The "It's Been a While" Review Thread [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

OldTrees1

2015-01-20, 05:19 PM

You can't have bounded accuracy + background skills + skill points all together. It just doesn't work.
One of my players wanted more skills, so I allowed him to take each proficiency and split it into two half-proficiencies (rounded down at odd prof bonus levels for both). Spending two of them gave him full proficiency.
So he has a little skill in more things, but less focus than straight proficiency offers. Kind of like skill points in that regard, but with less min/max tweaking available.
He was satisfied with that.

If you keep the proficiency bonus system for bounded accuracy, then points to buy half, normal, double proficiency is a good change. This is much more granularity than currently exists and is an improvement over both systems. There may be a better system still. However this is what would use in the meantime.

Eventually I might figure out an easy bounded accuracy d20 -> bounded accuracy dice pool conversion which would have even more room for granularity. (Since skill points would buy dice instead of just halving or doubling a proficiency bonus)

@Knaight
The Prof bonus * # of Prof Skills => Skill points system you suggested is another I should test.

some guy

2015-01-20, 06:31 PM

I consider it a generally solid game with a couple of irritating flaws, most of which can be worked around pretty easily, a few of which are fairly intractable.

This, mostly.
I feel 5e is fast but still has a lot of room for customization. The biggest negative for me has nothing to do with the system but with indexing and so on. I feel the phb really needs a two-page spread showing a character sheet and what needs to be filled in where (which doubles as the 'creating a character section'. Call of Cthulhu (at least, 6th edition) has one and it's super handy). The index is a super mess.

paladin, 45, 82-88

sacred oaths. See sacred oaths
Get outta here, index. Don't waste my time.

And the spell section could have learned a few things from the 3.5 spell section.

These things get me quite annoyed, especially considering companies with less money have done better indexing and such.

JFahy

2015-01-20, 06:35 PM

Get outta here, index. Don't waste my time.

I have major problems with writing in books, but I'm sorely tempted to
go through that index and write in all the cross-reference numbers.
Irritating.

some guy

2015-01-20, 06:37 PM

I have major problems with writing in books, but I'm sorely tempted to
go through that index and write in all the cross-reference numbers.
Irritating.

Yah, a simple solution which wizards should have done themselves. (I'm ashamed to say I didn't think of it, it's a good solution)

Knaight

2015-01-20, 06:50 PM

The index isn't great, but I'm so inured to RPG formatting at this point that it doesn't even seem that bad. I mean, it has an index and a table of contents, which is more than I can say of entirely too many games.

Eslin

2015-01-20, 10:17 PM

One huge problem - no warlord, no proper maneuver or 4e like system of abilities. Martial characters are back to the bad old days of 'I attack', and it's not a problem you can fix with a bandaid, they need a subsystem of their own for those who want to play them but none exists despite one third of the PHB being dedicated to spells.

A lot of little problems - indexing is crap, no CR list in the Monster Manual, spells don't have what classes get the listed on them, still uses confusing and difficult to multiply imperial measurements, ambiguous wording all over the place, lack of guidelines for things that need them - you can jump a fixed number of feet up to your strength score, so what does making an athletics check to jump actually do?

A few bigger problems - the magic items are complete and utter horse****, terrible to a great enough degree that I immediately returned my DMG to the shop. The crafting for both items and magic items is terrible. Caster disparity still exists, though it starts a little later and while it still gets worse as you level, doesn't get as bad as it did.

One bad point of design resulting in lots of little problems, there's a general laziness to the design which I really dislike. They included templates like lycanthropes and being half-dragon, but decided 3.5's LA was not an ideal way to balance them. Instead they included... nothing. Player characters and non player characters are built on fundamentally different lines for no good reason except that it would have taken more work than they wanted to put in to build them on the same chassis. They realised casters were too useful late, included legendary saves as an artificial balancing measure (note lack of an equivalent mechanic to stop martial characters) and it's the most boring, binary and arbitrary thing they could have done.

Good sides wise, everyone's probably said it by now - less complexity without too much loss of depth, easy to teach new players, far fewer trap options and rough parity between classes in combat without removing everything that made them unique like 4e did. Lots of little aspects of good design like legendary actions, though these make plainly lazy design like legendary saves stand out even more.

mephnick

2015-01-20, 10:51 PM

Player characters and non player characters are built on fundamentally different lines for no good reason

I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, I hated having to create every damn NPC using PC rules in 3.5. A high level NPC was way too much of a preparation time sink. But it's easier to make characters in 5e, so it wouldn't have been as bad. On the other hand, they provided hardly any NPC templates to build off of, and exactly one mid-high level NPC at all (archmage). It's like they had no idea what they wanted to do with NPCs, so I end up ignoring the Monster Manual and building NPCs as PCs anyway.

mr_odd

2015-01-21, 12:08 AM

*Thoughts*

Thanks for the in-depth thoughts Eslin. I may not agree with you, but your thoughts are appreciated. I assumed that you would post something on the thread. :smalltongue:

I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, I hated having to create every damn NPC using PC rules in 3.5. A high level NPC was way too much of a preparation time sink. But it's easier to make characters in 5e, so it wouldn't have been as bad. On the other hand, they provided hardly any NPC templates to build off of, and exactly one mid-high level NPC at all (archmage). It's like they had no idea what they wanted to do with NPCs, so I end up ignoring the Monster Manual and building NPCs as PCs anyway.

I think 5e assumes that NPCs (for the most part) should remain lower leveled. As players get stronger, they should be fighting more and more monsters.

Forrestfire

2015-01-21, 02:02 AM

I like bounded accuracy as a concept, and I like the way combat flows. I don't like that the boring +numbers magic items still exist, given that bounded accuracy was meant to make them redundant. Races not having minuses are nice, too.

I hate how boring monsters are now. Maybe I'm biased because of how many unique and awesome monsters 4e had... But 5e's seem to have taken everything they did right, and only learned one important thing ("player=monster transparency is bad") from it. It's a shame, really.

I dislike that skills don't have any sort of guidelines to setting DCs, and I still dislike that the math is fundamentally broken unless the DM interprets DCs as being based relative to the PC attempting them, rather than absolutes (i.e. a high-level wizard who has studied all his life would recall some obscure piece of knowledge as an Medium check, whereas someone who has never opened a book might call it Impossible).

Overall, I like the classes, although many of the subclasses are kinda boring. The casters have neat things, and some of the noncaster things are cool. I was a bit sad that 5e's gishing classes out of the box were basically "melee cleric", "minorly magic, strong swordsman" (EK), and "can hit things but eldritch blast is still better" (Bladelock)... But 5e's rules system lends itself nicely to homebrew, so I wrote up a hack of the warlock with my DM that made it gishy, as a sort of happy medium between "all magic all the time" and "I hit things with my sword and have a little bit of magic."

I'm looking forward to seeing what WotC does with it, since the game is fun, even with all its flaws and its design philosophies I disagree with (namely, I think that 4e is the best-made system WotC has done, and that abandoning many of the lessons they learned in order to try to appeal to a part of the fanbase that is unlikely to leave the systems they're comfortable with is just... bleh).

OldTrees1

2015-01-21, 02:13 AM

I hate how boring monsters are now. Maybe I'm biased because of how many unique and awesome monsters 4e had... But 5e's seem to have taken everything they did right, and only learned one important thing ("player=monster transparency is bad") from it. It's a shame, really.

Would you please elaborate on this? I skipped 4th so elaboration would be useful.

SiuiS

2015-01-21, 02:23 AM

Its hard to tell whether I feel it has more flexibility, or if with my experience with D&D growing I am realizing how I can be more flexible.

Both. The culture surrounding the game is not as calcified.

5e is, by far, my favorite edition of D&D. I consider it a generally solid game with a couple of irritating flaws, most of which can be worked around pretty easily, a few of which are fairly intractable. I'm probably not going to use it much, but its chances of seeing use are drastically above previous editions, and I'm more than willing to play in a 5e game.

What do you find intractable about the rules design?

Mrmox42

2015-01-21, 02:27 AM

I'm quite happy with 5E. Lots of old-style stuff and a good and playable system.

Forrestfire

2015-01-21, 02:37 AM

Would you please elaborate on this? I skipped 4th so elaboration would be useful.

A significant portion of the monsters in 5th edition have very little to do in combat. Legendary monsters and lair actions are neat, but they don't come online until late in the game. 4e monsters (later in the design cycle), even at low levels, generally had powers and abilities to make combat more interesting. They could impose status effects, or move around the battlefield a lot, or do more things than just "it attacks you". One example, off the top of my head, is a gargoyle monster with an aura that weakened enemies that are taking ongoing damage, setting them up for some nice synergy with monsters that cause that sort of damage.

Monsters also have the issue of low-level math being broken for them, and in some cases incredibly lethal (looking at you, Intellect Devourer :smallsigh:).

Really, the monster writing I've seen for 5e just feels lazy, like they decided that instead of doing their jobs and writing decent rules, they'd just meet the DM halfway. Skills felt the same way. At least they took the most important thing they learned from 4e and stuck with it, though. Monsters and NPCs run best when written with different rules than PCs, especially any monsters that are meant to fight alone. The action economy just screws them over otherwise (a major issue in 3.5).

XmonkTad

2015-01-21, 02:55 AM

Been playing one campaign for ~2 months now and I like the system in general. It's simple to learn, has a high optimization floor, and captures the flavor of the PC classes well (the monk feels different from the rogue feels different from the druid etc).
I've got a few complaints, but the one that bugs me the most is that the combat feels the same at low levels as it does at high levels. You get one move, one spell, one bonus action and then you're done. I came from 3.5, so I'm used to high level combat looking like a teleport-y, magical mayhem extravaganza. Huge numbers gave (me) a real sense of the weight of our newfound power. Those things are just gone now.
On a side note, I feel like Incarnum might make a successful comeback!

TheDeadlyShoe

2015-01-21, 02:58 AM

I'm pretty happy so far.

I feel like there's somethings I don't like, but when I try to put them to words they haven't quite crystallized yet.

Legendary monsters and lair actions are neat, but they don't come online until late in the game.
? IIRC the lowest legendary monster is actually level 5: the Unicorn.

Anyone you want to be a major enemy can have legendary actions strapped on, even at lower levels.

Most monsters have some trick to them, even the bog-standard goblins (cunning action) and orcs (run at things).

Eslin

2015-01-21, 03:23 AM

Thanks for the in-depth thoughts Eslin. I may not agree with you, but your thoughts are appreciated. I assumed that you would post something on the thread. :smalltongue:

It was something of a guarantee, wasn't it?

I hate how boring monsters are now. Maybe I'm biased because of how many unique and awesome monsters 4e had... But 5e's seem to have taken everything they did right, and only learned one important thing ("player=monster transparency is bad") from it. It's a shame, really.
But... player monster transparency is great. It gives the world better verisimilitude and allows you play as more than just a human with slightly altered physical appearance. Agreed on the loss regarding interesting monsters, 4e was great about that (idiotic minion concept excepted).

I'm looking forward to seeing what WotC does with it, since the game is fun, even with all its flaws and its design philosophies I disagree with (namely, I think that 4e is the best-made system WotC has done, and that abandoning many of the lessons they learned in order to try to appeal to a part of the fanbase that is unlikely to leave the systems they're comfortable with is just... bleh).
Agreed once again - I didn't like 4e nearly as much as you seem to, but they dropped a bunch of things 4e did really well for seemingly no reason.

On a side note, I feel like Incarnum might make a successful comeback!
Looking forward to this so hard. It was a great idea bogged down with needlessly complex execution, and 5e is the perfect system to re-add it more simply.

Rallicus

2015-01-21, 06:07 AM

A few bigger problems - the magic items are complete and utter horse****, terrible to a great enough degree that I immediately returned my DMG to the shop.

Seems a bit drastic.

Out of curiosity, have you switched editions yet? I've noticed you've been railing on 5e for some time now, and your negatives clearly outweigh your positives. I mean if it's so bad that you literally return your purchase for a refund...

As for me, I like 5e. It retains a feel of DnD, unlike 4e, which was so different it felt like a new product entirely. It's extremely simple to run as a DM.

I suppose the simplicity is what I enjoy most about it. The fact that I don't have to track wealth by level, magic items (beyond rarity), etc is such a blessing.

Eslin

2015-01-21, 06:16 AM

Seems a bit drastic.

Out of curiosity, have you switched editions yet? I've noticed you've been railing on 5e for some time now, and your negatives clearly outweigh your positives. I mean if it's so bad that you literally return your purchase for a refund...

As for me, I like 5e. It retains a feel of DnD, unlike 4e, which was so different it felt like a new product entirely. It's extremely simple to run as a DM.

I suppose the simplicity is what I enjoy most about it. The fact that I don't have to track wealth by level, magic items (beyond rarity), etc is such a blessing.

I switched ages ago. The negatives are in general smaller than the positives, but the positives have already been mentioned and tend to be simple, broad things like the reduced complexity without much loss of depth.

And returning the DMG wasn't drastic at all. I know how to DM, I was mostly buying it for the magic items, but again the magic items were poorly designed trash so I returned it.

Heartspan

2015-01-21, 07:24 AM

I like the system, it's really streamlined so you don't have to as many calculations. I feel the stuff like advantage/disadvantage makes the game alot easier, as a DM, ans as a player. One thing i really feel sad about is how necromancy/minionmancy got nerfed. Undead armies are so difficult now. I mean, i understand why, but still... :P

Knaight

2015-01-21, 09:15 AM

What do you find intractable about the rules design?

The short rest-long rest balancing system is pretty heavily ingrained into it and not likely to come out, there's a standard number of encounters that it's built around, and if you're trying to use a pacing structure that isn't the WotC standard or if you're trying to just focus on other things as GM you're out of luck. Then there's some balance issues beyond that.

archaeo

2015-01-21, 10:29 AM

The short rest-long rest balancing system is pretty heavily ingrained into it and not likely to come out, there's a standard number of encounters that it's built around, and if you're trying to use a pacing structure that isn't the WotC standard or if you're trying to just focus on other things as GM you're out of luck. Then there's some balance issues beyond that.

I'm not sure why you keep saying this when the DMG openly suggests altering the rest lengths to adjust the pacing of the game as needed. Furthermore, combining encounters into bigger events, rebalancing encounters to deal with different resting schedules, or just throwing caution to the wind tend to all work out, basically. The only thing missing, in my view, is an easy table that converts 5e class features to the AEDU structure, or at least the AED part.

The only "WotC standard" that exists, as far as I can tell, is that 6-9 medium-to-hard encounters is about how long it takes to exhaust the resources of a standard adventuring party. They don't say you have to do it that way, just that the system works out that way, and you'll want to adjust what you throw at the party to compensate if you play it differently. Hardly a damning glare.

Laurefindel

2015-01-21, 11:07 AM

I only started playing recently, but I've been eying the game for a while. Nevertheless, here are some intuitions/opinions that got confirmed (or denied) after more than two or three games.

Bounded accuracy means that the d20 roll often has more weight than proficiency/abilities/bonuses combined. I didn't think it would bother me for attacks and saves, but I was unsure about skills checks (especially since skills are pretty broad). I can now say that I'm ok with it as long as the DM does take your field of expertise in consideration, especially when knowledge checks are concerned.

4e wasn't as complex and rigid as 3e, but it felt just as 'heavy' (from player's perspective) past level 5. I was curious to see if i would find 5e too simplistic. I find 5th edition's simplicity and limited range of options more liberating than restraining.

There are more access to magic and magic-like features than my liking. Tuning the game down to low-magic still needs a lot of work (but is at core *much* better than 3e in that regard). As a counter argument, the default heroic fantasy (or whatever they call it) isn't as wacky as before, so the desire to play lower magic is not as strong.

I like legendary creature but I wish there was more low CR legendary creatures. I would have liked a legendary lizard king of CR 3 or 4, or perhaps a legendary orc chieftain of something. I know it defies the 'legendary' tag, but the mechanical conception of a 'boss' is well done. The auto save concept is neat, and so is the concept that the creature acts in each player's turn (up to three times).

I like the concept of lair actions, but I don't like most of the lair actions as they are presented. They are easily replaceable however, and houseruled lair actions would be easy plug-and-play features.

Turns out I like the Warlock. Classes is general perform better than what I thought (by 'perform' I mean that a player can make a concept, follow it and not feel constantly sub-optimal).

Forrestfire

2015-01-21, 11:52 AM

But... player monster transparency is great. It gives the world better verisimilitude and allows you play as more than just a human with slightly altered physical appearance. Agreed on the loss regarding interesting monsters, 4e was great about that (idiotic minion concept excepted).

As a concept, I will agree that player-monster transparency is great. However, the issue with it is that it's so damn hard to implement correctly, I'd rather that it be dropped and the effort used to work on something else. Badly-done transparency leads to more issues than it's worth. The biggest issue, for me, is that if monsters follow the same "rules" as PCs, then they will oftentimes just not work to do their job. In 3.5, for example, if you had a BBEG built as an NPC, he would likely get about one turn and then die, unless you changed something to give him extra hp, actions, and defenses... At which point, he's no longer built like a PC, he's built like one of 4e's Solo monsters.

Monsters in 4e and 5e, compared to 3.5, have much more HP and various different abilities compared to PC. If they didn't have more HP (like how CR 1 NPCs are generally 5 hit dice), then combat just wouldn't work. I'm okay with dropping a small amount of verisimilitude to make the game run more smoothly.

On the note of minions, while I like how they were done, I'll agree that 5e wouldn't have really been a place for it. 4th edition's rules and fluff was about being an incredibly badass hero/villain/etc, eventually leading up to you becoming something akin to a god. Minions were great for increasing the scale of a combat without bogging it down too much, and helped underline the tone the game seemed to be trying to convey. At level 1, minions might be random rats or something, and an ogre is an incredibly dangerous threat. At level 10, when you're hitting your paragon path, ogres might be done as minions in a combat against bigger things, because at this point, you're badass enough that ogres are just beneath your notice. At level 30, you're fighting gods and demon princes and the like, so it'd make sense to just apply minion rules to most monsters. However, this is a part of 4e's tone and the way it scales. 5e's design principles are built on the high-level stuff being able to lose to low-level stuff, and low-level stuff staying relevant at high levels, so I don't think minions would have fit it. In 5e, you're not playing as someone who eventually becomes Cu Chulainn, or Heracles, or Goku, or Superman, you're playing as someone more down-to-earth, even at level 20. There aren't really any monsters to shove into the folder of "beneath your worry", other than stuff that dies to one hit anyway.

Knaight

2015-01-21, 12:04 PM

I'm not sure why you keep saying this when the DMG openly suggests altering the rest lengths to adjust the pacing of the game as needed. Furthermore, combining encounters into bigger events, rebalancing encounters to deal with different resting schedules, or just throwing caution to the wind tend to all work out, basically. The only thing missing, in my view, is an easy table that converts 5e class features to the AEDU structure, or at least the AED part.

Altering rest lengths doesn't change the system being balanced around the two types of rests, just how long they are. The nature of the problem can be tweaked a bit, the problem itself is intractable. As for things just tending to work out, that has not been my experience.

The only "WotC standard" that exists, as far as I can tell, is that 6-9 medium-to-hard encounters is about how long it takes to exhaust the resources of a standard adventuring party. They don't say you have to do it that way, just that the system works out that way, and you'll want to adjust what you throw at the party to compensate if you play it differently. Hardly a damning glare.
I consider it a flaw, as I'm used to systems where I can safely ignore that sort of thing. My evaluation of 5e is based on the systems that it is in competition with, and earlier editions aren't involved in any real competition with it. I guess they can compete at gathering dust on a shelf, but 3e and 4e have that niche locked down. Among the set of systems that I seriously consider using, 5e is particularly bad about dictating pacing, and one of only a handful that really do so to any extent.

archaeo

2015-01-21, 12:14 PM

Altering rest lengths doesn't change the system being balanced around the two types of rests, just how long they are. The nature of the problem can be tweaked a bit, the problem itself is intractable. As for things just tending to work out, that has not been my experience.

Oh, now I see what your deal is.

I tend to think that the short rest/long rest dynamic is really the 4eism that gets overlooked by most edition warriors; it's AEDU in another form. It's pretty obviously gameist, and it's intended to granularize resource recharges to contribute to interclass balance. In a class-focused, combat-focused game like D&D, it strikes me as a pretty good idea.

I consider it a flaw, as I'm used to systems where I can safely ignore that sort of thing. My evaluation of 5e is based on the systems that it is in competition with, and earlier editions aren't involved in any real competition with it. I guess they can compete at gathering dust on a shelf, but 3e and 4e have that niche locked down. Among the set of systems that I seriously consider using, 5e is particularly bad about dictating pacing, and one of only a handful that really do so to any extent.

I guess what I don't get is the resistance to making the system's pacing expectations explicit instead of implicit; 5e seems to be saying, "Here's the pacing baseline around which we balanced the classes, and here are all the different ways you can deviate from the baseline to achieve the precise pace you're looking for."

I can understand the desire for something that doesn't require you to think about that baseline at all, but it seems hard to do when you have class features that depend on limited resources that recharge on a given timescale.

Knaight

2015-01-21, 12:32 PM

Oh, now I see what your deal is.

I tend to think that the short rest/long rest dynamic is really the 4eism that gets overlooked by most edition warriors; it's AEDU in another form. It's pretty obviously gameist, and it's intended to granularize resource recharges to contribute to interclass balance. In a class-focused, combat-focused game like D&D, it strikes me as a pretty good idea.
There are elements of 4e in there, but 4e is pretty homogenous regarding AED distribution and actually ends up less picky.

I guess what I don't get is the resistance to making the system's pacing expectations explicit instead of implicit; 5e seems to be saying, "Here's the pacing baseline around which we balanced the classes, and here are all the different ways you can deviate from the baseline to achieve the precise pace you're looking for."

I can understand the desire for something that doesn't require you to think about that baseline at all, but it seems hard to do when you have class features that depend on limited resources that recharge on a given timescale.
Bingo. The bolded bit is what makes it so intractable. Something like elephants being half the price of a warhorse is weird, but I can fix that with a strategically placed '0'. Class features being set up on two different recharge paradigms, where classes range from almost using neither to favoring one or the other in high amounts? That's a bit trickier.

archaeo

2015-01-21, 12:42 PM

There are elements of 4e in there, but 4e is pretty homogenous regarding AED distribution and actually ends up less picky.

Sure, I suppose. The fact that it doesn't apply evenly over every class is the big change; it's also an attempt to address one of the most common criticisms leveled at the edition, regardless of whether or not it was a fair critique.

Bingo. The bolded bit is what makes it so intractable. Something like elephants being half the price of a warhorse is weird, but I can fix that with a strategically placed '0'. Class features being set up on two different recharge paradigms, where classes range from almost using neither to favoring one or the other in high amounts? That's a bit trickier.

The alternative is 4e, where everybody's on the same recharge paradigm, or some game that basically isn't D&D, as far as I can tell. I mean, haven't you previously said that D&D isn't usually your preferred way of running a TRPG?

Doing "classes" in any way that's remotely like the way D&D has always done them (with the exception of 4e) requires finding some paradigm for recharging powers, and the way they've done it here makes sense to me. It creates a couple tiers, which allows for granularity, and it strikes me as an attempt to balance the martials versus the casters in order to give everyone a chance to shine over the course of an adventuring day. It's also a good way to give tiered mechanics to each class, so that you're always "getting something" out of a rest.

Not that I think it's perfect, by any means, and I get where you're coming from. It just strikes me as a pretty good way to handle the D&D concept of classes.

Knaight

2015-01-21, 02:10 PM

The alternative is 4e, where everybody's on the same recharge paradigm, or some game that basically isn't D&D, as far as I can tell. I mean, haven't you previously said that D&D isn't usually your preferred way of running a TRPG?

Some game that basically isn't D&D is my preferred alternative here, though the short rest does make things a bit messy even relative to 3e (of course, everything else in 3e is on the other side of the messiness scale).

This furthers my point about intractability, really. It's so intractable that removing it starts threatening the brand identity, as 4e only partially removed it and even then was greeted with a lot of "that's not D&D".

archaeo

2015-01-21, 02:34 PM

Some game that basically isn't D&D is my preferred alternative here, though the short rest does make things a bit messy even relative to 3e (of course, everything else in 3e is on the other side of the messiness scale).

This furthers my point about intractability, really. It's so intractable that removing it starts threatening the brand identity, as 4e only partially removed it and even then was greeted with a lot of "that's not D&D".

I mean, calling it "intractable" is just a somewhat more negative way of saying "iconic."

Vogonjeltz

2015-01-21, 05:17 PM

I dislike that skills don't have any sort of guidelines to setting DCs, and I still dislike that the math is fundamentally broken unless the DM interprets DCs as being based relative to the PC attempting them, rather than absolutes (i.e. a high-level wizard who has studied all his life would recall some obscure piece of knowledge as an Medium check, whereas someone who has never opened a book might call it Impossible).

I believe the guidance on DCs is that the DM sets it at whatever they think is reasonable.

This also speaks to why I think 5e is great, indeed the greatest edition printed. By setting fewer absolutes, and granting the DM clear latitude, the game can be anything to anyone. I could say something is incredibly hard in one game, and someone else can say it's relatively easy in another game, and we'd both be right! That is a truly awesome level of customization.

I think the game is all around smoother for simply being able to make a judgment call on things and roll with it instead of games dragging out looking up things. The largest time sink for 3rd edition games was the constant referencing of information in order to play.

Forrestfire

2015-01-21, 06:18 PM

I believe the guidance on DCs is that the DM sets it at whatever they think is reasonable.

And there's my issue. What one DM thinks is reasonable is likely to be completely different from what another DM thinks is reasonable, and in many cases will be a decision made from misinformation or just outright ignorance. The Guy at the Gym Fallacy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303089-The-Guy-at-the-Gym-Fallacy) (tl;dr: "it must be hard/impossible because I myself can't do it") is incredibly common in this situation, and there are no guidelines to help alleviate it.

Eslin

2015-01-21, 07:13 PM

And there's my issue. What one DM thinks is reasonable is likely to be completely different from what another DM thinks is reasonable, and in many cases will be a decision made from misinformation or just outright ignorance. The Guy at the Gym Fallacy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303089-The-Guy-at-the-Gym-Fallacy) (tl;dr: "it must be hard/impossible because I myself can't do it") is incredibly common in this situation, and there are no guidelines to help alleviate it.

Yup. You can high jump 3+str mod feet. What does an athletics check do? Can I use it to jump more than 8 feet, and if so what kind of roll?

I just don't understand the lack of guidelines. That kind of balancing is very difficult to do on the fly, them doing it for us is part of the point of buying their products.

Knaight

2015-01-21, 07:49 PM

I mean, calling it "intractable" is just a somewhat more negative way of saying "iconic."
Not really. There are a lot of iconic things that can also be easily removed. The d20 is iconic, you can implement 2d10 instead and it works just fine (though there is some weirdness with how to handle Advantage and Disadvantage; it's a minor thing).

And there's my issue. What one DM thinks is reasonable is likely to be completely different from what another DM thinks is reasonable, and in many cases will be a decision made from misinformation or just outright ignorance. The Guy at the Gym Fallacy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303089-The-Guy-at-the-Gym-Fallacy) (tl;dr: "it must be hard/impossible because I myself can't do it") is incredibly common in this situation, and there are no guidelines to help alleviate it.
I wouldn't be too worried about misinformation or outright ignorance. If those are going to be an issue, they'll come up in non-mechanical stuff anyways, and as long as the DM can communicate the standards well it's pretty easy. Plus, if they just start with a baseline of genre convention or similar, all's well.

That does leave it shifting heavily from table to table, and I can see how this would be a problem for some people. Personally, I couldn't care less.

MadBear

2015-01-21, 09:27 PM

Yup. You can high jump 3+str mod feet. What does an athletics check do? Can I use it to jump more than 8 feet, and if so what kind of roll?

I just don't understand the lack of guidelines. That kind of balancing is very difficult to do on the fly, them doing it for us is part of the point of buying their products.

This is a point that I feel many people just fundamentally disagree on with 5e. I completely see where you're coming from, and yet I like it the way it is. It allows each DM to arbitrate what they feel is appropriate for their campaign. In a more heroic campaign, athletics checks might easily add to the jump, allowing ridiculously high jumps. In a more gritty campaign, you might not even get to use athletics to jump higher.

jkat718

2015-01-22, 02:22 AM

The only thing missing, in my view, is an easy table that converts 5e class features to the AEDU structure, or at least the AED part.

Is this what you're looking for?
Complete List of Action Recharge Times (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?392795-Complete-List-of-Actions-Recharge-Times)

Tehnar

2015-01-22, 01:09 PM

So, we finally have all three books. We've played the game for a while, and we know what we like and don't like. What are your opinions and reviews of 5e now that the game has been out?

The passage of time, and my experience with it has done nothing to ameliorate my opinion of 5e. Its a badly designed game whose only redeeming feature is that it has the DnD logo stamped on it. While we can argue about unbalanced things like Conjure Woodland Beings or Contagion its problems are actually much deeper. It somehow manages to combine the worst features of all editions of DnD.

1) The ability check system and bounded accuracy: This has a effect that the success of a action is determined primarily by the luck on a d20 roll, rather then character skill / ability. This is hugely breaks immersion. Bounded makes this even worse, as the inability to get away from the primary role of the d20 roll makes it that there is very little differentiation when you make character choices. Sure no one is bad at things, but no one is very good either. Another huge immersion break.

2) Design by committee: the extensive playtest did one thing, 5e lacks focus and/or vision. Abilities are all over the place, so you get things like Tongue of the Sun and the Moon vs lvl 7 spells, or the various lvl 20 capstones. Granted the lower levels are a bit better, due to more playtesting in that area, and more suggestions by the playtesters.

3) Advantage/Disadvantage system: while at first glance looks to be a solid addition, it is actually a trap due to its nonstacking mechanic. It leads to silly things like the default prone archers, or generally that multiple disadvantages can be removed with a single advantage source, or that there is no worse penalty then disadvantage. It actually cuts down on combat options your characters can take; for example there is no point for a fighter to use Protection style on a enemy trying to attack another if the enemy already has disadvantage, or even worse advantage and disadvantage. These things actually come up fairly frequently.

4) There are no digital tools that support 5e, no digital searchable PDFs, no SRD, nothing that makes gaming easier in the modern age where most players have a smartphone/tablet/laptop at their games. It makes searching for rules much more of a chore.

So to conclude. 5e is a game that stretches 4e's heroic tier or the first 5 levels of 3.x to 20 levels with many immersion breaks along the way. There are no in universe reasons for a adventuring party, as a small band of trained soldiers can do anything adventurers can do. Well except casters, who still have access to broken spells. There is no in universe space for characters to be epic or even heroic but by DM fiat. Even monsters like the Tarrasque (which has at least 4 mentions of the word legendary in its MM description entry) is easily dispatched by a dozen level 5 fighters with magic bows (or NPCs built to similar stats). It is mathematically better to bring 20 untrained commoners to solve a skill or ability check of hard or less then a single level 20 character who is trained and with a maximum ability modifiers (except a rogue or bard). Basically 5e requires the DM to heavily involve himself in the rules, thinking a lot how to resolve in game issues instead of using his time to create encounters and develop the story.

Knaight

2015-01-22, 09:58 PM

There are no in universe reasons for a adventuring party, as a small band of trained soldiers can do anything adventurers can do.

Given the prevalence of fiction, RPG systems, and other things where there's an adventuring party sort of structure in which the people in it are not superhumans that can do vastly more than anyone, where said party simply can't do things like go toe to toe with armies, this particular complaint feels a little hollow.

mr_odd

2015-01-22, 10:41 PM

Given the prevalence of fiction, RPG systems, and other things where there's an adventuring party sort of structure in which the people in it are not superhumans that can do vastly more than anyone, where said party simply can't do things like go toe to toe with armies, this particular complaint feels a little hollow.

Yeah, there are all kinds of reasons for adventuring parties to do stuff. You just have to be creative. Is that not how many stories start? Someone unlikely steps up to save the day/girl/world.

Tehnar

2015-01-23, 04:01 AM

Given the prevalence of fiction, RPG systems, and other things where there's an adventuring party sort of structure in which the people in it are not superhumans that can do vastly more than anyone, where said party simply can't do things like go toe to toe with armies, this particular complaint feels a little hollow.

Apart from losing the cliche dragon attacks town, the pcs at high level are advertised by the phb to be able to change the fate of the universe. Clearly that is not the case if high level pcs ate outclassed by a small number of npc guardsman.

You cant have a bounded accuracy system and still have a in universe reason for epic heroes to exist.

Rallicus

2015-01-23, 05:36 AM

Clearly that is not the case if high level pcs ate outclassed by a small number of npc guardsman.

You cant have a bounded accuracy system and still have a in universe reason for epic heroes to exist.

I'd really, really like to see an example of this. I keep reading about PCs being outclassed by handfuls of lower level enemies, or being outright slaughtered by an army of commoners. Nobody has given me an example of this in play, it's all theorycraft.

And I don't think any DM in his right mind would give an army of commoners their own individual initiative counts. That would take forever.

Also bounded accuracy existing in a world of heroes is completely feasible. If DnD had a wound system as default for health you might be on to something, but you're completely neglecting the importance of HP.

ghost_warlock

2015-01-23, 08:02 AM

I'd really, really like to see an example of this. I keep reading about PCs being outclassed by handfuls of lower level enemies, or being outright slaughtered by an army of commoners. Nobody has given me an example of this in play, it's all theorycraft.

And I don't think any DM in his right mind would give an army of commoners their own individual initiative counts. That would take forever.

Also bounded accuracy existing in a world of heroes is completely feasible. If DnD had a wound system as default for health you might be on to something, but you're completely neglecting the importance of HP.

How big is the army? Mathematically, for every 20 of them, you'd expect one of them to crit and one or two others to land a normal hit every round, thanks to the low cap on AC for most characters in 5e. So, without needing individual initiatives, an army of 100 commoners should expect to land 5 crits and ten normal hits every round. Assuming they're armed with some simple weapons that do the usual 1d6 damage, that would average out to about 70 damage per round.

Or say a level 20 fighter is sent to kill a 1st-level wizard. Things are great, except that the wizard can cast charm person with a save DC of 13. More often than not, the fighter will fail that save because his Wisdom save never progressed beyond +0 and be unable to complete his mission.

It gets even worse if the same fighter is sent to take out a 3rd-level bard and a 3rd-level cleric. The bard and cleric cast hold person and heat metal on him. Thanks to one of those spells not having a save and the other having a save DC of 13, the fighter is as good as dead as they simply maintain concentration and tear him apart in melee with advantage on every attack and every hit landed is a critical.

silveralen

2015-01-23, 08:58 AM

How big is the army? Mathematically, for every 20 of them, you'd expect one of them to crit and one or two others to land a normal hit every round, thanks to the low cap on AC for most characters in 5e. So, without needing individual initiatives, an army of 100 commoners should expect to land 5 crits and ten normal hits every round. Assuming they're armed with some simple weapons that do the usual 1d6 damage, that would average out to about 70 damage per round.

Or say a level 20 fighter is sent to kill a 1st-level wizard. Things are great, except that the wizard can cast charm person with a save DC of 13. More often than not, the fighter will fail that save because his Wisdom save never progressed beyond +0 and be unable to complete his mission.

It gets even worse if the same fighter is sent to take out a 3rd-level bard and a 3rd-level cleric. The bard and cleric cast hold person and heat metal on him. Thanks to one of those spells not having a save and the other having a save DC of 13, the fighter is as good as dead as they simply maintain concentration and tear him apart in melee with advantage on every attack and every hit landed is a critical.

Considering 70 damage is actually about what a high level fighter can do in basic DPR, that sounds pretty decent to me. A high level fighter as a small army seems... idk about right to me?

Why on earth does a fighter have a +0 wisdom save? He has more chances to increase ability scores and grab feats than anyone else, and he should have advantage anyways due to the nature of charm person. Even if it succeeds, the mage buys himself an hour.

Actually, he has two chances to break the hold person before the cleric even gets a second turn. Even if, for some unfathomable reason, the fighter completely neglects his wisdom save, he is still more likely than not to succeed one of the two saves. If feats aren't allowed he can easily get a 16-18 wisdom (I mean, 7 ability score increase, 2 to max strength/dex, the rest spread about as needed which should include wisdom because its commonly targeted and nasty) which means the cleric has a 25% chance of even getting a turn to hit him before his spell fades. If feats are allowed, that fighter probably has a +7/+8 to the save, making it incredibly trivial.

Knaight

2015-01-23, 09:33 AM

Apart from losing the cliche dragon attacks town, the pcs at high level are advertised by the phb to be able to change the fate of the universe. Clearly that is not the case if high level pcs ate outclassed by a small number of npc guardsman.

You cant have a bounded accuracy system and still have a in universe reason for epic heroes to exist.

No (at least by the definition of epic heroes that requires people single handedly fighting armies and similar, or at least capable of it), but there's plenty of room for adventurers. And it's a pretty large number of NPC guards that outclass high level PCs. Again, there are a lot of RPG systems out there in which people still play adventurers, in which PCs never get close to high level 5e characters in their specialties (violence and magic). As for changing the fate of the universe, from a literary perspective consider Frodo and Conan. Frodo isn't some superhero, he was still involved in changing the fate of the universe. Conan is highly skilled, but he's no demigod, and he's still prevented several cults from unleashing apocalyptic events.

Tehnar

2015-01-23, 09:51 AM

I'd really, really like to see an example of this. I keep reading about PCs being outclassed by handfuls of lower level enemies, or being outright slaughtered by an army of commoners. Nobody has given me an example of this in play, it's all theorycraft.

And I don't think any DM in his right mind would give an army of commoners their own individual initiative counts. That would take forever.

Also bounded accuracy existing in a world of heroes is completely feasible. If DnD had a wound system as default for health you might be on to something, but you're completely neglecting the importance of HP.

Hp are not that important if you have weight of numbers on your side. Take for example the CR 1/2 scout NPC, as a base ranged soldier. 2 attacks at +4 for 1d8+2 damage. LEts say they are facing a adult blue dragon (CR 16) with a AC of 19 and 225 hp.

A single scouts DPR is (assuming within 150') is (0.25*6.5 + 0.05*11)*2 = 4.35, or 52 scouts bring a CR 16 dragon down in one round.
A level 14 champion fighter, DEX 20, with archery style and a +1 longbow has a DPR of: (0.65*10.5 + 0.1*15)*3=(6.285+1.5)*3=21.975, or he has the DPR of almost exactly 5 scouts. Lets take the Sharpshooter feat his DPR goes to (0.4*20.5+0.1*25)*3=32.1 or between 7 and 8 scouts.

So if your local lord has a standing army of only 100 scouts, the town / barony / large village is pretty much immune to attacks from CR 16 dragons? What reason would any local lord have to hire adventurers to hunt down the dragon when 100 dudes armed with bows easily dispatches a CR 16 dragon in one round. Why would a dragon even go near a town with such a militia?

Frightful presence equally affects the scouts and the fighter due to the non proficient fighter.

And to remind everyone, a lvl 14 character, going by the PHB definition is: "A mighty adventurer who confronts threats to whole regions or continents." pg 15. of the PHB. What a joke.

Considering 70 damage is actually about what a high level fighter can do in basic DPR, that sounds pretty decent to me. A high level fighter as a small army seems... idk about right to me?

I don't know why you keep bringing that up, but a fighter has no where near a consistent DPR of 70. High level (15+) fighters reach a DPR of around 30, and lvl 20 (and only lvl 20) fighters have a DPR of around 40, give or take a few points of DPR due to magic items/combat style. See calculation above for a lvl 14 fighter.

silveralen

2015-01-23, 10:19 AM

I don't know why you keep bringing that up, but a fighter has no where near a consistent DPR of 70. High level (15+) fighters reach a DPR of around 30, and lvl 20 (and only lvl 20) fighters have a DPR of around 40, give or take a few points of DPR due to magic items/combat style. See calculation above for a lvl 14 fighter.

If they aren't optimized I suppose, though AC 19 seems a bit high for a default assumption. Regardless, an optimized crossbow user can hit (5d6+75)*50/100=46.00 easily with just feats before you factor in any limited usage abilities. EK can toss around haste to get output (6d6+90)*50/100=55.25 (BM doesn't boost DPR, just burst and control, while champion only helps with larger hit die weapons).

Of course, I was thinking AC 18 with a basic set of +1 weapons when I claimed 70 DPR, which is (6d6+96)*60/100=69.80, something a fighter can mange without struggling unduly. For less DPR and more burst you can go with BM over EK, you still hit (5d6+85)*60/100=61.10, but you gain a bit more burst damage, not that either of them suffer for that with two action surges per short rest.

By lvl 14 you could manage (4d6+64)*55/100=42.44 even without any buffing spells, not awful by any stretch.

If you hit 40 DPR at lvl 20 you aren't trying very hard tbh, that or you got stuck without feats which is unfortunate.

Naanomi

2015-01-23, 10:25 AM

And to remind everyone, a lvl 14 character, going by the PHB definition is: "A mighty adventurer who confronts threats to whole regions or continents." pg 15. of the PHB. What a joke.
Actually, a team of 3-5 adventurers working together covering eachother from a bad save or critical hit are who solve those threats. Big difference between solo hero and a good team.

Also, where is this archer army standing where they have clear shots on a dragon with their expensive longbows (elven commoners I assume, since they are proficient?) and don't get breathed to death first?

On that note, if my Barbarian can have 100 people with clear shots shoot arrows at him and he is still standing and dangerous, I consider that pretty fantastic to me.

mr_odd

2015-01-23, 10:42 AM

Actually, a team of 3-5 adventurers working together covering eachother from a bad save or critical hit are who solve those threats. Big difference between solo hero and a good team.

5e is all about the party. Solo heroes should not be absolutely spectacular. They shouldn't be able to fight an army. But 4 of them? They can change the world.

MadBear

2015-01-23, 11:05 AM

Part of the issue as I see it is that people assume that the army of 100 commoners vs 4 person adventuring party can accomplish the same goals.

The system isn't designed to handle 100 man army battles. It falls outside the parameters of the games range. If I wanted to run this type of simulation, I'd convert the characters to warhammer for the battle.

I guess my point is that it is not the fault of the system when you take it outside of what it's meant to do.

Why don't 100+ commoners defeat the dragon? Because the game isn't designed to represent this situation. In that situation you do a cut-scene. To me it's much the same way that some people will try to use carbon dating to date items past their range. The method will still output a result, but it will be inaccurate.

The game assumes a certain amount of enemies, and PC's and trying to use it to represent different situations outside of this just breaks the system. It's not a fault of the system, anymore then me being mad about GTA V for not being a good city building game when it isn't meant to be a city building simulator

Atmosfear

2015-01-23, 12:12 PM

Naanomi

2015-01-23, 02:12 PM

In all fairness a poor initiative roll and a caster does pretty poorly against a peasant archery battery... Excepting perhaps moon Druids?

archaeo

2015-01-23, 02:26 PM

The whole "high-level Fighter vs 100 commoners" debate really just highlights the 5E Caster Edition flaw more than anything, IMO. High level casters have no problems dispatching (or outperforming) 100 commoners.

Well, except for the fact that it's a debate that has no basis in the game itself, just a misleading attempt to stretch the model the rules create to the breaking point. The game wasn't designed to pit individual classes against 100-man armies; presumably, if the PCs need to fight an army, they're going to have to raise one of their own. The only thing "the whole 'high-level Fighter vs 100 commoners' debate" actually highlights is the degree to which arguing about white-room theorycrafting tells you basically nothing about the game that people actually play.

Tzi

2015-01-23, 02:41 PM

I'm a complete convert. 5e is now the only edition, with older editions existing to be mined for scraps like feat ideas, monster ideas and spell ideas (Like Sandstorm or Heroes of Horror).

1) Monsters are fun to make. The stat blocks are short, simple, fairly fluid and legendary monsters make it very easy to make memorable boss battles that aren't psychosis inducing to make or fight. In older editions I basically just poured hit points on a solo encounter big bad guy and had to navigate a labyrinth of rules and moving bits and splat just to calibrate a mechanically viable monster. Now I can make an iconic boss fight that my players ACTUALLY ENJOY for a change and it's quick, fun to DM and apparently fun to fight. Monsters in general are fun and fun to make and easy to make. Plus the smaller and more simple stat-blocks make reading them and remembering their powers is very easy. Sure this might sound like I'm just simply lazy but I think for a DM whose love is homebrewing lots of content, making lots of lore and isn't really into crunch, math, and stats, I'm happy with it.

2) Backstory is mechanically beneficial. Okay, maybe its just a small thing and technically you could do that in any edition but I'd remain unsure of myself that I was breaking the game somehow OR simply just doing something that was silly and nonsensical. Like "You know a skill that you are just good at but can't use to benefit yourself, just roleplay!" Which was incredibly dumb. Other methods created holes in an already easily exploited broken mess to create intense advantages across the field. I guess I feel confident knowing there is a balanced system for backstories to really be a mechanical part of the game. Because again, I'm less crunch oriented and if I can use a built in system to focus on lore and fluff and not have to worry then awesome.

3) Power level seems scaled down. That 1 to 20 doesn't seem like the difference between Farmer Brown and a literal God. More over the sword and board fighter isn't at a certain point giving burnt offerings to the mighty spellcaster at a certain point midway through the journey.

4) The Christmas tree is gone! I've hated the endless gobs of magic items that you can pick up at yee old magic wal-mart in the spellerific sporting goods department. My first campaign didn't even give them magical items until 7th level and it didn't hurt gameplay one bit. Money has more of an RP value and isn't necessarily used to buy the all encompassing essentials of "I gotta have these gauntlets by this level and this sword by that or I suck!"

5) My fifth reason... get it? fifth reason? Fifth edition!? I regret nothing! Anyway this reason is largely personal. I came to D&D late, both because I'm young so wasn't alive for 1st, 2nd ect. And wasn't introduced to the game until college. 3.5e was my first edition introduced to me, and later Pathfinder. As the group got better and some of us took on DM'ing, we borrowed books ect. With 5e I own the Players hand book, Monster Manual and Dungeon Masters Guide. All to myself I own the set of books. To a degree its given me a sense of personal connection, "This edition is my edition!"

MrStupendous

2015-01-23, 05:18 PM

my short review

I've been playing ttrpgs since the early 80's as a reference

my group of friends looked at 5e....it looked fun

we've been playing it.....it is a lot of fun

ImperiousLeader

2015-01-23, 06:53 PM

Separating it out:

The Game:
The new edition runs quite well. I'm interested to see what happens at higher levels, but right now, I'm a fan. I like the new spellcasting mechanics, it's significantly simpler than 3.5, and seems better balanced. In general, everything runs pretty smoothly. Combat is fast, although I sometimes miss the tactical depth of 4e.

The Books:
The presentation is clean and easy to read. The art is gorgeous (with the exception of some hideous halflings), and the books make for good reading.
That said, I'm not really pleased with organization of the books. I don't mind the alphabetical spell listing (listing spells by level means a second thing to look up before I can find a spell). The monster manual is okay, except for the grab bag of the monsters thrown into the appendix. But the DMG is just a little weird. Houserules scattered across the book, putting campaign construction rules and planar material first. The individual elements of the DMG are good, but I think the whole book needed a reorganization. I think it's a little inscrutable and even intimidating to newcomer DMs.

Right now, I'm reserving my opinion on magic items. I like attunement, but item crafting rules and pricing are underbaked.

Gov. Sandwiches

2015-01-23, 06:58 PM

Yeah it's a really good system. I despised 4e which is the only other system I've played. I'm familiar with 2e a bit from Baldurgating and 5e feels closer to that than 4e which should be rebranded D&D Tactics and developed into a video game because it would be great in that medium.

I don't like rules heavy system and I like flexibility. 5e is very well done and I'm very pleased to see such a positive reaction from the fans. Nice to know that in this day and age not every single thing that comes out is completely trashed by people, no matter the quality of the product. I mean compare this reaction to the war over 4e...it's like night and day.

Biggest complaint i have is that i wish the spells were sorted by level and then had the classes that could cast them in the descs. Having to flip back and forth is annoying.

ghost_warlock

2015-01-23, 08:13 PM

Like every other edition of D&D, there are things I like about 5e and things that I don't.

After sitting on both sides of the DM screen for Basic/Challenger D&D, 2e, 3-3.5e, 4e, and now 5e, 3.5 has remained my favorite edition (with some admittedly deep reservations). Still, I would happily play in a 4e or 5e game someone else is running and might be persuaded to DM in a pinch (I'm currently DMing my group's 5e game).

Honestly, 5e seems to me like a "fast-play" version of 3.5 with a few tweaks such as filling the "dead levels" in character classes, simplified skill points, and an all-around reduction in scaling.

I have the same complaint on encounter planning as I have with every edition of D&D: the build-in rules for building encounters give me only a vague outline of how challenging the encounter was.

Last week, I threw my group against three "deadly" encounters. The combats were: 1) two ettins, 2) three orogs, 3) an ettin and an orog. The party was 3rd-level and consisted of a paladin, a bard, a wizard, and a warlock. They took a full rest after the encounter, but practically coasted through the next two.

Maybe it's just that "deadly" is a misnomer and may actually mean "the party might be in trouble if the dice aren't being kind to them." Although, really, with the way bounded accuracy works, that might as well apply to every encounter.

Naanomi

2015-01-23, 08:32 PM

Pro:
-it's fun, really the most important thing.
-It flows smoothly in play, with many encounters flowing quickly... No all night combats yet!
-Good variety of classes right in the core products
-Everything needed to play in the PHB, or online on Basics even
-Some semblance of balance inherent in the system
-Bound accuracy does great things to play and world building

Cons:
-Some abilities and spells could have used one more draft of proofreading for balance/function(Improved grapple, summon pixie mob, simulacrum, polymorph)
-Others could have used a bit of clarifying wording (crossbow expert, contagion)
-tweaks for apparent balance would be good (make Beastmaster not so wonky in implementation, rework many capstone abilities)
-clean up some tables (spells) and indexes

Verdict: best dnd edition in years for my table and I've played them all since chainmail.

ad_hoc

2015-01-23, 09:14 PM

I love 5e. It has far surpassed my expectations. It is by far my favourite edition.

Most of the complaints in this thread are aspects of the edition that I like a lot. The magic items, for instance, are one of the best parts. I also like the different pacing options that the addition of short rests give.

It is the advancement of 2e that I wanted out of 3.x.

There are some bits that I don't like, but they aren't major.

The Ranger, for instance. Favoured Enemy and Natural Explorer should be better. There are some others but they are mostly just small balance issues.

I suppose the only big design problems I have is that I feel the 3 pillars should be reflected more directly in the classes. It would be nice if class features called out the pillars and every class had something. Some classes could still be more or less focused on each pillar. I also feel that the secondary saves should have more to do. Specifically intelligence and charisma.

Rallicus

2015-01-24, 06:57 AM

Well, except for the fact that it's a debate that has no basis in the game itself, just a misleading attempt to stretch the model the rules create to the breaking point. The game wasn't designed to pit individual classes against 100-man armies; presumably, if the PCs need to fight an army, they're going to have to raise one of their own. The only thing "the whole 'high-level Fighter vs 100 commoners' debate" actually highlights is the degree to which arguing about white-room theorycrafting tells you basically nothing about the game that people actually play.

You nailed it.

In addition, I've noticed that these so-called flaws of the edition are almost never accompanied by examples in actual play.

A funny thing: I've never run a siege in DnD, EXCEPT in this edition. Not only was the PC super heroic, he was level 3 as well.

Knaight

2015-01-24, 11:45 AM

In addition, I've noticed that these so-called flaws of the edition are almost never accompanied by examples in actual play.

At least some of this is because people aren't listing examples. I've found rest-balancing to be an irritation in actual play. It's mild, and nothing plays perfectly for everything, but I've definitely felt it.

MadBear

2015-01-24, 12:18 PM

At least some of this is because people aren't listing examples. I've found rest-balancing to be an irritation in actual play. It's mild, and nothing plays perfectly for everything, but I've definitely felt it.

wait. You're saying that when people say that their not having a problem with the rest rules, it doesn't count because they didn't give an example of it?

In that case sure.

Day 1:

- Broke into cultists dungeon. Pretended to be part of the cult and eventually snuck downstairs. After multiple fights with wondering monsters, we took a short rest while hiding in a broom closet. The cleric patched up the wounded, while I stayed vigilant for any cultists making the rounds. After a final push, we encountered a bollywog chief who we quickly dispatched. It was then we were caught by 3 cultists who were bring some relics to said king. After killing them as well, we set up their bodies in such a way that it looked like the bollywogs rebelled and they all died in the conflict. We snuck back upstairs into our bedroom where we slept for the night.

Day 2:

In the morning we were rallied to a meeting to deal with the bollywog rebellion, and used the ensuing conflict to sneak to the cultists leaders room where we killed him and took the artifact we were looking for.

All in all the rests worked fine for our group and seemed like a natural fit.

Knaight

2015-01-24, 12:25 PM

wait. You're saying that when people say that their not having a problem with the rest rules, it doesn't count because they didn't give an example of it?

No. That has literally nothing to do with what I said. What I said was that people who do have a problem but haven't given examples often still have them. It was in response to a post trying to paint all the criticism as pure theory crafting.

Whether or not people who think the rules work well have played the game is an entirely separate issue that has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. I'd assume that at least some of the people who like the game like it from having read it (at the very least there's a small group here that is between reading and liking the rules and getting to play for the first time; then there are the people on involuntary gaming hiatuses that still read RPG rules), but I expect that most of the people on the forum talking about their enjoyment have some 5e under their belts by now.

NomGarret

2015-01-24, 04:48 PM

I still get a "D&D's Greatest Hits" feel from 5e, which is fine but I already own all the albums those hits came from. There wasn't enough newness, nor was the old reimagined in a fresh way that I've been inspired to try something I hadn't before.

Vogonjeltz

2015-01-24, 10:04 PM

And there's my issue. What one DM thinks is reasonable is likely to be completely different from what another DM thinks is reasonable, and in many cases will be a decision made from misinformation or just outright ignorance. The Guy at the Gym Fallacy (tl;dr: "it must be hard/impossible because I myself can't do it") is incredibly common in this situation, and there are no guidelines to help alleviate it.

To which any player can immediately point to: Iron Man competitions (for obvious real life examples) and because this isn't real life, but in fact fantasy, they can point to an endless cavalcade of myths, legends, and stories: Hercules, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Odysseus, Ajax, Perseus, Beowulf, Lancelot, Gawain, Ali Baba, Sinbad, Achilles, and so forth. These are characters who do supreme feats of strength in stories. And D&D is nothing if not a story.

Second line of attack available is that, if we are to suppose that nothing can occur that can not also occur in life, then that summarily rules out any magic at all, eliminating all caster classes entirely.

The guidelines you're asking for are actually on pages 237-239 of the DMG (for setting appropriate difficulty classes) and in Chapter 7 of the PHB (what kinds of checks ought skills and ability checks apply to).

Yup. You can high jump 3+str mod feet. What does an athletics check do? Can I use it to jump more than 8 feet, and if so what kind of roll?

I just don't understand the lack of guidelines. That kind of balancing is very difficult to do on the fly, them doing it for us is part of the point of buying their products.

This is literally answered in the PHB on page 175 (what does the athletics check do) and page 182 of the PHB (jumping distances). Guidance is readily available, and most topics can be located in a moments notice by looking at the index.

How big is the army? Mathematically, for every 20 of them, you'd expect one of them to crit and one or two others to land a normal hit every round, thanks to the low cap on AC for most characters in 5e. So, without needing individual initiatives, an army of 100 commoners should expect to land 5 crits and ten normal hits every round. Assuming they're armed with some simple weapons that do the usual 1d6 damage, that would average out to about 70 damage per round.

Or say a level 20 fighter is sent to kill a 1st-level wizard. Things are great, except that the wizard can cast charm person with a save DC of 13. More often than not, the fighter will fail that save because his Wisdom save never progressed beyond +0 and be unable to complete his mission.

It gets even worse if the same fighter is sent to take out a 3rd-level bard and a 3rd-level cleric. The bard and cleric cast hold person and heat metal on him. Thanks to one of those spells not having a save and the other having a save DC of 13, the fighter is as good as dead as they simply maintain concentration and tear him apart in melee with advantage on every attack and every hit landed is a critical.

For one thing, unless this entire army can engage at once (doesn't seem remotely likely) the actual results would vary substantially. That's potentially 1 crit per 20 attacks, assuming the Fighter has a shield equipped and wears plate armor (at 20 this is basically a given) those are the only attacks that can harm the Fighter. Who can kill 4+ commoners per turn. If the Fighter makes good use of terrain and choke points, he could probably kill several thousand commoners before even getting close to. And if this is a Champion? Forget it. He regenerates 10 hp per turn, so he regenerates 200 hp for every crit. He can literally kill millions of commoners before going down.

So, the Wizard can delay the Fighter from killing them (maybe) for 1 hour? That's assuming the Fighter blows what is basically a 50/50 chance twice in a row? (Indomitable basically gives better than advantage on all saves). That's of course assuming this Fighter doesn't have Resilience (wisdom) and/or Mage Slayer. Those assumptions are simply outlandish enough as to not be realistic.

Heat Metal deals 5 damage average. Champion regenerates at least 5, so we can call that a wash. Melee still has to hit ac of 18, minimum. Fighter gets a save each round. If he beats the save he can probably insta-gib the Bard (maximum hp is only 39, maximum AC is 17, Fighter hits that 75% of the time. 3 hits deal at least 6d6+15 damage, or 33, action surge means death by more than 27 points on average, more than enough to also kill the Cleric.) What on earth made you think this was a real threat?

Why would a dragon even go near a town with such a militia?

Because, as in life, total application of force is not a given. That's what military strategy is basically all about, trying very hard to apply the most force possible. If the town has 100 trained archers and the fairly expensive bows and arrows to go with them, they are almost certainly not going to be capable of concentrating that force.

The dragon doesn't fear them because it can use cover (the inability of the archers to get line of sight) and pick them off singly or a small group at a time.

The whole "high-level Fighter vs 100 commoners" debate really just highlights the 5E Caster Edition flaw more than anything, IMO. High level casters have no problems dispatching (or outperforming) 100 commoners.

The Wizard (a caster) would have actual trouble fighting 100 commoners with only 22 spells. What do they do after the first 22 commoners die?

Forrestfire

2015-01-24, 10:22 PM

To which any player can immediately point to: Iron Man competitions (for obvious real life examples) and because this isn't real life, but in fact fantasy, they can point to an endless cavalcade of myths, legends, and stories: Hercules, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Odysseus, Ajax, Perseus, Beowulf, Lancelot, Gawain, Ali Baba, Sinbad, Achilles, and so forth. These are characters who do supreme feats of strength in stories. And D&D is nothing if not a story.

Second line of attack available is that, if we are to suppose that nothing can occur that can not also occur in life, then that summarily rules out any magic at all, eliminating all caster classes entirely.

You greatly underestimate the stubbornness of people, especially the sort of people who would be causing these issues in the first place. The game runs fine with a good DM. That's a given. Every game runs fine with a good enough DM. This doesn't make it good for rules to be written under the assumption that the DM will be both amicable and willing to discuss things, because in my experience, the bad DMs greatly outnumber the good ones.

The guidelines you're asking for are actually on pages 237-239 of the DMG (for setting appropriate difficulty classes) and in Chapter 7 of the PHB (what kinds of checks ought skills and ability checks apply to).

Could you give me page numbers for the PHB ones? Because all I'm seeing in my book is a list of DCs with vague titles that are meaningless for constructing any sort of expectations regarding the game other than "well I guess the DM is god and I shouldn't build towards anything without clarifying exactly how everything works with him."

This is literally answered in the PHB on page 175 (what does the athletics check do) and page 182 of the PHB (jumping distances). Guidance is readily available, and most topics can be located in a moments notice by looking at the index.

That passage basically says "you can do athletic things", again leaving it completely in the hands of the DM to decide how it works.

The Wizard (a caster) would have actual trouble fighting 100 commoners with only 22 spells. What do they do after the first 22 commoners die?

Why is the wizard only using single-target spells? Stuff like Fireball, Circle of Death, Cloudkill, Simulacrum, and the like are all useful tools in the wizard's arsenal.

Eslin

2015-01-25, 08:58 AM

This is literally answered in the PHB on page 175 (what does the athletics check do) and page 182 of the PHB (jumping distances). Guidance is readily available, and most topics can be located in a moments notice by looking at the index.
Yeah, I was referring to those very guidelines not existing. 'You try to jump an unusually long distance' - what? We already know how long you can jump, it's one foot per point of strength - if you want to jump further than that, what kind of roll? It doesn't say. If my strength is 15 and I want to jump 16 feet, what do I roll?

Please note that 'it varies by table' is not an answer for rules like that - if that kind of thing is supposed to vary by table, the actual jump distance based on strength would vary. You can't have it both ways.

The Wizard (a caster) would have actual trouble fighting 100 commoners with only 22 spells. What do they do after the first 22 commoners die?
Use their remaining 20 spells? Seriously, if you want to kill a bunch of commoners as a wizard you either use aoe spells or just animate a bunch of skeletons.

Are you seriously implying the wizard's going to try to kill 100 peasants by using single target spells? What, is Nukevoker McOverkill only capable of using disintegrate?

MaxWilson

2015-01-25, 10:23 AM

So far I love this edition far and away better then any other edition of D&D (well besides 2nd edition that my memory has patched up to look wonderful even though I know that it was probably way worse then I remember).

Not necessarily. I've been looking through old AD&D material (Monstrous Manual primarily) and 5E conversions of AD&D stuff (Fifth Edition Foes, by Frog God), and my chief impression is, "Wow, it wasn't just nostalgia, this really is better than 5E!" 5E monsters are mostly just bags of HP with attacks attached, but AD&D monsters have ecologies, goals, and social organizations. There are exceptions (the 5E concept of a social ordning(?) for giants is fantastic), and the fact that 5E has stats included for all monsters by default is very useful, but if you are running a 5E D&D game it is worthwhile to look to AD&D for inspiration. I guess it was "Advanced" D&D for a reason. :)

mr_odd

2015-01-26, 12:36 PM

Not necessarily. I've been looking through old AD&D material (Monstrous Manual primarily) and 5E conversions of AD&D stuff (Fifth Edition Foes, by Frog God), and my chief impression is, "Wow, it wasn't just nostalgia, this really is better than 5E!" 5E monsters are mostly just bags of HP with attacks attached, but AD&D monsters have ecologies, goals, and social organizations. There are exceptions (the 5E concept of a social ordning(?) for giants is fantastic), and the fact that 5E has stats included for all monsters by default is very useful, but if you are running a 5E D&D game it is worthwhile to look to AD&D for inspiration. I guess it was "Advanced" D&D for a reason. :)

I had never heard of Frog God Games. Are they good? Fifth Edition Foes looks really cool, so I'm actually particularly interested in it.

archaeo

2015-01-26, 12:44 PM

The game runs fine with a good DM. That's a given. Every game runs fine with a good enough DM. This doesn't make it good for rules to be written under the assumption that the DM will be both amicable and willing to discuss things, because in my experience, the bad DMs greatly outnumber the good ones.

I'm not sure that this always holds true.

A bad game with a good DM is still, fundamentally, a bad game. The math might not work, or the balance-by-RAW may be problematic, or the default setting may be half-baked. A bad game may not have the resources necessary for even good DMs to make much of the game.

Writing rules with "the assumption that the DM will be both amicable and willing to discuss things" does not, however, seem like a bad-game thing. This is the same thing as saying "The rules expect that people at the table are able to have successful social interactions." What do game rules even look like, when the rules are striving to prevent bad DMing from even being possible? Is that even something that rules can do?

5e seems written with the clear assumption that individual tables will be best able to decide how to adjudicate individual issues. That the rules have never been used "exactly as written" in the history of the game, and that the best response to that is to see to it that tables have flexibility within the rules themselves to seek out the kind of game they want to play.

Conversely, the downside is that 5e loses a modicum of table-to-table portability, insofar as different configurations of the rules options will tend to prioritize different things. This is a trade-off, however, you want to parse it; you can't have "boundless flexibility" and "continuity between all tables" in the same ruleset, in my opinion. I tend to think flexibility is a better goal than continuity. Frankly, the idea that an idea needs to work at every table doesn't seem to provide many advantages in the context of 5e, whereas the flexibility enables more tables to make the rules work for them.

SiuiS

2015-01-26, 05:04 PM

The whole "high-level Fighter vs 100 commoners" debate really just highlights the 5E Caster Edition flaw more than anything, IMO. High level casters have no problems dispatching (or outperforming) 100 commoners.

Oh, no. A wizard on an open plain in sight of a hundred peasants with ranged weapons and their eyes closed would die just as quick.

No. That has literally nothing to do with what I said. What I said was that people who do have a problem but haven't given examples often still have them. It was in response to a post trying to paint all the criticism as pure theory crafting.

The above was actually a specific argument that kept showing up. People kept saying 'well it doesn't matter if this one example can be discounted because the flaw is still there' to which the response was 'no, a flaw that never comes up in actual play is not a flaw'. That's not about all problems lacking examples, it's specifically about the "OHMYGOD ASMODEUS CAN BE KILLED BY PEASANTS THIS GAME IS DUM!!1!" Complaint family.

JFahy

2015-01-26, 05:32 PM

Icewraith

2015-01-26, 06:10 PM

Oh, no. A wizard on an open plain in sight of a hundred peasants with ranged weapons and their eyes closed would die just as quick.

The above was actually a specific argument that kept showing up. People kept saying 'well it doesn't matter if this one example can be discounted because the flaw is still there' to which the response was 'no, a flaw that never comes up in actual play is not a flaw'. That's not about all problems lacking examples, it's specifically about the "OHMYGOD ASMODEUS CAN BE KILLED BY PEASANTS THIS GAME IS DUM!!1!" Complaint family.

I don't get what the big deal is. If you stand like an idiot in the middle of an evenly-spaced army of peasant archers in a completely featureless area and don't have something like invisibility, teleport, wall of X, fog cloud, gust of wind, fly... and sit there and try and melee them down one at a time, yes you will get killed. Even then, you can negate a good chunk of the criticals by picking up the first archer you kill and using it as cover if you're medium sized and have reasonable strength. If you're large or larger you can maybe GTFO easier since your move speed is probably better and long range grants disadvantage.

If the peasants' eyes are closed it doesn't matter what it is the army is trying to kill, it won't succeed. Even assuming you allow the peasants to all target the correct square, they'll be firing with disadvantage which will negate 95% of the crits they would generate.

Forrestfire

2015-01-26, 06:19 PM

So are we looking for a game that runs fine no matter how bad the DM is? :smallsmile: That might not be feasible, and even if you could write one the rules would probably be bizarre. We don't criticize a sport because it can't be played by the morbidly obese, do we want to criticize a social game when a person with personality disorders can't play it well?

(I support the idea of the rules, especially the DMG, trying to steer DMs in the right direction. Many of the bad ones are probably teachable. But in my experience the effort it takes to make a ruleset sabotage proof (a) makes the rules a clunky nightmare, and (b) probably can't succeed anyway.)

Mostly I'm aggravated by how lazy the rules-writing for skills is. The fact that differing expectations on what is feasible for a character to accomplish with a roll has a high chance of causing friction in many groups is another issue entirely. I just don't like that the rules default to "if there's any mismatch in expectation, this will cause an argument", rather than at least giving something in the book (even a single paragraph would have worked) to create some common ground between groups, and between players, and between players and DMs.

Icewraith

2015-01-26, 08:35 PM

Actually, most tables differ in expectations with what is feasible for a skilled character to do anyways. If you've got a table, the person who disagrees argues for the DM to houserule it anyways. If the disagreeing person is the DM, it gets houseruled anyways. The argument still happens, it's just now only between the particular DM and the player instead of the particular DM, the player, and the guy who made the table.

archaeo

2015-01-26, 08:51 PM

Mostly I'm aggravated by how lazy the rules-writing for skills is.

It's not lazy, it's concise! :smallbiggrin:

The fact that differing expectations on what is feasible for a character to accomplish with a roll has a high chance of causing friction in many groups is another issue entirely. I just don't like that the rules default to "if there's any mismatch in expectation, this will cause an argument"

I would consider the big "Master of World" section to be the clear and obvious bulwark against this, since it very much assumes that the DM is going to be purposefully looking to satisfy their players, ideally by providing a play experience that matches their expectations. Ability checks falls right into line with this, and if there's a mismatch between expectation and reality, the system just assumes that you can handle it like an adult instead of like a child.

common ground between groups, and between players, and between players and DMs.

Why is common ground between groups worthwhile? Every game is going to be different, every game always has been different.

Common ground between players and between the players and their DM is something the system can't foster. That's a social thing. A PHB that could make antagonistic, obnoxious people into functioning friends would be worth so much more than $50 MSRP.

JFahy

2015-01-26, 09:06 PM

Mostly I'm aggravated by how lazy the rules-writing for skills is. The fact that differing expectations on what is feasible for a character to accomplish with a roll has a high chance of causing friction in many groups is another issue entirely. I just don't like that the rules default to "if there's any mismatch in expectation, this will cause an argument", rather than at least giving something in the book (even a single paragraph would have worked) to create some common ground between groups, and between players, and between players and DMs.

Eh, what you call lazy I call simple and flexible. :) You can do a gritty campaign where a six foot broad jump in heavy armor is Medium, or a crazy anime campaign where running on airborne snowflakes is Medium. I think I like that better than the "you can jump no more than twelve feet and if you jump thirteen feet you're playing a totally different game" stance. Are players really that fragile, that the game's going to devolve into an argument as soon as there's any mismatch in expectation? <rant>Do people really have that-low expectations for themselves?</rant>

Forrestfire

2015-01-26, 09:06 PM

"Concise" doesn't really cut it, when all it'd take is a paragraph or two of the book.

Common ground between groups is valuable because it allows you to play the game with multiple social circles without having to relearn it every time. I guess it's not necessarily the most important thing, but I still think it's pretty damn important, especially for people trying to get into the game, or who play with lots of people. And maybe "arguments" was overstating it (more likely, it'd just stop gameplay as things are discussed and eventually agreed on), but there are still issues, because even when it comes to adults, many people consider their opinion and expectations (myself included, when it comes to some things) to be more valuable than those of others, especially if those of others are seen as wrong. Maybe I've had too much exposure to people of this sort, and it's coloring my opinion of the game? Who knows...

In any case, you're right that a PHB that could make antagonistic, obnoxious people into functioning friends would be worth more than $50. The issue here is that, to me, the PHB as it is is not worth $50. I would not pay that much for these rules, and the only reason I'm playing the game is because I have access to a friend's PHB when we're actually gaming. There are better-designed games out there for free that hit many of the same points that 5e does, without the brand identity. And honestly, the brand identity isn't worth much to me, beyond pushing me to at least try it. The game's fun, but not $150 fun.

In all honestly, that's probably part of my biggest gripe. The game had way too much "make it up as you go" in it for me to consider a worthy purchase of rules. If I wanted that (and sometimes I do), I'd go play Fate or something instead. That game flows better than 5e, works better as a narrative system, and is free.

... Not that that stopped me from buying the DMG for $25 when I found a good deal on it... 5e, with a good group, is fun. Combat's fun, the system has issues that I really dislike, but they're not big enough to do anything more than complain about. Every D&D has had issues. 1e and 2e were utter messes, 3.5 was a broken pile of rules holes, 4e's early monster math was bad, and was laid out in a way that pushed away many players before they even tried it, and 5e has some lazy writing, some broken math, and incredibly boring monster design (compared to the stuff I'd been spoiled with in previous editions).

JFahy

2015-01-26, 09:08 PM

Maybe I've had too much exposure to people of this sort, and it's coloring my opinion of the game? Who knows...

Yeah, you're making me wonder if I've been really lucky or if you've been really unlucky. :smallwink:

Forrestfire

2015-01-26, 09:14 PM

I've been a bit of unlucky and a bit of lucky, I think. I've thankfully mostly been an observer in 99% of the situations like this I've seen. Most of my gaming experiences have been good, because I make it a point to only play with people I know are reasonable people. The issues I've complained about here are all things I've managed to carefully sidestep... But in all of the gaming communities I've been in in real life, there is a massive amount of people that would cause these sorts of problems. Flgs' have many of them, and online communities have many of them. Just look at all the threads about bad players or bad DMs...

So I think I might just be a bit cynical as a result of watching these gaming communities for something like ten years and thanking god I mostly just play with my friends.

archaeo

2015-01-26, 09:23 PM

"Concise" doesn't really cut it, when all it'd take is a paragraph or two of the book.

There are multiple paragraphs spread across two books. It's purposefully open-ended to allow for tables to make their own decisions about what kinds of games they like. I don't see this as a problem, and you do. So it goes.

Common ground between groups is valuable because it allows you to play the game with multiple social circles without having to relearn it every time. I guess it's not necessarily the most important thing, but I still think it's pretty damn important, especially for people trying to get into the game, or who play with lots of people.

Except it's not like you have to "relearn it every time." It's still 5e. You say, "Okay, we're playing with feats, multiclassing, the DMG combat rules, and heroic rests." Maybe you copy those bits out of the DMG for players that don't have them. Everybody's caught up in ten minutes.

This pales in comparison to all the other ways the game is vastly different at every table. You have to learn a few new rules, sure; how does that compare to having to learn a whole new setting, maybe one that has literally never existed before that moment, along with all the people in that setting, and the plot, and your fellow party members, and the clues to the mystery you have to solve, and all the junk on your character sheet...

The issue here is that, to me, the PHB as it is is not worth $50. I would not pay that much for these rules, and the only reason I'm playing the game is because I have access to a friend's PHB when we're actually gaming. There are better-designed games out there for free that hit many of the same points that 5e does, without the brand identity. And honestly, the brand identity isn't worth much to me, beyond pushing me to at least try it. The game's fun, but not $150 fun.

Well, for one thing, nobody's paying $150 to just play 5e. You practically have to go out of your way to spend that much money on the books.

But, that said, you're absolutely right. There are a bunch of fun games that are totally free and arguably "better" than 5e. But you're not buying a set of rules; you're buying the ability to play "the world's greatest roleplaying game." You're buying (or borrowing! which is totally reasonable! the library probably has a copy!) the ability to understand the core rules of a system which will, undoubtedly, be a pillar of the TRPG community for years to come, barring unforeseen crashes in the 5e market.

In all honestly, that's probably part of my biggest gripe. The game had way too much "make it up as you go" in it for me to consider a worthy purchase of rules. If I wanted that (and sometimes I do), I'd go play Fate or something instead. That game flows better than 5e, works better as a narrative system, and is free.

FATE is a pretty cool game! It's not D&D. People like playing D&D.

5e isn't "make it up as you go." It's "play the D&D you want to play." And you're not really "making it up," as such, but choosing from options that WotC provided, or making informed, common sense decisions about how to adjudicate ability checks. This does not strike me as making anything up, honestly.

But I'll leave it at that, and this thread to boot. I think it's really abundantly obvious where I stand on 5e, so I'll just let it go there.

Xetheral

2015-01-26, 10:41 PM

Why is common ground between groups worthwhile? Every game is going to be different, every game always has been different.

It's certainly possible to successfully run a game in a system where every table is different. However, if a system allows for common ground between groups, it becomes much easier for players and DMs to rely on the rules as a set of shared expectations. For example, on the topic of skills, a set of unified DCs means that players and DMs can both look at a character's sheet and know how good a character is at a particular skill in game-world terms. Without such a set of unified DCs, it's up to the DM to express to the players what a given bonus on a roll is going to mean in-game. Otherwise you run into problems where players choose actions for their characters based on a certain expectation of degree of competence, only to find out that with a given DM those expectations don't hold true.

Furthermore, as a DM it's easier to express to the players changes from a baseline, rather than trying to describe one's particular style for setting DCs.

Except it's not like you have to "relearn it every time." It's still 5e. You say, "Okay, we're playing with feats, multiclassing, the DMG combat rules, and heroic rests." Maybe you copy those bits out of the DMG for players that don't have them. Everybody's caught up in ten minutes.

And if there were modular rules for the skill system DCs, then it would be easy to express which ones a DM was using. But there aren't any rules at all for what constitutes a (e.g.) "hard" DC, and coherently expressing one's DMing philosophy on setting DCs is going to be very tricky.

Shared expectations are important, particularly in regards to what characters are capable of. As a DM I dread hearing the question: "Does my character think she can accomplish [x]?" On the one hand, it's a perfectly reasonable question coming from a player whose character would know how good they are at a particular task. On the other hand, it means that my players don't have a good enough sense of how their characters relate to the game world to be able to take advantage of their agency as PCs. When the rules don't provide a baseline set of shared expectations, it's more work for everyone involved.

Safety Sword

2015-01-26, 11:19 PM

It is the advancement of 2e that I wanted out of 3.x.

This just about sums it up for me.

It's a cleaned up (and logical) 2E that I always wanted. It's not bogged down with counting pluses and minuses to every damned roll of the dice ever and my players, in two seperate groups from ages 9 through 50 all love it.

It is approachable and fantastic.

archaeo

2015-01-27, 02:27 AM

But I'll leave it at that, and this thread to boot. I think it's really abundantly obvious where I stand on 5e, so I'll just let it go there.

so much for that :smallyuk:

It's certainly possible to successfully run a game in a system where every table is different. However, if a system allows for common ground between groups, it becomes much easier for players and DMs to rely on the rules as a set of shared expectations. For example, on the topic of skills, a set of unified DCs means that players and DMs can both look at a character's sheet and know how good a character is at a particular skill in game-world terms. Without such a set of unified DCs, it's up to the DM to express to the players what a given bonus on a roll is going to mean in-game. Otherwise you run into problems where players choose actions for their characters based on a certain expectation of degree of competence, only to find out that with a given DM those expectations don't hold true.

Furthermore, as a DM it's easier to express to the players changes from a baseline, rather than trying to describe one's particular style for setting DCs.

Maybe I'm just totally missing why this dispute exists. What would be a good example of "a set of unified DCs"? Is there a prior edition of D&D that did a really good job with this, or has 5e just kind of worn away all the cruft on what was already a virtually DM-dependent set of difficulty levels?

I tend to think that 5e, as a whole, creates a portable experience. We're all talking about the same game with no trouble; a shared vocabulary exists. It seems like the ability check system is one of the sticking points for this issue, and I sincerely don't understand it. What does a unified set of DCs look like? Do you have a big list, where virtually anything you can do is assigned a DC? At what point does that become absurdly unwieldy? Do people really use the list as-is, or is it so frequently house ruled and eyeballed that it may as well just be 5e's spare list?

And if there were modular rules for the skill system DCs, then it would be easy to express which ones a DM was using. But there aren't any rules at all for what constitutes a (e.g.) "hard" DC, and coherently expressing one's DMing philosophy on setting DCs is going to be very tricky.

I think there is no rule for what constitutes "hard" because the designers assumed that the DM would fairly adjudicate it. The DMG certainly provides a concise explanation of what "hard" requires: a high ability score and proficiency in the skill. What more can really be desired, beyond a list of concrete examples of each difficulty class?

Shared expectations are important, particularly in regards to what characters are capable of. As a DM I dread hearing the question: "Does my character think she can accomplish [x]?" On the one hand, it's a perfectly reasonable question coming from a player whose character would know how good they are at a particular task. On the other hand, it means that my players don't have a good enough sense of how their characters relate to the game world to be able to take advantage of their agency as PCs. When the rules don't provide a baseline set of shared expectations, it's more work for everyone involved.

Do you find that this happens often in 5e? Or more often than in other editions?

I realize I just asked a bunch of questions instead of making solid points, but it's hard for me to understand this point of view.

ghost_warlock

2015-01-27, 06:08 AM

So far as the DMG goes, I came across something the other day that lead to a good deal of frustration.

The information regarding the generation of settlements (towns, etc.) is introduced on pages 15-20, but the tables for generating a settlement randomly aren't detailed until page 112.

Likewise, dungeon generation is introduced on pages 99-105, but the random dungeon generation is tucked away back in the appendix starting on page 290.

All the stuff for building towns should have been detailed in the same section. Likewise, all the stuff for building dungeons should have been collapsed into one section as well. I should not have be flipping between two sections, almost 100 pages apart, to make a town.

Kurald Galain

2015-01-27, 01:41 PM

How did I miss this thread?

Overall, the 5E design does a good job of fixing the most common complaints about 4E (e.g. its slow combat, overly complicated character generation, and lack of verisimilitude).

And it should be common knowledge by now that I dislike 5E's skill system :smalltongue:

Knaight

2015-01-27, 08:30 PM

Maybe I'm just totally missing why this dispute exists. What would be a good example of "a set of unified DCs"? Is there a prior edition of D&D that did a really good job with this, or has 5e just kind of worn away all the cruft on what was already a virtually DM-dependent set of difficulty levels?
Basically, it's where instead of having a single scale of DCs ranked by adjective, you instead have a list of DCs under every skill for specific implementations of it. 3.x did this, and a lot of people miss it.

Like a lot of things in 3.x that a lot of people apparently miss (the monster classes and NPC-PC symmetry come to mind), I'm of the "good riddance" opinion.

Eslin

2015-01-27, 11:58 PM

Basically, it's where instead of having a single scale of DCs ranked by adjective, you instead have a list of DCs under every skill for specific implementations of it. 3.x did this, and a lot of people miss it.

Like a lot of things in 3.x that a lot of people apparently miss (the monster classes and NPC-PC symmetry come to mind), I'm of the "good riddance" opinion.

Yep, I miss both of those.

Forrestfire

2015-01-28, 12:02 AM

On a side note, I have to say, having finally gotten a chance to look through the DMG for a while without focusing on the rules, the art in it is phenomenal. And varied. They really outdid themselves. I guess that counts as an "it's been a while" review?

http://i.imgur.com/tHNs5nh.jpg

mr_odd

2015-01-28, 12:29 AM

Envyus

2015-01-28, 12:43 AM

The whole "high-level Fighter vs 100 commoners" debate really just highlights the 5E Caster Edition flaw more than anything, IMO. High level casters have no problems dispatching (or outperforming) 100 commoners.

Guess what with just one or two of the rules from the DMG to make large combats easier. A High level fighter can easily handle 100 commoners.

Lots of the complaints being made are rather stupid about accuracny. Someone actually used the Cleaving and Mob Attack rules to have his party of 4 level 18's (Containing a Fighter, Monk, Warlock and Druid fight an army of 250 Orc's. They won with only a bit of difficulty.

strangebloke

2015-01-28, 01:12 AM

I like it. I was able to teach 5e in a little over an hour to a group of total tabletop newbies. That's a huge selling point for me.

I love bounded accuracy. If I wanted to play a demigod, I'd play exalted, which does a way better job at that sort of thing that 4e/3.5 ever did.

None of the classes/paths are gimped too badly. Sure, wizard 20 still outclasses monk 20 by a bit, but the wizard will still need some backup in melee after a few encounters.

As I mostly DM, I like the flexibility as well. It means that I can set a DC for, say, persuading a commoner to follow you without a player jumping on me with a "Nuh-uh, that's not the DC for that check."

JAL_1138

2015-01-28, 03:20 PM

Except it's not like you have to "relearn it every time." It's still 5e. You say, "Okay, we're playing with feats, multiclassing, the DMG combat rules, and heroic rests." Maybe you copy those bits out of the DMG for players that don't have them. Everybody's caught up in ten minutes.

This pales in comparison to all the other ways the game is vastly different at every table. You have to learn a few new rules, sure; how does that compare to having to learn a whole new setting, maybe one that has literally never existed before that moment, along with all the people in that setting, and the plot, and your fellow party members, and the clues to the mystery you have to solve, and all the junk on your character sheet...

Agreed. It worked fine in 2e, although the Player's Option splats did make it pretty much a whole 'nother game. But the drop-in rule variants in the PHB & DMG in 2e worked fine from table to table--or even at the same table in different campaigns--and the variants in 5e will work pretty similarly. Besides the modular rules there are a couple of grey areas that will need houseruled or interpreted (much like AD&D again) which will differ DM to DM, but talking those over for a while on how they'll go should sort that out.It's not much different than "We're using this, this, and this splatbook, but not that one or that one...(etc.)" from any other edition.

Granted, I liked 2e more than 3.X or 4th, so that 5e reminds me of a cleaned-up / fixed do-over of 3rd with 2e sensibilities makes it my second-or-third (I'm still unsure of whether I like Moldvay+Cook&Marsh better) favorite version. It's my favorite of the editions I'm likely to get to play anytime soon, or get anyone else to play, since apparently no one these days likes THAC0, combat tables, weird subsystems, wonky multiclassing/dual-classing, nonexistent encounter-balancing guidelines, or their characters dying horribly all the time. :smalltongue:

bokodasu

2015-01-29, 10:47 AM

For everything below, add "IN MY OPINION" at the beginning and end of every sentence. Obviously enjoyment of any game is subjective and there are lots of games available for people who find different parts of RPGs fun.

I really like 5e overall. I'm not going to say there aren't bugs - the crafting system is... well, I started to say it's among the worst things WotC ever designed, but saying that it *was* designed would be giving it too much credit. And I have a couple of players with a deep and abiding love of crafting, so I have to come up with something for them.

I like the turn it's taken away from tactical battle simulation. Basic was all about saying "I'm doing this" and the DM saying "Ok!" or "Ok, you try to do that, but this other thing happens instead!" Every later edition went further into "here are the rules for doing things, and if you can't make the dice roll, you can't do the thing." I'm not a rules-heavy kind of person. GURPS depresses and angers me. But I'm not really a pure storytelling fan either - monster-piñata is fun, and fighting is fun, and rules make those things fun. Coming up with a clever hiding place or a tricky ruse are fun things too, and putting too many rules/dice rolls on them makes it just more fighting instead of creative problem solving.

I feel like bounded accuracy has given back a more cohesive feeling to the world. Back in the olden days, you didn't worry too much about what would challenge the party and what would overwhelm them, because you trusted them to be able to figure out when to run away. Or you let them die, that was just part of the game. In 3.5, you had to willingly not think about why all these dragons suddenly appeared when the characters hit a certain level.

I get what people are saying about the rest system. Flavor wise... I'm torn, because stopping for a breather every now and then to bandage wounds and have a snack makes sense. Waking up totally uninjured every morning... not so much. But I like the effect it has on being able to tell the stories I want to tell, so I'm ok with that. (Moment of truth: I did the "full HP in the morning thing" in Basic too, even though it was decidedly not part of the rules. Healing was hard to come by and waiting around and doing nothing was BORING, and who plays a game to be bored?)

If you don't like the short rest ability recharge, you can always do it like
breath weapons - roll a d6 every hour, and on a 6, the ability recharges. That works out to roughly the same as 2-3 short rests, unless you're unlucky - and maybe the party is unlucky and doesn't get to take 2-3 short rests that day. I dunno, it could use some refinement, but it's a starting point.

I don't understand the reasoning behind complaining that one person is not as powerful as an army of 100 people. I mean... ok? Sure? There are genres that cater to that power level (superhero), but traditional fantasy not so much, unless you are talking about the Bad Guy. Outfitting and keeping up an army of 100 people isn't cheap or easy, either. (True story: I work for an organization that people keep saying needs to hire more, but nobody ever thinks about the fact that there aren't as many qualified people in the nation who also want to do these jobs as there are job positions that they want to open.)

And the "but under this system, people doing something that should be easy for them can fail!" is a feature, not a bug. Another true story: a couple of weeks ago, I was in a competition where you got up to three attempts, but one miss and you're out for that event. One woman who is much, much better than I am picked her opener at what should have been an easy weight for her - I've seen her run with this weight with my own two eyes, she does it as a warmup. And she dropped it. No reason, her strategy was perfect, she didn't do anything wrong, it was just one of those random things that happens. And so I beat her at that event, despite it being one of my worst ones.

It's a thing that happens, and when it happens against you it can be terrible, but when it happens in your favor, it can be pretty exhilarating. I don't want to play a game that's just a list of all the things you win at - frankly, I find that tedious, even if polishing my huge pile of magic items at the end is a little fun-ish.

Sadly I haven't gotten to play yet, only DM. My players would probably have different things to say about the system. They are very set in a 3.5 mentality - because of not doing things like scouting ahead or trying anything other than head-on attacks or realizing that they can't win every fight and letting the bad guy escape when she's about to run through two rooms of reinforcements (that the party is aware of and knows could overwhelm them even if they were at full strength) and they are all down to single-digit HP, they were almost TPK'd last week and are setting themselves up to be TPK'd next week. I did warn them, but I guess it's hard to believe that when every time you've been up against "overwhelming odds" before, you've been able to fight your way out of it. It's ok, I already wrote out the player death rules, so we're good to go.

bokodasu

2015-01-29, 11:20 AM

Reading more responses, two more things!

Count me in the "good riddance" camp for things like monster transparency. I never played 4e (except a bit of Gamma World) so I can't say how that compares, but I am utterly charmed by the monster special abilities. There were some berserkers in the last encounter I ran, and I found their "I get advantage but that gives you advantage" mechanic just... completely satisfying for simulating a berserker attack. Monsters shouldn't need as much work to create as characters do, because players only need one character and I need dozens of monsters. But there's nothing stopping me from using the PC rules to create a monster if I feel like it. I find it a nice balance.

Personally I don't care how difficult it makes playing as a monster, because I don't run that kind of game. If you say "I want to work through the angst of being a medusa who just wants to be loved!" hey, cool, sounds fun, but you're going to have to find someone else to DM for you.

DCs, too. I don't want players to think they can overrule me on how difficult something is - if they're standing on a 1" ledge and there's a flying creature attacking them in the middle of a lightning storm, I don't really feel like stopping for a big argument about "but it says a tumble check is a DC15, so I flip off the ledge onto the Roc's back!" or whatever. I don't want them to feel like they don't know what their characters can do, either - if they explain what they want to do and I think it's ridiculous, I'll give them a chance to explain why it's not. And I don't think "how difficult do I judge that leap to be?" is an unreasonable question - it's the one I ask myself before *I* jump across something, so why wouldn't you ask the DM? I'm not gonna lie to my players, that would just be being a jerk for no reason. ("YOU think it's pretty easy. Roll a 25, muah ha ha!" No.)

Mostly I'm finding running the game to be smoother and easier than 3.5 was. And if it's smoother and easier, and still at least the same amount of fun, then I will do it more often, and then everybody gets to play more, and everyone wins!

My major complaint is that WotC doesn't believe in being able to look things up and seems to be stuck in the TSR mindset of "computers are these giant room-sized boxes that do basic calculations and probably nobody has access to them anyway" and refuses to release even a searchable PDF of their materials. It's not like we're not going to obtain the PDFs anyway, so why wouldn't they want to take our money for them? I wrote my own character-creation/tracking tool - I would have preferred to throw money at that problem too, but sadly they seem to want me to keep it and invest my time instead.

The final nice thing I have to say is that if you like 3.5 or 4e better... those still exist, and you can continue playing them. If you think other systems do what you want out of D&D better than D&D does, then you can play those instead! It is a beautiful world jam-packed with tabletop RPGs, and everyone should be able to find something they like. Heck, I have friends who play this crazy "fantasy football" game that uses real football games instead of dice to generate stats and outcomes, and it's not my cup of tea, but they seem to be really into it.

Vogonjeltz

2015-01-30, 05:40 PM

You greatly underestimate the stubbornness of people, especially the sort of people who would be causing these issues in the first place. The game runs fine with a good DM. That's a given. Every game runs fine with a good enough DM. This doesn't make it good for rules to be written under the assumption that the DM will be both amicable and willing to discuss things, because in my experience, the bad DMs greatly outnumber the good ones.

I think the assumption that the DM isn't deliberately trying to drive their players off is a safe one. If that's the problem, then it's not the rules or the way they are written that is the problem.

Could you give me page numbers for the PHB ones? Because all I'm seeing in my book is a list of DCs with vague titles that are meaningless for constructing any sort of expectations regarding the game other than "well I guess the DM is god and I shouldn't build towards anything without clarifying exactly how everything works with him."

Sure I can do that again. Starting on page 175 of the PHB it spells out what strength check is, what a Strength (Athletics) check covers, and what other sorts of activities a DM might call for a Strength check for. On that page it also indicates a variant wherein one might do a Constitution (Athletics) check or a Strength (Intimidation) check, for example, as appropriate.

That passage basically says "you can do athletic things", again leaving it completely in the hands of the DM to decide how it works.

Actually it's quite specific that it applies to difficult situations for climbing, jumping, or swimming. Are you not trying to do one of those things? Then Athletics probably doesn't apply. It even gives examples of those things. So if your DM doesn't just say: Yes, you can automatically do this thing, then you get the proficiency bonus when rolling if you're proficient in Athletics. The only thing the DM is deciding there is how difficult the activity is.

And yes, that's going to be subjective. I like that, it's a strength of the system because it cuts down immensely on flipping through books and lets the DM make calls on situations in the moment, saving time and effort for everyone involved.

Why is the wizard only using single-target spells? Stuff like Fireball, Circle of Death, Cloudkill, Simulacrum, and the like are all useful tools in the wizard's arsenal.

Why not? What is prepared is highly variable per Wizard, and the safety/applicability of aoe is quite situationally dependent. For example, Fireball and Circle of Death are actually just as likely to frag the Wizard as the peasants if the confrontation doesn't take place in a flat featureless plain (as so many of these hypothetical confrontations seem to).

I'm not saying the Wizard won't take quite a few people with him, I'm just saying he's only got 4 spells above 6th level per day (6th level being potentially replenishable) and he only can memorize 25 spells per day for those 22 slots. So what does the Wizard do against the first 5 waves of 6 enemies? If he tries to use cantrips the next wave will have time to close with him, then the one after that.

Yeah, I was referring to those very guidelines not existing. 'You try to jump an unusually long distance' - what? We already know how long you can jump, it's one foot per point of strength - if you want to jump further than that, what kind of roll? It doesn't say. If my strength is 15 and I want to jump 16 feet, what do I roll?

Please note that 'it varies by table' is not an answer for rules like that - if that kind of thing is supposed to vary by table, the actual jump distance based on strength would vary. You can't have it both ways.

To answer your first question, you don't roll anything. "Your Strength determines how far you can jump." If you want to jump 16 feet, get stronger.

Use their remaining 20 spells? Seriously, if you want to kill a bunch of commoners as a wizard you either use aoe spells or just animate a bunch of skeletons.

Are you seriously implying the wizard's going to try to kill 100 peasants by using single target spells? What, is Nukevoker McOverkill only capable of using disintegrate?

Or they run out of spells tout de suite. No good reason for 100 peasants to all engage at once, conveniently congregating as closely as possible for the Wizard.