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No, you can play without minis, they recommend them as they are easier than keeping things straight in your head but I have always played with groups who use minis (or squares of paper) and mat for fights so it's no big thing for me. I guess groups who have played without will continue to do so, 3.5 recommended minis as well but again not in a heavy way.
The games is still like the 3.5 D&D only it has been streamlined to make it easier to play straight off the bat, the skills have been put together to have fewer skill choices, such as Acrobatics including riding, jump, tumble and balance. This means that you don't necessarily seem to get 'specialised' characters which may fail anything which isn't their strong point. Anything Arcana based such as history arcana or spellcraft are under one skill arcana and so on.
Nice thing for most characters is the choice on the saves, reflex you have a choice between which ever is the highest of the Dex and the Int ability mod to use rather than just being struck with using the Dex. Will save is a choice between Wis or Cha which can be very nice for the Rogue, mind you the choce of Str or Con for the Fort is nice for them too. (Yes I like playing Rogues).
I like the clarification on 'bloodied', if you get to half hitpoints anything can see you have been hit for alot of damage and well act accordingly, this is good for clerics as you can now clearly see your fighters have been hit.
On the 'ohh shiny' note, they have standardised the artwork so it is all really good, rather than the usual D&D some good and most bad. It is also in my opinion possible to play this new game by only buying one PHB and one Monster Manuel for a group.
The only hardsell I note is the mentions of other races, classes and etc which will be in future volumes of the PHB or DMG or MM. But I can deal with that, they have to make cash and some will buy all of it like with 3 and 3.5, others will make do with the three first books. |
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