I know that some people on this forum are into Dungeons & Dragons, so I thought they might find this interesting. A team of fans has made an unofficial 5e supplement for the Warcraft setting.
It’s pretty much the closest thing we have to a successor to the discontinued Warcraft RPG, which was based on D&D 3e.
I’m curious what D&D players on this forum think about this initiative. I know I’d be interested in playing my AD RP characters in tabletop format, but online D&D doesn’t sound as appealing as playing it in person.
My guild currently runs a once monthly, sometimes once twice monthly, Warcraft based Pathfinder Homebrew. We would run it more often but I’m the sole content creator currently and it’s a lot of work creating the maps, monsters and stories that hook people in.
I find Pathfinder to be the better system for this as it allows people to be very, -very- specialised(Crit builds or non lethal builds, Diplomancer for example) in their builds or incredibly versatile even going as far as a jack of many trades.
Pathfinder also enables people to avoid the typical D&D experience of literally going to a dungeon, fighting some dragons, getting some loot. It enables things like social combat, building influences, reputations and follow on events through it’s various branches of gameplay.
5E doesn’t strike me as a great system in general but that’s just my personal preference and experience, across the many tabletop games I’ve been in from WH40K to Pathfinder APs, to playing face to face PFS’s in Cali, 5E has been the only system that didn’t hook me.
(Edit: Corrected some formatting and un-blunted my opinion cause I felt rude :c)
5e tends to allow more flexibility and puts more emphasis on the roleplay over rollplay. Pathfinder is great as a game but the number management and character creation can be a touch overwhelming.
I can honestly say that this rule set is good. Like , really good. It has some flaws and lore inconsistencies but those are being worked on. Balance is also bit all over the place but then again , this is very much a living project with re-balance happening all the time. Currently we can expect overhaul to Engineering coming in next update alongside couple quality of life improvements.
On the side note. I am using this rule set to run DnD campaigns on Roll20. If any of you is interested in joining them , look for either Against the Flame - Fridays 9 PM Server Time or Sons and Daughters of the Alliance - starting next year on Sundays 7 PM Server Time.
I have found the exact opposite to be true. During Pathfinder, I’m focusing more on my characters motivations and their social place within the game world, during 5E, it feels like I’m more or less playing diablo. Smashing bad guys and getting loot, fun in it’s own right but it’s not the world of Golarion and it’s rich stories.
Oh and as a quick edit, the motivations for my characters in Pathfinder are easy to find, such as I know this character’s race or culture originates from say, Kwanlai, but the Adventure takes place on the other side of the world in the west, so there’s one basic motivation, they came, they saw the world, they’re homesick and then, adventure happens. During 5E, there’s no consistent overworld that I’ve ever been introduced to and none of the 4 Dm’s I’ve had so far have sold me a world that I can connect to like Azeroth or Golarion.
With the time spent creating my own homebrew Pathfinders, work, home life and my general dislike of 5E, I’ll have to pass myself but I’ll relay this in my Community discord, there’s some folk in there with more varied taste in tabletops than me.
That sounds more like a DM issue than a game issue. 5e has an entire system built around roleplaying your character to their personality, ideals, bonds and faults well (Called ‘Inspiration’) and in character creation it does urge you to fill those in.
DnD does have a consistent setting in the official campaigns but very few people run those I think.
Still, all personal preference in the end. I like PF for letting me get really nitty gritty with my character’s specialities, particularly with a colossal treasure trove of open game and 3rd party content to the point where the sky is the limit. 5e is more accessible and flexible but has notably less open game content (there’s only ONE background preset, acolyte, that’s let loose outside the paid books and PDFs), but at the same time it is remarkably easy to homebrew your own races, subclasses, backgrounds, etc.
I didn’t envision this as an “edition wars” thread. Whatever my personal preferences are, I don’t really have a hill to die on here, nor do I want to invite arguments about which system is better.
It’s a thread about a fan-made 5e sourcebook. For those not interested in 5e, even in a detached, “I wonder how different systems handle different things” way, I don’t think it offers much of value - which is totally fine. No accounting for taste.
One thing I might point out is that the section on backgrounds in the 5E RPG conversion document seems incomplete. Not sure if this is an oversight but I can only see three backgrounds there, those being Kirin Tor Agent, Sentinel and Farstrider.
I assume you’re supposed to use generic backgrounds from core 5e (Acolyte, Noble, Soldier, etc.) and the document only lists backgrounds specific to Warcraft.
Edition wars is an infinitely better topic than what the forums have been up to lately, so let’s duke it the heck out, yeah? How about some PF vs 3.5, and where are the GURPS supremacists at? Where are the fans of indie systems hiding - Symbaroum, anyone?
Other than that, which time period or event chain would be best for Warcraft-themed tabletop? Maybe the start of Vanilla? (year 25?)
Every D&D thread is an edition wars thread just waiting to happen.
I’ll probably steal a few monsters from this. I’d be loathe to set any campaigns in current-day WoW just 'cos of all the stuff that’s happened in the lore. I’d probably be going at-or-pre-Vanilla. Good job though.
Backgrounds for me tend to be custom ones 99% of the time anyway. The pre-made ones are usually used to give an idea of what sort of thing you should put down for traits, ideals, bonds and faults, as well as what bonus proficiencies or equipment you should get. Pre-made backgrounds have a habit of not being QUITE what I’d like to portray.
Ah, brother, let us have an ale and talk of the days of yore, when a first level fighter with a 15 strength had one attack, no combat bonuses, and if your foe had an AC:1, you were in for a very tough fight.
5e is by the far the superior platform for WoW for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it is significantly more beginners friendly. That goes without saying.
Secondly, it’s overall more freeform structure and streamlined gameplay rewards creativity and ingenuity more so than 3e, where being able to cite rule after rule and roll dice after dice will determine your fate. This point is particularly applicable to AD roleplayers taking their first foray into tabletop, either as DM or player.
Thirdly, 5e makes actual choices and logic matter due to keeping everything within a easily managed bracket for success or failure. PF allows you to brute force anything with the right build, taking more power from the DM. The flipside is that specialised characters in PF are awful outside of their intended function, 5e characters not so much.
I’ve played tabletops for a while. PF rewards rules lawyering and knowledge of inner workings a great deal more than actual creativity.
Thanks to Jimbob, there is now a much better formatted version of the sourcebook, illustrated and laid out in a style similar to core 5e rulebooks. Personally, I find this version much easier to read.
