The Thrown Property, and previous edition assumptions

[KorvinStarmast]

When I first got to D&D 5e after a one time reading through of the Basic Rules download (PHB had yet to be released) I didn't quite 'grok' the difference between ranged weapons and thrown weapons. The issue of "weapons properties" had not quite clicked. (My life cleric's two weapons were mace and javelin when I first started).
I later had the light go on when I was talking to my nephew about javelin versus dagger versus short bow as my cleric tended to walk about with a jav prepared, but my dex wasn't great. His rogue usually had a dagger handy, or a bow, depending.
He observed that I can use my strength for + to hit with a jav or a dagger, so I looked at the rules again and went "aha!"

That's the thing about new editions. There are some assumptions not to make in re the old editions, it is worth taking a look at how things work.

Crawford once again has to address this via a tweet recently:


Douglas Blackman @iamdiggerdoug Replying to @JeremyECrawford: So when you throw a dagger, surely it becomes a ranged weapon?
Jeremy Crawford: The act of throwing a melee weapon doesn't transform it into a ranged weapon. Melee and ranged are categories of weapons in the rules. Similarly, whacking someone with a longbow doesn't transform it into a melee weapon. #DnD

I am glad that my nephew pointed that out, since it got me to more carefully look at quite a few more rules, which prompted a lot more questions to my DM so that I better understood this new edition.
(I had not played 4e, and had stopped 3.x e a decade or so before)

What "oops, not quite like my last edition" changes caught you by surprise?

[nickl_2000]

The Shield Spell giving +5 AC instead of +4

[Elminster298]

Not being able to delay your turn in order to gain a better strategic place in the initiative order. When I DM I still allow this even though it is not by the book any longer.

[Eric Diaz]

Not being able to delay your turn in order to gain a better strategic place in the initiative order. When I DM I still allow this even though it is not by the book any longer.

Same here. But then I switched to side initiative.

[nickl_2000]

Also concentration sometimes trips up our DM who regularly plays both 5e with our table and Pathfinder with a few others. In our last encounters the NPC bad guy "cheated" and had Shield of Faith, Vampiric Touch, and Hold Person all running at once :smallbiggrin:

It didn't kill us, and he boosted the experience from the encounter due to the fact that it was much harder than it would have been otherwise. We are all human and often look back and go "oops, I think I just cheated in that last encounter, sorry about that"

[strangebloke]

Also concentration sometimes trips up our DM who regularly plays both 5e with our table and Pathfinder with a few others. In our last encounters the NPC bad guy "cheated" and had Shield of Faith, Vampiric Touch, and Hold Person all running at once :smallbiggrin:

It didn't kill us, and he boosted the experience from the encounter due to the fact that it was much harder than it would have been otherwise. We are all human and often look back and go "oops, I think I just cheated in that last encounter, sorry about that"

My one gripe with concentration as a mechanic is that it forces the DM to be very diligent. You have to remember whether or not each character has a concentration spell active, and also remember which spells are one-round concentration spells. (like guidance, for example) It's a lot of bookkeeping and a not-insignificant burden.

[Cynthaer]

Not being able to delay your turn in order to gain a better strategic place in the initiative order. When I DM I still allow this even though it is not by the book any longer.

I've always felt like the designers intentionally omitted a Delay option with the expectation that every table would either assume it existed or homerule it in.

One problem with including it in the official rules is that any proper RAW implementation would have to be very careful to not encourage weird action economy shenanigans with things like "until your next turn" effects. And adding clauses to make sure those end at the right time just introduces more bookkeeping to combat. Not, you know, a whole lot of bookkeeping, but every little bit counts.

Probably the bigger reason to exclude it is just to smooth out combat for new players, though. When I was younger, I was in a couple of groups that got completely bogged down in combat because everyone was trying to optimize the turn order with six player characters involved.

By not having "Delay" in the section of the PHB with all the other important combat choices, the designers make it a bit more likely that any given group will just run the normal turn order, and less likely that they'll trap themselves in a boring loop of analyzing turn order permutations.

It also means Delays are more likely to be on an individual, ad hoc basis ("Actually, can I wait until after the cleric buffs me?" -> "Sure, I'll move your initiative down to 6.") instead of treated as A Core Combat Technique to Be Optimized in Every Battle ("Ok, based on our current initiatives, what's the optimal sequence of Delays and actions for this round?").

[Tiadoppler]

Having DMed a lot of 4e with the same group, my players got used to being able to "downgrade" an action: Turning a Standard Action into a Move Action, or a Move Action into a Minor Action, which lets a player potentially use multiple Minor Actions per turn. 5e doesn't do that, and it took some getting used to.


Re: No more Delaying turns
I haven't noticed the absence. If initiative goes A B C, and a combo requires B A C, A can always ready an action for "when B gets into position".