The Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set has everything you need to begin adventuring with the 5th edition rules.

The recently released Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set comes with a rulebook, introductory adventure, five pre-generated characters and all the necessary polyhedral dice.

If you have never played Dungeons and Dragons then this boxed set is an excellent way to learn and try out the game. I may be wrong but I think most people reading this have played DnD. So in this post I am going to talk about the new things introduced in 5th edition, how well the Starter Set conveys and presents the rules and how good the introductory adventure is.

The rulebook is 32 pages and walks through the basics of how to play, combat, adventuring and spell casting.

Advantage and disadvantage are new terms used in 5th edition. When you have either advantage or disadvantage you roll two d20s. With advantage you take the higher roll and with disadvantage you take the lower one.

Combat goes back to one move and one action per round. And healing uses some aspects from 4th edition like short and long rests, but you get less of them.

Spellcasters must prepare an assortment of spells and they use spell slots to cast them. This means you can cast magic missile as a first level spell or a second level spell. When you do this you use up a second level slot and the magic missile does more damage. You do have access to some zero level spells that can be cast over and over and are still pretty useful too.

The Lost Mine of Phandelver is a 64-page adventure that takes PCs from level 1 to level 5. The introduction helps new DMs understand how to run an adventure and talks about ideals, bonds and flaws. Ideals, bonds and flaws are added to characters to help give them more personality. If players roleplay a negative aspect of their personality, the DM may give them inspiration. Each player may only have one point of inspiration at a time and it may be spent to gain advantage on a roll.

The pre-generated characters fit with the introductory adventure well and the character sheets are well organized. The sheets are easy to read and new players should have little trouble finding the information they need.

The adventure is well laid out and though it has some typical fantasy tropes it is well designed and very good for helping new players learn many aspects of Dungeons and Dragons. Both experienced and new players will get hours of fun from this adventure.

Like I said above if you are new to DnD then the 5th edition Starter Set is a great way to learn the latest system. If you were part of the playtest then you’ll need to decide if the price is worth getting the adventure. In either case you will also want to download and read the basic rules pdf. It contains rules for character generation, more spells and rules for advancing all the way to level 20.