the books, either in online such as Beyond or physical format, at some point. It’s good stuff and worth supporting.
5e’s main strength is that it’s more or less fat trimmed most of the number crunching off, and, especially nowadays, still has a good but not overwhelming number of options for characters. As I mentioned earlier you can roleplay near damn anything now, they even removed stat reductions from races (Exception for kobolds and orcs) so you can play a half-orc wizard and not feel like you’re impeding yourself too much for daring to use a less typical race/class combo.
If you really can’t find a way to make a concept work, you can always ask the DM for homebrew races (Which are much, MUCH easier to balance check if you just compare them to existing races) or to refluff certain class elements. I’ve seen people rebrand the warlock subclass Hexblade into a Holy Inquisitor. Same thing mechanically but some reflavouring and renaming of abilities satisfied the player and DM no problem. Or maybe consider multiclassing if it’s a really niche idea between two classes (Which… can break things but not nearly as badly as one might think, even the most minmaxed 5e character has an achille’s heal, max damage builds tend to suck at dealing with hordes for example, or drawn out fights).
I’ve even made a habit of making my WoW characters in DnD 5e rules just to see how flexible it is. And honestly the only one I struggle with is my warrior, since heavy armour on a barbarian nullifies their rage, which is their main class ability, and is something the walking steam tank I RP in WoW definitely uses.
tl;dr: Many take the ‘simplicity’ of 5e to mean it’s more restrictive but I find it the opposite. Because things are much easier to take in and manage on your character sheet, and because concepts for classes and abilities are much looser, it’s much easier to roleplay that character how you want using the rules given. Whereas something like Pathfinder gives you literally hundreds of options to REALLY specifically make a concept, meaning it can take forever to find out how to mechanically portray your concept since, odds are, options for it exist. 5e keeps things quite open to interpretation and broad by comparison.
That ended up being a wall of text, d’oh. But it more or less explains why I moved on from PF for good.
Not helped that PF2e has… mixed receptions.
My main DM boi sometimes wants a break, so every few weeks someone does a oneshot. Either set in the same setting but so far away anything they do doesn’t impact the main story, or in something entirely different. I did a sci-fi one shot once using Hyperlanes, a DnD 5e sci fi supplement someone made. It… served it’s purpose, though balance was wild (As is the norm for 3rd party content).
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Look, I didn’t ask how big the room was, I said I cast fireball
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It’s honestly strange for me to hear that some DMs just allow homebrewed races and classes willy-nilly. World consistency is important to me, so if I were to DM an original campaign, I wouldn’t even allow all PHB races, only those that make sense for my world. Homebrew is right out, lest the setting devolves into a kitchen sink.
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I tend to run 100% custom worlds - and I’ll allow or disallow custom races and classes based on the world that I’m running - same actually goes for default races. For example, due to in-world reasons, players aren’t able to use high elves or dragonborn.
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This makes complete sense to me, and it’s also what I’d do. I wouldn’t allow half-elves, drow and tieflings, because they don’t exist in my world.
But it just feels daunting. The sheer amount of work required to create a believable, consistent and interesting world feels insurmountable. And that’s in addition to the work of preparing adventures.
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If it’s just a setting for your group you don’t need to go into a huge amount of detail initially - like you’re not gonna need to give an intricate explanation of [City’s] local power structure if your group isn’t going to get there for 50 sessions.
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I went the extra, unnecessary mile for my homebrew setting, though that’s because worldbuilding is one of the main draws for me as a DM.
There are 70+ countries/regions in my setting each with their own cultures, royal lines (if they have them), histories and of course towns/villages. This doesn’t include the various homebrew planes and other extraterrestrial locations I wrote up.
But I have no expectations of my players to know and be familiar with it all. Most of it will likely never beep explored via play but again I did it all for fun. Plus it helps the players feel they’re in a large world.
It’s a setting that I add to over time and now I only add more details when it’s relevant to the current adventure at hand. My players like that they can point to any place on the map and know there is adventure and intrigue awaiting them there.
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Most campaigns I’ve been in are in an original setting anyway.
Homebrew races are usually to fill a void or niche that the official races are lacking in (Though admittedly very few). Usually we just ‘reskin’ an existing race or similar to keep balance in check.
Homebrew classes… nope. Too much of a balance nightmare. Refluff or rewrite material sure but the mechanics stay the same.
You don’t really need to write up an entire world ahead of time, just write the road that’s immediately ahead of or around the players, fill it in as it’s relevant. With a broad, general idea for the whole continent and it’s history.
Wise words.
Small changes are usually good (f. ex I play an archer paladin in a Descent into Avernus game where I asked for smite to work off ranged attacks and the archer weapon speciality) but homebrew classes very rarely have anything close to enough playtesting for broken or bad combinations to be all weaned out.
As it turns out, archer paladins are basically like a sniper with an elephant gun - they don’t often hit, but they usually kill what they do hit. At level 3 and a smite I’m currently on 3D8-4D8 + 12 damage a round x)
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Warlord sadness intensifies.
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I just have to put my foot down on homebrew classes. I’ll even take full custom races since they’re just a single page of stuff and can quickly go “Yup that’s broken” if it’s some BS like a vampire with resistance to weapons and a gas form racial with no limits at all…
Homebrew classes in theory can be balanced but require the DM to go all the way through the class features to spot anything that stands out. And even then a lot of class abnormalities might not be obvious until put into practice (That’s why UA isn’t permitted in AL and all). There’s just too much risk that they’ll have one or two features that utterly break the game. Especially if it’s from… DandDWiki Lightning+Thunder in the background.
I just feel at this point almost any kind of class from older editions could probably be represented with existing classes/subclasses, maybe with a multiclass. No homebrew required. (Admittedly the ‘support/leader’ fighter type is… lacking, the Purple Dragon Knight kinda sucks and could use a rework)
Probably why they can’t normally use bows!
A pal of mine did a Hexblade “Paladin” that used a longbow. Just swapped some damage types for radiant and his patron was an angel that gave him some sweet divine powers. Hexbow is a standard build otherwise.
Most of that damage comes from Sharpshooter (the Power Attack for bow feat, -5 to hit +10 damage) to be fair - a melee paladin could easily do the same or better damage - in our game, the GM has ruled that flanking attacks generate advantage.
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:freaked:
10 rogues out of 10 love this.
In news that will surprise nobody, giving level 1 characters a bonus that they can normally only get at 4+ is Pretty Good :v
Sadly 10/10 devils also love this and only me and the other paladin can take a hit worth a damn
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Oh boi. It’s an optional rule for a reason! (I don’t use it because then enemies get super deadly…)
But yeah, sharpshooter is great. I kinda wish two-weapon fighting didn’t suck so much, it lacking a SShooter or Great Weapon Fighting style feat hurts that fighting style a lot.
Laughs in Kobold