u/MyrthDM

Bastions are one of the 5.5e ideas I keep going back and forth on.

On paper, I really like them. Giving the party a home base, NPCs, facilities, and something that grows alongside the characters sounds like exactly the kind of thing that can make a campaign feel more grounded and personal.

But in practice, I’m not fully sure how naturally they fit into every kind of campaign.

In my experience, players often like the idea of having a base, a ship, a guildhall, a tower, or some kind of home between adventures. But once the campaign starts moving, especially if the party is traveling a lot or following a more urgent plot, it can be hard to make that home base feel relevant without forcing the campaign to bend around it.

So I’m curious how people are actually using them.

Have Bastions added something meaningful to your campaign?

Do your players care about them and interact with them regularly?

Or do they mostly feel like a cool system that only really works if the campaign is designed around them from the start?

I’d especially like to hear from DMs who tried them for more than a few sessions.

After seeing more people talk about the 2024 monsters, I’m starting to think the bigger question might actually be encounter building.

One of the most common frustrations I had with 2014 5E was that encounter balance often felt more like a rough suggestion than a reliable tool. Sometimes a “deadly” encounter got deleted in two rounds, and sometimes something that looked manageable on paper became way more dangerous because of action economy, terrain, or one bad turn.

With 5.5e, I’ve seen people say the new encounter building rules work much better, especially when paired with the newer monster design. But I’ve also seen DMs say they still have to rely mostly on experience and instinct, especially when resources, rest pacing, magic items, and party optimization get involved.

In my experience, the biggest issue with 2014 encounter building was that I often had to mentally correct the difficulty before the fight even started. If the party had strong magic items, good control spells, or just better action economy, the listed difficulty could stop meaning much very quickly. I could still make good encounters, but it was more because I knew my group than because the system was giving me a really reliable estimate.

So I’m curious how it has actually felt at your table.

Do the 2024 encounter building rules feel more reliable than 2014?

Are combats easier to make challenging without becoming unfair?

Or are you still mostly eyeballing difficulty the same way you did before?

I’d especially like to hear from DMs who have run both versions for the same group.

One thing I keep seeing people bring up about 5.5e is that the new monster design feels better at the table.

Not necessarily just stronger, but more active, more direct, and more likely to make combat feel different from round to round.

For me, this is one of the changes I’m most curious about because monster design is one of those things that can look very different on paper than it feels in play. Some of the newer statblocks seem more streamlined, and I can see how fewer “nothing happens because they passed the save” moments could make monsters feel more memorable.

At the same time, I wonder if part of the improvement is just that monsters are more dangerous now, rather than actually more interesting.

So for people who have used the 2024 Monster Manual or fought against 2024 monsters:

Do they feel more fun to run or fight?

Do they make encounters more dynamic?

Or do they mostly just hit harder and keep up better with stronger player characters?

I’d especially like to hear from DMs who have run both 2014 and 2024 monsters for the same group.

One 5.5e change I keep going back and forth on is Origin Feats and the new background structure.

On one hand, I think it gives characters more identity and customization right from level 1, which is fun. It also feels like a cleaner way to make backgrounds matter mechanically instead of just being mostly flavor.

On the other hand, I can also see the argument that it makes character creation feel a bit more gamey, or that it pushes people toward thinking about background as a package of stats and feats first, and a story element second.

So after actually seeing it in play, where do you stand on it?

Do Origin Feats make character creation better in practice?
Or do they make backgrounds feel a little too mechanical?

And for DMs, have you found the new background setup better to work with at the table?

One of the more interesting 5.5e changes to me is that subclasses now come online at level 3 across the board.

I can definitely see the upside. It makes early progression feel more standardized, probably easier to teach, and it avoids some classes frontloading too much identity right away.

But at the same time, I’m not totally sure it was the right call for every class. For me, it feels cleaner from a design point of view, but it also makes some classes feel a little more generic at levels 1 and 2 than they used to. On some characters, the subclass is such a big part of the fantasy that waiting until level 3 can make the early game feel more like a lead-up than the actual concept.

So I’m curious where people landed on this after actually playing with it.

Do you think moving subclasses to level 3 improved the game overall?

Or do you think it delayed some class fantasies in a way that hurts the early experience?

And has your opinion changed after seeing it at the table instead of just reading it?

A lot of discussion around 5.5e usually ends up being about balance, buffs, nerfs, and what is technically stronger than before, but I’m more curious about something a little more practical:

What change has actually made the game more fun at your table?

For me, one of the biggest ones is that martial turns feel less repetitive now. In a lot of 2014 games, martial combat could sometimes slip into I walk up, I attack, I end my turn. In 5.5e, things feel a bit more textured. Between weapon masteries, cleaner class design, and some subclasses feeling more active, it feels like there is more going on from turn to turn without needing to overcomplicate the game.

That has probably been one of the biggest quality-of-life improvements for me. Not necessarily the flashiest change, but one that makes actual play feel better.

So what about you?

What change in 5.5e has genuinely made the game more fun in practice, either as a player or as a DM?

It could be:

• a class that now feels smoother to play
• a mechanic that makes combat more satisfying
• a rule that speeds things up or reduces confusion
• a DM-facing change that makes encounters easier to run
• a feature that looked small at first but ended up improving the feel of the game a lot

And on the other side, was there anything that sounded great when you first read it, but ended up being less fun at the table than you expected?

Now that people have had some time to read and actually play the revised rules for Dungeons & Dragons 5.5e for a while, I’ve noticed that a lot of discussions still come down to people interpreting the rules in very different ways.

At my table and in online discussions, some rules seem to be misunderstood or misapplied pretty often. Sometimes it's because the wording changed compared to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and other times it's because the new mechanics interact with older assumptions.

Some examples I’ve seen people get confused about:

• how weapon masteries actually trigger and when they apply
• the revised exhaustion rules and how punishing they really are
• hiding and stealth, especially when a creature can attempt to hide in combat
• changes to certain spells and how their wording affects old tactics
• class feature updates that work differently than they did in 5E

I’m curious what others have run into in actual play.

What rules in 5.5e do you think are currently the most misunderstood?
Have you had to correct something at your table that people assumed worked the same as it did in 5E?

Bonus question: was there a rule you initially misunderstood yourself until you saw it used at the table?