[Sell Me] 5e. A game for a grognard? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Man_Over_Game

2019-01-11, 05:35 PM

5e is made with the philosophy that everything is a bit loose, so that the DM can easily fill in the gaps where the rules aren't concrete.

For example, DCs for EVERYTHING scale on a range of 5 (impossibly easy) to 30 (impossibly hard) for every level.

Additionally, rather than a +1 - +5 tally for a bunch of different conditional things for different actions, the game utilizes a concept called Advantage or Disadvantage for everything, which is simply just rerolling and keeping the highest or lowest of the 2d20.

Blinded attack? That's Disadvantage.

Drank a potion of Nigh Invulnerability? Your saving throws have Advantage for the next minute.

Make a called shot to the boss's weak point? Disadvantage on your attack, but add +10 damage if it hits. (Not a real rule, but why not?)

Everything uses a common system, so you don't need to track much of anything. Most of the classes are inherently balanced well, so you don't really need to sway anything in anyone's favor. There are features that recharge halfway in the day, and others that recharge after a full night's sleep, so you can sway between having a ton of fights or a few.

While 5e has hard mechanics and rules, a lot of it is written in a way that the DM can easily pick and pull what he wants or decides whether or not a rule is relevant. And as a DM, with everything using the same scale, it's fairly easy to make up scenarios on the fly or adopt a mechanic in the middle of a boss fight (the constant thunderclaps of the machine knock you prone if you don't succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw at the start of each of your turns, etc).

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That being said, a lot of the core mechanics revolve around combat and having a single DM, so it might not fit your playstyle. There are a lot of homebrew solutions that people have made that fit pretty well together, though, due to the fact that the system is pretty streamlined.

Hecuba

2019-01-11, 05:51 PM

So... I haven’t played in an edition past the 2e era. I’m not just a grognard of D&D. That’s somewhat misleading. I branched out in the 2000’s into narrative and ultra-lite beer & pretzel games. Up to and including 2e is still reasonable in terms of crunch...not too much, but it’s really at the top of my crunch scale. My first browse at the 3e books when it came out scarred me. I’m lazy. I like to run things off the cuff, but preparing dungeons and scenarios is a fun little hobby in and of itself if it’s well codified.

I’m enjoying occasional dips into OD&D and B/X. Still lots of fun. But I’m wanting something that is well-supported in which I won’t have any trouble finding interested players. However, looking on the character sheets, it still looks like a lot of stuff to track. I know it’s the standard for 300+ tomes, which I find unnecessary and off-putting. I want a game that’s supported that might allow me to run games in several modes: standard crawls, intrigue-based, or even more freeform player-driven action in which I can improv.

Is 5e for me? Does it run (from the DMs side of things) fast and loose enough for a ‘casual gamer’?

Sell or unsell me, please!

Yes, it is for you.

My take away of 5e is that it:

Aims for the same general tone as early-to-mid 2nd edition
Uses a game engine that adopts the core mechanical refinements of the 3rd edition d20 system (which I find generally superior to the TSR engine, which was still bogged down with legacy war-gaming elements).
Avoids (or at least limits) the rules complexity and power creep of 3rd and late 2nd edition by maintaining overarching design guidance and static mechanical power targets.
A better long-term product strategy for maintaining #3 (above), chiefly in terms of long-form adventure modules representing a significant chunk of publications (as opposed to leaning primarily on publishing new mechanics).
Uses a light-touch approach to combat and other tactical play, which makes it play faster and looser than the more tactically intricate 4th edition*.

5th sounds exactly like what you are asking for. Give it a try.

*Random aside on 4th: 4th edition was a well made, enjoyable, and intricate tactical game. In many ways, the resembles a great deal what I would expect if the original proposition of D&D 74 - adapting the strategic tabletop war gaming that descend from Chainmail to a tactical 5 man context - were executed on a blank slate today. That makes it a good model of what D&D might look like if it were invented today, but it also inherently abandons all of the changes then make D&D what it is to most people.

HappyDaze

2019-01-11, 06:17 PM

Thanks! SotDL is lighter? I know it’s somewhat popular and has good production values, but it seems only a fraction as popular as D&D. Would you agree with that?

Sure, it gets far less exposure than D&D, but that's true of just about any game. However, you can spin up a game of SotDL very quickly and it requires no system mastery to enjoy.

JAL_1138

2019-01-11, 06:37 PM

Speaking as someone who started playing D&D at the tail end of 2e, didn’t much like the “Players’ Option” splats (particularly Combat & Tactics’ combat system), tried 3.X and didn’t much like it, tried 4e and didn’t like it, and finally tried 5e...I’m pretty sold on 5e. I’m not necessarily saying it’s a better game than 2e—I actually like (parts of) 2e better still—but it’s much easier to get a 5e game going nowadays, and...well, it’s turned out to be a close second to 2e in terms of my enjoyment of it. It manages to bring back a lot of the feel of older D&D despite having considerably different mechanics. It felt like I was playing D&D again, even though the rules were quite different, not something I didn’t really feel like I recognized anymore like I felt about 3.X and 4e.

5e is fairly easy to DM. The rules for building reasonably-balanced encounters are easy enough to use, and various online encounter-builders like KoboldFightClub can make it even easier. Enemies aren’t built like PCs, unlike 3rd edition, so the amount of crunch in an enemy statblock is pretty manageable. The amount of rules you need to know off the top of your head, as opposed to looking up special circumstances, is pretty small, and the number of soecial circumstances you’ll need to look up is also fairly small. It’s got more crunch than the Red Box of Mentzer BECMI, yes, but it’s generally a bit...if not necessarily simpler per se, more streamlined and with a gentler learning curve than 2e. Fewer distinct subsystems like the percentile dice Thief skills, for instance. And the vast majority of fiddly bonuses and penalties from 3e/3.5 have been replaced by the Advantage/Disadvantage system, for another example.

For players, it’s quite forgiving of unoptimized character builds, and it’s a lot easier for DMs to avoid accidentally killing low-level characters than AD&D was. It’s generally regarded as the most “newbie friendly” of the various editions; there’s mechanical depth to be found if you dig, but it’s also quite workable to just go with what looks cool. It’s hard to build an outright bad character, and combat isn’t horrendously complex and it tends to move reasonably fast.

A couple of things I always advise new 5e DMs:

First, to treat it as though it’s a completely new game with completely new rules, and don’t assume anything from prior editions carries over, even if it uses the same terminology as a prior edition. It might have carried over completely intact, or it might use the same term to mean something very different, or it might be very subtly different but in a way that does have significant gameplay implications. Approach 5e as a whole new beast and, perhaps paradoxically, it’ll be a lot easier to learn.

Second, to run it by the default rules, without houseruling or digging into optional DMG rules, for at least a short campaign—more than a few sessions, and definitely more than one session—before starting to change things around, so you can get a feel for the system and why it does the things it does. A lot of things I thought I’d dislike because they didn’t fit the “old school” style and preconceptions I’d brought from AD&D, actually turned out to work really well within the context of 5e, whereas things I tried to do to “make it more old-school” (mainly dialing up the lethality and toning down the “easy healing” via some optional rules in the DMG) turned out to work kinda poorly for the way 5e is designed.

My personal recommendation is to pick up the 5e Starter Set and play through the included adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver, either using the included pregenerated characters or by having the players create characters from the free SRD pdf (or the PHB if they’ve already got it). LMoP is a well-regarded, well-designed adventure module that serves as a great introduction to 5e’s mechanics, and the starter set also includes a reasonably simple straightforward overview of the basic rules except for character creation. The Starter Set generally runs less than $20 USD, and the SRD (and a couple of other PDFs that further simplify things, the “Basic Rules” pdfs) is free, so it won’t take a huge financial investment to see if 5e is for you or not.

SlackBadger

2019-01-11, 08:11 PM

Dude. It's the best version of the game since either 1E or 3.0 depending on your tastes. 5E is a greatest hits edition, and it hits a very nice sweet spot.

This is coming from someone who's been playing for 33 years, and worked at the publisher of the game for a little over a 1/3rd of that time.

niklinna

2019-01-11, 11:40 PM

If you liked any earlier version of D&D (4e was not D&D, sorry), you'll probably like 5e. It's more streamlined than prior versions, in good ways rather than bad ways.

But it's still D&D. You have chinese menus of options, races that have big mechanical effects on your classes, and arbitrary lists of spells with little said in the way of making up your own.

One specific change that stands out as worth mentioning is that in 5e, many spells require the caster to concentrate on them for the duration or they fizzle out, and you can only concentrate on one spell at a time. The basic idea is this limits buffs & debuffs you can have active at any one time. Various homebrews have added in feats or things that increase how many spells you can concentrate on, but to my knowledge in the official materials this is a hard limit. My problem with this mechanic is that the list of such spells seems completely motivated by gamist combat concerns rather than any sensible interpretation of things. Your mileage may vary.

roryb

2019-01-12, 12:27 AM

Wow! Thanks, all, for your detailed responses so far, especially those of you who know from where I’m coming. I may have some more questions. I certainly like that I can have a complete game without all the splatbooks 2e had, and that the support is geared toward adventures.

roryb

2019-01-12, 03:06 AM

MaxWilson

2019-01-12, 03:07 AM

DerficusRex

2019-01-12, 03:41 AM

...but — and I should have noted this in my initial observations before asking here — there is no pdf version?! That’s a dealbreaker for me. I don’t have the shelf space for large gamebooks. At most, I might be able to add one or two digest-sized volume of any size to my collection.

Sheesh. I guess this is to combat piracy? What century are we in now? :smallmad:

You might want to have a look at dndbeyond.com for electronic versions. You're buying access to book content through their site, not an electronic document, but they have an app that will cache the contents of the works you've purchased so you can reference them offline. They'll also let you purchase books piecemeal if you want, picking and choosing races, monsters, spells, items, etc. If you later want to buy the entire work, it's discounted by the amount you've already paid for the parts you have.

I've found it useful enough for ease of reference that I rarely use physical copies of anything now when running a game.

Yora

2019-01-12, 04:16 AM

For now I would just read the free Basic Rules pdf (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules?x=dnd/basicrules). It's the full game rules plus the four basic classes. There's a lot more in the Player's Handbook, but this is a perfectly adequate way to get an impression of the system and whether that looks inviting or not.

I'm someone who has come to loath 3rd edtion and never bothered with 4th edition, and have almost nothing but praise for B/X. And now I really like how 5th edition looks and can't wait to start my first campaign soon. But I find it quite important to understand that this game is not an improved version of either B/X or AD&D. That was what I was looking for when 5th edition came out, and why I went on to ignore it for the next several years.
But judging it now as its own game, I really like what I am seeing. But it's not AD&D 3rd edtion.

Ghatt

2019-01-12, 04:36 AM

As someone who cut their teeth on 1st edition AD&D, played some Pathfinder, and now 5e, along with other RPGs like FFGs Star Wars, I’d say 5e feels more like a sequel to 1e than it does 3e or 4e. Although, I’ve never played 4e, I have read the PHB.

Just DMed for my wife and her sisters a few days back and I ran it fast and loose. But, that really depends on the DM.

JAL_1138

2019-01-12, 06:55 AM

...but — and I should have noted this in my initial observations before asking here — there is no pdf version?! That’s a dealbreaker for me. I don’t have the shelf space for large gamebooks. At most, I might be able to add one or two digest-sized volume of any size to my collection.

Sheesh. I guess this is to combat piracy? What century are we in now? :smallmad:

The lack of legal pdf versions, rather than simply paid access to the (potentially quite pricy, but full of admittedly more powerful tools and features than a simple bookmarked pdf) D&DBeyond site, is infuriating and nonsensical, yes. That said, there are free pdfs of the “Basic Rules” (Player’s Basic Rules and DM’s Basic Rules, slimmed-down versions of the rules—nothing actually changed from the full version, but quite a lot of customization options such as feats, most classes, most subclasses, optional rules, a lot of spells, and a lot of monsters monsters omitted) and the SRD (much more optional content than the Basic rules, but not 100% complete by any stretch. Both have the fundamental system rules you’d need to play a game, though. So if you want to test drive 5e, doing so without resorting to piracy can cost you as little as “nothing but your group’s time.”).

MoiMagnus

2019-01-13, 07:10 AM

Second, to run it by the default rules, without houseruling or digging into optional DMG rules, for at least a short campaign—more than a few sessions, and definitely more than one session—before starting to change things around, so you can get a feel for the system and why it does the things it does. A lot of things I thought I’d dislike because they didn’t fit the “old school” style and preconceptions I’d brought from AD&D, actually turned out to work really well within the context of 5e, whereas things I tried to do to “make it more old-school” (mainly dialing up the lethality and toning down the “easy healing” via some optional rules in the DMG) turned out to work kinda poorly for the way 5e is designed.

This.
Houseruling is good, but most thing are in the rules for a reason, and usually a good one (and possibly a counter-intuitive one), and you may not understand it without testing. So use the standard rule (with feats, and giving only few magic items) first, and then adapt if needed.

Keravath

2019-01-13, 09:04 AM

Based on your comments. I would think it would be worth trying. The investment is relatively low since you can play it with just the Player's hand book. If you have DMed before the DMG is really not required unless you want some of the fluffier magic items. The monster manual would give you more opponents but some of introductory type modules (like Lost Mines of Phandelver if you want pre-created content) will give you most of what you need.

I mostly played AD&D (1e) and dabbled in the others. I personally find 5e to be much better designed, balanced and streamlined compared to any of the earlier editions while not sacrificing any of the role playing game flavor. It is still a dungeon's and dragons combat and role playing game ... it still has three main pillars of play ... social, exploration and combat. A DM can choose to run their campaign to emphasize any of these, mix it up or whatever they like. If you are looking for something that is NOT D&D then this is not what you want ... if you want a D&D system that is simpler and more streamlined than 1e, 2e and certainly 3e/3.5e/PF then this might be what you would like.

One of the reasons I think for the increased popularity of D&D is that they kept a lot of the flavor but applied some more simplified design mechanics so it retains a lot of fun and flexibility while dropping a lot of the minutiae that appealed to folks wanting to play a medieval fantasy simulation ... but not so much to folks interested in a fantasy role playing game.

Some of the design aspects
- there are only three types of dice rolls - attack rolls/saving throws and skill checks - each is a d20. There is a target number defined by the difficulty of the task and a modifier based on your stats/skills/level - roll the die and if it higher than the target number, you succeed. The mechanic is the same to resolve hitting someone in combat, avoiding full damage from a fireball, or convincing someone to let you into the busy pub.
- the idea of bounded accuracy. The modifiers are modest and as a result a level 20 character may only have a 25% better chance of hitting a creature than a level 1 might have. This makes it much easier to have a level or two gap or range in levels in a party and still have everyone feel like they are contributing. It also makes play into the higher levels more accessible and fun.

... lots of other little differences

However, as folks have suggested here ... try playing it and don't change anything until you have played quite a bit ... some of the elements that seem a bit overpowered when you first encounter them end up feeling quite well put together after being played for a while (e.g. doubling of all damage dice on a critical hit).

Ignimortis

2019-01-13, 09:10 AM

As someone who views 5e negatively (IMO, it's oversimplified and caters too much to sacred cows which are outright bad for the game), I'd still say it'll probably be a good game for you. While playing 5e, I'd always felt that it was something like editions before 3e, but streamlined and polished with some additions from 3e and 4e that mostly contributed to ease of play and accessibility. So in that way, 5e is definitely a game for grognards. There should definitely be PDFs for sale, probably at dndbeyond.com or something.

HappyDaze

2019-01-13, 09:26 AM

One word of caution for a grognard: 5e tends to be very soft-handed and forgiving to player characters. Character deaths after 5th level or so tend to be very rare, and magical healing is much less needed in this since anything short of death can be wiped away with a good night's sleep. There is almost nothing that an long (overnight) rest won't fix. Parties tend to go into each day at 100% capabilities, and this can become a problem if they are not required to spend that day's resources carefully. If you are used to extremely challenging resource management in your games, 5e doesn't really provide that beyond the realm of a single day.

Malifice

2019-01-13, 10:37 AM

HappyDaze

2019-01-13, 11:07 AM

You do need to be on top of the resource management aspect of the game, and encounter building, and managing your players adventuring days.

Once you get that though, the game works great.

Whereas in old school D&D the players were required to do their own resource management and management of days, and it wasn't the DM's problem if encounters were unbalanced (many of them were and it was up to the players to avoid or work around it). 5e is made for players that expect to be able to win all the time. It's vastly different from older (pre-3e) D&D in that regard.

roryb

2019-01-13, 11:51 AM

Based on your comments. I would think it would be worth trying. The investment is relatively low since you can play it with just the Player's hand book. If you have DMed before the DMG is really not required unless you want some of the fluffier magic items. The monster manual would give you more opponents but some of introductory type modules (like Lost Mines of Phandelver if you want pre-created content) will give you most of what you need.

That’s an intriguing idea, and one that perhaps I can get behind.

- the idea of bounded accuracy. The modifiers are modest and as a result a level 20 character may only have a 25% better chance of hitting a creature than a level 1 might have. This makes it much easier to have a level or two gap or range in levels in a party and still have everyone feel like they are contributing. It also makes play into the higher levels more accessible and fun.

That’s not what I would have expected. That’s a crazy notion.

As someone who views 5e negatively (IMO, it's oversimplified and caters too much to sacred cows which are outright bad for the game), I'd still say it'll probably be a good game for you. While playing 5e, I'd always felt that it was something like editions before 3e, but streamlined and polished with some additions from 3e and 4e that mostly contributed to ease of play and accessibility. So in that way, 5e is definitely a game for grognards. There should definitely be PDFs for sale, probably at dndbeyond.com or something.

Streamlined and polished is good. +

One word of caution for a grognard: 5e tends to be very soft-handed and forgiving to player characters. Character deaths after 5th level or so tend to be very rare, and magical healing is much less needed in this since anything short of death can be wiped away with a good night's sleep. There is almost nothing that an long (overnight) rest won't fix. Parties tend to go into each day at 100% capabilities, and this can become a problem if they are not required to spend that day's resources carefully. If you are used to extremely challenging resource management in your games, 5e doesn't really provide that beyond the realm of a single day.

That’s not surprising and doesn’t necessarily daunt me. I play some other heroic level contemporary-minded games, so I assume this would naturally creep into the design.

Whereas in old school D&D the players were required to do their own resource management and management of days, and it wasn't the DM's problem if encounters were unbalanced (many of them were and it was up to the players to avoid or work around it). 5e is made for players that expect to be able to win all the time. It's vastly different from older (pre-3e) D&D in that regard.

Hmm, that’s somewhat troubling. Are the guidelines for balance easy, and do they work?

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-13, 12:02 PM

Hmm, that’s somewhat troubling. Are the guidelines for balance easy, and do they work?

Yes and yes. Really, as long as you allow time and options for 1-3 short rests between each full rest (for days/events that matter) and average more than 1 resource-consuming encounter between each of those rests on those days, you'll be fine. You might hear "6-8 encounters", but that assumes medium (no substantial threat, small resource drain) encounters.

Another tip: 5e does not handle "big solo monster" fights well, especially at low levels. Action economy is king. Minions are your friends.

Mith

2019-01-13, 12:04 PM

Hmm, that’s somewhat troubling. Are the guidelines for balance easy, and do they work?

In my experience, the guidelines are a reasonable starting point for you to get a gut feeling to go from there.

When it comes to "targets are easier to hit", one thing to keep in mind is the HP is used as a defensive buffer, so the inflated HP to the damage of the players does mean that higher level threats are still threats with regards to combat. Yes you can hit the dragon easily enough, but it's going to annihilate you if you are not skilled enough to take it on.

As far as skills go, after you run through the game, if you like the system well enough, I recommend using 2d10 for skills, which curves the skill roll distribution, making the added bonus more apparent. For a even greater curve, use Proficiency Dice (1d4 instead of +2, 1d6 for +3, etc.) With Expertise maximising the roll (behaving as normal). This means that your skill rolls will tend greatly to your average roll, and your static modifier matters more, so you feel liked skilled people are actually good at what they do.

Malifice

2019-01-13, 12:10 PM

Hmm, that’s somewhat troubling. Are the guidelines for balance easy, and do they work?

The game works best with a median of around 6 medium-hard encounters per long rest (8 hour rest) with around 2-3 'short rests' of an hour granted over that same time frame.

So your average dungeon level, or similar.

Thats only adventuring days, not days of travel or roleplaying or days not spent with at least 1 encounter.

If you're running games with no more than 0-3 encounters in a single day as a median (i.e. more wilderness based, and less dungeon based) then there are options in the DMG for that (its called 'gritty realism' where long rests become a while week in town, and short rests are overnight affairs).

If you use too few encounters between long rests (whether you make them overnight, or a whole week), players will 'nova' and dump all their long rest abilities into that encounter and cream it.

This not only mucks about with encounter difficulty, it also invalidates several classes (Warlock, Fighter and Monk who are all Short rest based classes) while buffing others (Barbarians, Paladins and full Casters who are all long rest based).

Your natural reaction will be to dial up encounter difficulty. DONT! This only entrenches the above issue (players will be forced to nova, just to survive, and those short rest classes will suck even more) plus it leads to boring rocket tag, and a high chance of a random TPK.

The best way to deal with it is to push those six or so encounters on the party (with enough time to short rest at least twice) as a median. Make them ration those abilities, and use them when they count instead of dumping them all in the first few rounds (and ensuring your short rest classes, get enough short rests to enable them to keep up with the long rest based classes).

Doom clocks work great in this regard (save the princess/ recover the macguffin/ stop the ritual by midnight or else bad thing X happens kind of thing) as does using the alternate rest variants provided above (or a simple chat with your players to avoid that kind of thing).

In my own games, we've reduced short rests to 5 minutes long, but with a hard 'no more than 2 per long rest' cap on them. That fixes the short rest issue; from there the DM only has to worry about providing e enough encounters to challenge the long rest classes.

Remember - the above is only a median. You can have the occasional longer or shorter adventuring day (or days with only the one really deadly encounter). It gives you a chance (as DM) to pull some different levers to move the spotlight from player to player simply b varying the number of encounters that adventuring day, or the number of short rests, or both.

It's a useful tool when you get the hang of it, but you should know about it before going in and DMing.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-13, 12:14 PM

KorvinStarmast

2019-01-13, 12:16 PM

Is 5e for me? Does it run (from the DMs side of things) fast and loose enough for a ‘casual gamer’?

Sell or unsell me, please! 5e brought me back to the game. 2e was bloated, for me, and 3.x was far too rulesy for me, and also some things in life changed, so I packed up my D&D stuff and put it away for a lot of years. Most of my D&D time over the years was OD&D, AD&D 1e, some 2e, quite a bit of Empire of the Petal throne (a lot like D&D but also unlike it somewhat) and we also played things like Runequest (original), Traveller (original), Chivalry and sorcery (original) and some other stuff.

5e can be as simple as original D&D, but if you want it to be a bit more complicated, it has room to be so. It is, after all, WoTC and the d20 system.

Rulings over rules? Yes. Room to riff and improvise? Yes.

Combat at first level is swingy. Not hard for a character to drop to 0 HP in the first encounter. (But you get some "death saves" so a re roll immediately isn't needed).

You can download the free basic rules on WoTC site (http://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/DnD_BasicRules_2018.pdf), you can down load some pregenerated characters too (or have your players roll them up) and run some adventures from levels 1-4 pretty easily using just what's free. There is actually enough in that, and in the SRD (free, with one archetype for each class) to get you well into levels 12-15 if you all take to it.

If you want all rules in electonic form, do as suggested and sign up at D&D beyond.

Malifice

2019-01-13, 12:18 PM

One other note about the guidelines--they're intentionally set to be generous to the players. That is, a Medium encounter should pose no significant threat to a baseline party[1]. Each group can and must adjust to taste.

[1] A baseline party is 4 players, no feats, no multiclassing, no (or few) magic items of combat significance. If you're giving out lots of +X (to hit, AC, or save DC) items or using feats and/or multiclassing, the guidelines will significantly undershoot expectations for difficulty. Basically, a "full power" (feats + multiclassing + common items) will generally treat each encounter category as one lower-- Deadly becomes Hard, Hard becomes Medium, etc.

This is intentional. TTRPGs are a significant investment of time and money. Many new groups will fall apart at a TPK, especially if it seems they did everything right (followed the rules). So the baseline is set to "no TPKs" and then can be scaled upward if desired. If you or your group are significantly motivated by "challenge" and/or are heavy optimizers, you'll want to adjust upward--increase the adventuring day budget by about 1.5x as a start. That could mean more encounters or replacing a medium with a hard, a hard with a deadly, etc.

My group isn't really challenge focused, so it works fine for us.

They also figured out that mathematically that even a 5 - 10 percent of a TPK in an encounter means fewer than 1/100 parties survive to 5th level.

The expectation in a medium difficulty encounter is the players win, expending a portion of their resources (HP, slots, smites, rages, potions etc) in the attempt. The overall challenge is completing the adventuring day/ adventure (of half a dozen or so encoutners) without dying, while managing your resources (HP, slots, rages, smites, kit points, P etc) not just surviving an encounter.

Once you get with that concept, you can create some really epic adventures and campaigns.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-13, 12:30 PM

They also figured out that mathematically that even a 5 - 10 percent of a TPK in an encounter means fewer than 1/100 parties survive to 5th level.

The expectation in a medium difficulty encounter is the players win, expending a portion of their resources (HP, slots, smites, rages, potions etc) in the attempt. The overall challenge is completing the adventuring day/ adventure (of half a dozen or so encoutners) without dying, while managing your resources (HP, slots, rages, smites, kit points, P etc) not just surviving an encounter.

Once you get with that concept, you can create some really epic adventures and campaigns.

True. That "each individual thing is less critical but the whole is important" philosophy also comes through in other ways. It's a way of controlling the overall chaos of a "swingy" system while still allowing surprises. Single points of failure are bad design, whether in process controls, software, or games. Unlike video games, where you can have a save/reload system, TTRPGs don't really handle hard failures very well. Soft failures (failure to complete an objective) work fine. Character death is actually one of the least interesting failure modes for me. Because it breaks continuity, wastes player time (they have to sit out while others play), but generally doesn't change the state of the world. Soft failures (they got away with the McGuffin because you sat down and rested/had to retreat because you nova'd the first fight/etc) are much more interesting while keeping everyone involved.

Accepting this philosophy also helps me not care about skills being swingy--yes, on any single roll the d20 dominates. But each single roll isn't that important. Over the long run, over the entire adventure, the skilled person outperforms the unskilled person noticeably. Same with saves and attacks--getting hit isn't the end of the world (unless your monsters are over-tuned). Very few things can be one-shot-killed (no uberchargers) and if they can, they come in packs. It's why having more monsters is better than having harder monsters--one crappy turn doesn't turn it into a cakewalk or a curbstomp. Failing a save isn't "ok, I'm out of the fight totally/dead"; losing initiative isn't the end of the world either. But it all adds up.

Malifice

2019-01-13, 12:33 PM

True. That "each individual thing is less critical but the whole is important" philosophy also comes through in other ways. It's a way of controlling the overall chaos of a "swingy" system while still allowing surprises. Single points of failure are bad design, whether in process controls, software, or games. Unlike video games, where you can have a save/reload system, TTRPGs don't really handle hard failures very well. Soft failures (failure to complete an objective) work fine. Character death is actually one of the least interesting failure modes for me. Because it breaks continuity, wastes player time (they have to sit out while others play), but generally doesn't change the state of the world. Soft failures (they got away with the McGuffin because you sat down and rested/had to retreat because you nova'd the first fight/etc) are much more interesting while keeping everyone involved.

Accepting this philosophy also helps me not care about skills being swingy--yes, on any single roll the d20 dominates. But each single roll isn't that important. Over the long run, over the entire adventure, the skilled person outperforms the unskilled person noticeably. Same with saves and attacks--getting hit isn't the end of the world (unless your monsters are over-tuned). Very few things can be one-shot-killed (no uberchargers) and if they can, they come in packs. It's why having more monsters is better than having harder monsters--one crappy turn doesn't turn it into a cakewalk or a curbstomp. Failing a save isn't "ok, I'm out of the fight totally/dead"; losing initiative isn't the end of the world either. But it all adds up.

Well said.

We're in total agreement.

SlackBadger

2019-01-13, 02:00 PM

Whereas in old school D&D the players were required to do their own resource management and management of days, and it wasn't the DM's problem if encounters were unbalanced (many of them were and it was up to the players to avoid or work around it). 5e is made for players that expect to be able to win all the time. It's vastly different from older (pre-3e) D&D in that regard.

You can totally play 5E in an old school way. For example I've run The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, Forge of Fury, Speaker in Dreams, and many other older edition modules in 5E making no changes to number of monsters that appear. By normal 5E encounter building rules, this would make the majority of encounters uber-deadly, but in actual play it worked out just fine, and felt just like 1E/3E play, just with snazzier PCs.

The battles are tense, players are constantly worried they will wipe, and victory is all the more savored, because the players have overcome meaningful challenges, not the (broken) formula that 5E uses for encounters.

strangebloke

2019-01-13, 02:07 PM

Ha. Being a rather recent comer myself, I don't know that I'm really qualified to sell you, but seriously, this is the biggest reason to play 5e:

You can play it with real-life human beings.

Assuming that you don't still live within 50 miles of whoever you were playing with in the 90s, and assuming that you're not part of a vibrant, active TTRPG community that is constantly trying new things, 5e dnd is the only game where you can reliably get a group together week-to-week. Young players, 3.5-era converts like myself, and grognards all find 5e to be perfectly acceptable, and if you're anywhere near a reasonably sized city in the US you'll almost certainly be able to find a group.

I would say that overall its harder to DM than lighter systems I've run, and at times its even harder than 3.5. The idiosyncratic daily encounter schedule can be a pain to manage at times and the rules are deceptively simple. You have to be on-point with making rulings and sticking with them. If your players completely ignore the conventions of the fiction and just treat the game as a mechanical exercise (as MaxWilson does) then there are a lot of really powerful, nonintuitive rules-abuses that could really mess with the fiction of the game. Overall, the system is easy to get started but hard to master.

But... it works. The daily encounter schedule is wonky, but really works with the narrative of the story, as characters will get really tense before a boss fight, knowing full well how few resources they have remaining. The complicated rules system makes for highly varied, highly technical fights where the correct decision is non-obvious and different players have different chances to shine. The overpowered but narratively weird strats are generally not used by players in my experience, and the emphasis on rulings makes the game feel less adversarial. Death Saves allows for a high degree of tension in fights, with characters close to dying but not-quite-there-yet.

As to your question of "Does it work if I'm a casual?"

Absolutely. There are things you'll get wrong; things that *I* get wrong, but odds are that the players know it less well than you do. Here's my advice:

Plan out a dungeon with the expectation that the players will do the whole dungeon in a day. Come up with a simple narrative reason why they can't rest. They have to rescue a princess or something. Fill the dungeon with 5-8 medium encounters, using an online calculator to make it simple. If the players are really on their game and this doesn't challenge them, change it to 3-5 deadly encounters.
Spend more time on the room the encounter takes place in than on the monster itself.
Be sure that your players know that they don't ask "Can I roll 'x.'" They describe an action, you tell them what to roll.
Levels 5-10 is where its at for the casual. Easy to challenge the players without killing them at this level.
Remember, a stealth check of 30 does nothing if the guy is looking right at you. You need cover or invisibility to hide, and you need to hide to be hidden.
You can't be bothered to know how PC abilities work. Got a rules lawyer in the group? Recruit him to make sure everyone's doing things right.

noob

2019-01-13, 02:11 PM

You can totally play 5E in an old school way. For example I've run The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, Forge of Fury, Speaker in Dreams, and many other older edition modules in 5E making no changes to number of monsters that appear. By normal 5E encounter building rules, this would make the majority of encounters uber-deadly, but in actual play it worked out just fine, and felt just like 1E/3E play, just with snazzier PCs.

The battles are tense, players are constantly worried they will wipe, and victory is all the more savored, because the players have overcome meaningful challenges, not the (broken) formula that 5E uses for encounters.

Actually 5e considers 4 level 17 wizards that can all go nova together is a balanced encounter for 4 level 17 adventurers and that 4 level 17 adventurers are supposed to fight that 5 to 8 times a day.
And while wizards might not be the best fighting class anymore(without shenanigans such as mirage arcana that can have its casting time cut by another spell and somehow drown into lava all the opponents at once which while being illusory according to sage advice can still kill by lack of air) it surely have a huge nova potential.
So I think 5e cr tables makes deadlier encounters than updating old modules by direct translation.

You can't be bothered to know how PC abilities work. Got a rules lawyer in the group? Recruit him to make sure everyone's doing things right.
Rules lawyers does not allows to know how the rules should work: they allows you instead to know how they exactly works.
So do not be surprised if stairs are nearly unpassable undefeatable obstacles that needs each member of the party to use the fly spell(trust me: dc 5 is so hard people fails half the time and yet for some obscure reason it is called easy tasks).

OverLordOcelot

2019-01-13, 02:24 PM

As someone who cut their teeth on 1st edition AD&D, played some Pathfinder, and now 5e, along with other RPGs like FFGs Star Wars, I’d say 5e feels more like a sequel to 1e than it does 3e or 4e. Although, I’ve never played 4e, I have read the PHB.

I'd say it's much more of a sequel to 2e than 1e. 1e was notable for having a ton of disconnected tables, rules systems that didn't integrate with each other, and incredibly convoluted rules with tons of exceptions and special cases. Just look at the difficulty people have in figuring out how 1e initiative works, and how the magic, melee, and ranged pieces seem to each be from a different game. (And then add in the psionics rules) There were also clearly different philosophies at work in different parts of the book; for example, if a player attracted 5th-8th level followers, they would arrive with much more magical equipment than a PC starting at 5th-8th level and using the chart for magic items for PCs starting at higher levels. 2e without all of the splat books tried to keep most of the feel of 1e in play and 'stat blocks' (to the point that you can use 1e and 2e modules pretty much interchangeably), but tried to cut out weird special cases and bizarrely complicated rules (again, look at initiative) and use a more consistent rules philosophy.

Illven

2019-01-13, 02:27 PM

The game works best with a median of around 6 medium-hard encounters per long rest (8 hour rest) with around 2-3 'short rests' of an hour granted over that same time frame.

So your average dungeon level, or similar.

Thats only adventuring days, not days of travel or roleplaying or days not spent with at least 1 encounter.

If you're running games with no more than 0-3 encounters in a single day as a median (i.e. more wilderness based, and less dungeon based) then there are options in the DMG for that (its called 'gritty realism' where long rests become a while week in town, and short rests are overnight affairs).

If you use too few encounters between long rests (whether you make them overnight, or a whole week), players will 'nova' and dump all their long rest abilities into that encounter and cream it.

This not only mucks about with encounter difficulty, it also invalidates several classes (Warlock, Fighter and Monk who are all Short rest based classes) while buffing others (Barbarians, Paladins and full Casters who are all long rest based).

Your natural reaction will be to dial up encounter difficulty. DONT! This only entrenches the above issue (players will be forced to nova, just to survive, and those short rest classes will suck even more) plus it leads to boring rocket tag, and a high chance of a random TPK.

The best way to deal with it is to push those six or so encounters on the party (with enough time to short rest at least twice) as a median. Make them ration those abilities, and use them when they count instead of dumping them all in the first few rounds (and ensuring your short rest classes, get enough short rests to enable them to keep up with the long rest based classes).

Doom clocks work great in this regard (save the princess/ recover the macguffin/ stop the ritual by midnight or else bad thing X happens kind of thing) as does using the alternate rest variants provided above (or a simple chat with your players to avoid that kind of thing).

In my own games, we've reduced short rests to 5 minutes long, but with a hard 'no more than 2 per long rest' cap on them. That fixes the short rest issue; from there the DM only has to worry about providing e enough encounters to challenge the long rest classes.

Remember - the above is only a median. You can have the occasional longer or shorter adventuring day (or days with only the one really deadly encounter). It gives you a chance (as DM) to pull some different levers to move the spotlight from player to player simply b varying the number of encounters that adventuring day, or the number of short rests, or both.

It's a useful tool when you get the hang of it, but you should know about it before going in and DMing.

Wait, how do you focus on the short rest players, if you can the short rests at 2? Do you some days just say. Today you can take 3 short rests

EggKookoo

2019-01-13, 02:45 PM

I'd say it's much more of a sequel to 2e than 1e.

To me, 5e feels like the 2e mindset toward the DM plus the 3e mindset toward the players.

noob

2019-01-13, 03:32 PM

To me, 5e feels like the 2e mindset toward the DM plus the 3e mindset toward the players.
It is not the 3e mindset toward the players.
It is something new: now players just fail at the easy tasks for no reason whatsoever and armies can be fought only with spells or armies.

JoeJ

2019-01-13, 03:44 PM

So do not be surprised if stairs are nearly unpassable undefeatable obstacles that needs each member of the party to use the fly spell(trust me: dc 5 is so hard people fails half the time and yet for some obscure reason it is called easy tasks).

A character with an attribute of 10 and no proficiency succeeds 80% of the time against a DC of 5. And stairs have no DC per the rules; climbing anything simply requires spending 1 additional foot of movement for each foot you travel (2 feet if it's also difficult terrain) unless the DM rules that the climb is especially difficult.

Lorka

2019-01-13, 03:46 PM

SlackBadger

2019-01-13, 03:59 PM

To me, 5e feels like the 2e mindset toward the DM plus the 3e mindset toward the players.

Pretty much.

The earliest internal iteration of 5E in 2011 was so good. It was a streamlined 1E with more robust character options.

noob

2019-01-13, 04:00 PM

A character with an attribute of 10 and no proficiency succeeds 80% of the time against a DC of 5. And stairs have no DC per the rules; climbing anything simply requires spending 1 additional foot of movement for each foot you travel (2 feet if it's also difficult terrain) unless the DM rules that the climb is especially difficult.

As I said you still have average people have 20% chance of failing to climb stairs.
An adventurer rolls either 1 or 2 on a d20(some people pretends there is other values on a D20) which means an adventurer that does not have +3 to the roll will simply never succeed in climbing the stair.

SlackBadger

2019-01-13, 04:03 PM

I also am an old Grognard that came from 2e. I have the last couple of years restarted playing D&D with my old mates that I used to play with 25+ years ago. We went with 5e and it have been great, the mechanics are easy and feels old school - they are not really, but they feel that way and that is what counts.

I can only recommend giving it ago.

A warning, beware old grognards! Modern roleplayers are more into narrative style gaming than what us old grognards are used too, so that is a much more difficult transition if you are to play with youngish gamers than what rule system you use.

It's crazy, cause narrative type games have been around forever, and have been super popular since VtM came out 28 years ago, but modern (newer) roleplayers seem to think that they didn't exist until the PbtA games.

It's just a side-effect of the massive spike in popularity Critical Role/streaming games have caused. So many newer players seem to think playing RPGs are some sort of high art form.

EggKookoo

2019-01-13, 05:32 PM

As I said you still have average people have 20% chance of failing to climb stairs.
An adventurer rolls either 1 or 2 on a d20(some people pretends there is other values on a D20) which means an adventurer that does not have +3 to the roll will simply never succeed in climbing the stair.

To the OP, don't get confused by this. There is no "stair climbing" roll in 5e. There is, however, a contingent of folks who bemoan 5e's lack of endless DCs for all kinds of tasks, and who also take the general TTPRG philosophy (which 5e embraces more than some more recent editions but not really more than 1e/2e) that the DM is the final arbiter in how things work to claim that playing 5e is a chaotic mess where DMs run wild and dictate what happens based on whim and you have to make Dexterity checks to brush your teeth (because the rules don't say you don't!) and cats and dogs live together. You know, mass hysteria!

If you come from pre-3e, you're used to the DM being the final say in how things work (for good or bad), and you'll be right at home with 5e.

noob

2019-01-13, 05:45 PM

Knaight

2019-01-13, 05:49 PM

You'll want to not use certain extremely heavily used variant rules, but 5e is a fine successor to early D&D, and I'd call it significantly easier to use, less finnicky, and generally more cooperative.

That said, the days when D&D was the only RPG option are long gone, and there are other options I'd consider stronger. Take a look at Warrior, Rogue, and Mage, for the same general style pared down well and totally free.

Ha. Being a rather recent comer myself, I don't know that I'm really qualified to sell you, but seriously, this is the biggest reason to play 5e:

You can play it with real-life human beings.

Assuming that you don't still live within 50 miles of whoever you were playing with in the 90s, and assuming that you're not part of a vibrant, active TTRPG community that is constantly trying new things, 5e dnd is the only game where you can reliably get a group together week-to-week. Young players, 3.5-era converts like myself, and grognards all find 5e to be perfectly acceptable, and if you're anywhere near a reasonably sized city in the US you'll almost certainly be able to find a group.

It is remarkably easy to create a vibrant, active, TTRPG community. Just get your nerdier friends together and GM something. This also spares you basically all problem player issues.

JoeJ

2019-01-13, 05:53 PM

noob

2019-01-13, 06:07 PM

You must have failed to read the part about there being, by default, no die roll to climb. It's automatic success unless the DM decides it's a special case.

Some gms decide that all the cases are special.
Stairs are commonly known as being evil.
I mean there is tons of people who die in stairs and there is even videogames where you can trip and fall down the stairs and die from a 10 centimeters fall in stairs.
It is still something easy in real life and that does not have 20% failure but it is not 0% failure either.
So gms from the school of "if it can fail then roll" will make you fail at everything ever in dnd 5e

SlackBadger

2019-01-13, 06:29 PM

SlackBadger

2019-01-13, 06:31 PM

what I say is that "easy" tasks are in fact hard.
I thin we should call easy tasks with a DC0 and make the higher tasks have name other than easy to give a better notion of what is easy or what is not easy.
Or we could roll 5d4 instead of a D20 if we want easy tasks to not be astonishingly impossible.

Or, ya know, you could follow the rule that there is no need to ever roll dice unless the DM wants dice to be rolled/there is a chance of meaningful failure. The only kind of DM that makes people make skill checks to use the stairs is the type of DM who shouldn't be running games in the first place.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-13, 06:31 PM

Some gms decide that all the cases are special.

You know what we call those DMs? BAD DMs. And the solution isn't to change the rules (because that doesn't stop a bad DM), it's to not play with those DMs.

And seriously--climbing already has explicit rules. And there are other explicit rules that you're ignoring:

There are 3 threshold questions before you get to set a DC at all.

1. Is this action covered under a different mechanic. If so, use those rules.
2. Is the desired result even possible? If not, don't roll, the attempt just fails
3. Does the desired action have both a significant chance of failure for an untrained, unskilled person AND interesting consequences for failure in this circumstance. If not, there is no roll, the attempt succeeds automatically.

Only once all three questions have been passed do you even set a DC. That handles all but extreme cases for climbing. And for those that prevaricate and call things extreme when they're not--see above about bad DMs.

Oh, and it's rich when people bring this up--let's consider 3.5e's Knowledge skills for a second.

The DC to identify a wolf is DC 12 (10 + 2 HD). To know what a wolf eats, it's DC 17. A commoner with no actual training can never identify a wolf (because they only get common knowledge, DC 10 max). Can't take 20, can't take 10. Cannot succeed. Ever. Period. Even a level 20 commoner unless he spends cross-class skill points--Knowledge (nature) is not a class skill. Or even worse--a level 20 adventurer with no points in K (Nature) will never identify a wolf, despite having killed thousands. Rules say you can't know anything above DC 10 without explicit training (having a skill point in it), so you fail. No chance. Have fun!

Edit: and as far as the names go--here's what they really mean.

Very Easy (DC 5)= "has an appreciable but not large chance of failure for an average commoner, but anyone with any skill in the area (either from a modifier or proficiency will rarely fail". Side note: it's recommended in the DMG not to use DC 5 checks much--if you're tempted to set the DC below 10, you probably should rethink giving a check at all.
Easy (DC 10) = "an average person will fail about 50% of the time, but either proficiency or a good bonus makes it a low chance of failure."
Moderate (DC 15) = "an average person will struggle; proficiency or a good modifier will get you a 50-50 shot. Having both makes it easy."
Hard (DC 20) = "an average person can only do this on a fluke. To have a decent shot, you'll need both proficiency and a good modifier"
Very Hard (DC 25) = "To even have a chance, you need both proficiency and a good modifier or a great modifier (or be very high level and proficient)."
Impossible (DC 30) = "To even have a chance, you need both high proficiency and a great modifier or high proficiency and expertise."

noob

2019-01-13, 06:36 PM

3. Does the desired action have both a significant chance of failure for an untrained, unskilled person AND interesting consequences for failure in this circumstance. If not, there is no roll, the attempt succeeds automatically.
It is interesting to see adventurers fail climbing stairs because it means they can not reach the bbeg without casting the fly spell(which might mean the bbeg can destroy the universe by the time the adventurers climbs the stairs and even without that you might still have monsters that reach you when they listen to the noises of people falling on the stairs) Also there is 20% chance of failure for climbing stairs by an untrained unskilled person because there is nothing easier than easy.
Had they made easy easier there would not be a huge problem.

EggKookoo

2019-01-13, 06:46 PM

It is interesting to see adventurers fail climbing stairs because it means they can not reach the bbeg without casting the fly spell(which might mean the bbeg can destroy the universe by the time the adventurers climbs the stairs and even without that you might still have monsters that reach you when they listen to the noises of people falling on the stairs) Also there is 20% chance of failure for climbing stairs by an untrained unskilled person because there is nothing easier than easy.
Had they made easy easier there would not be a huge problem.

So again, to the OP, what noob is getting at here is because 5e is pretty clear in the idea that the DM can fill in the blanks where the rules are ambiguous, and encourages -- with caution if you actually read the DMG -- that the DM even override existing rules if it suits their table better, there is a ridiculous extreme where DMs with absolutely no sense of how things really function in reality or how to sensibly interpret game rules and who almost certainly have no business DMing will do silly things like demand checks for just about any activity. Setting aside if any DMs actually do this in the wild or if it's some weird form of fearmongering, there's nothing in the 5e manuals that encourages it, and in fact there's quite a bit that advises against it.

I'd like to avoid even validating it by responding but this is a thread specifically about taking a chance on 5e. It'd be sad to see this kind of nonsense prevent that.

SlackBadger

2019-01-13, 07:03 PM

{Scrubbed}

strangebloke

2019-01-13, 07:15 PM

It is remarkably easy to create a vibrant, active, TTRPG community. Just get your nerdier friends together and GM something. This also spares you basically all problem player issues.

For one thing, not everyone has friends who are interested. Secondly, DMing something yourself is jumping in on the deep end if you've never personally seen the game played.

Also, not all friends make for good players. Flaky ones who don't show up reliably, or can't deal with a competitive environment at all... yeah, I've lost friends over DND. Made way more than I lost, but still.

*sigh* gotta kick another player out within the next two weeks.

olskool

2019-01-13, 08:06 PM

To the OP, don't get confused by this. There is no "stair climbing" roll in 5e. There is, however, a contingent of folks who bemoan 5e's lack of endless DCs for all kinds of tasks, and who also take the general TTPRG philosophy (which 5e embraces more than some more recent editions but not really more than 1e/2e) that the DM is the final arbiter in how things work to claim that playing 5e is a chaotic mess where DMs run wild and dictate what happens based on whim and you have to make Dexterity checks to brush your teeth (because the rules don't say you don't!) and cats and dogs live together. You know, mass hysteria!

If you come from pre-3e, you're used to the DM being the final say in how things work (for good or bad), and you'll be right at home with 5e.

Unfortunately, I'd disagree with your statement that there is no "stair climbing" mechanic in 5e. This type of obstacle does appear in certain published modules from WOTC and they are a thing. I just had a Level 2 Elvan Wizard DIE last night in a ridiculously written module where you had to make a STR check to open EVERY DOOR in an abandoned town. I failed the DC 10 roll about half the time with my STR 10 Wizard. Then we encountered the 12 HD DRAGON that had been written into the module and it breathed poison gas on us. I failed my save and took 44 points of damage to my 14 HP Wizard (a pregen that came with the boxed set/module). Half the party died and the rest fled from that 12HD Dragon that the writers put into what is supposed to be a Level 1 thru 3 adventure. The balance of 5e modules as written, SUCKS.

To the OP
as an AD&D Grognard who abandoned it for Runequest and now Mythras, looking at the mechanics of 5e, it has promise. I like the basic "Roll Over" mechanic a lot. You can use it for a number of applications and pretty much make it the "universal mechanic" that AD&D NEVER HAD. It should be used for more things. There is a CR System to mod monsters to make them a challenge for higher level characters. The DM's guide has support for world creation like NO edition I have ever played. I also like the Ritual Magic system BUT we modified it by adding a Skill Roll (average DC is 10 in the greater world) for failure of this Non-Vancian D&D Magic System.

Issues I've Encountered:

The Class system is a little hard to take after playing "Classless, Skills-Based systems" like Mythras (which I cannot recomend highly enough). Some features like Concentrate for certain spells is kind of broken because WOTC looked at them from a "combat perspective" instead of from an "exploratory viewpoint." The game (especially FEATS) has a "Video gamey" vibe that I just cannot shake. This is reinforced by AUTOMATIC Characteristic increases, everyone getting Magic at some point, and the unlimited castings of Cantrips.

Overall, I'd say that D&D5e is a better system than the ones we cut our teeth on, BUT you need a really confident DM to pull it off. The group I'm playing with now are too video game oriented, are MAJOR min-maxer's (which GREATLY reduces MY enjoyment of the game), and the DM feels he needs to "handout" stuff to placate the group. For example, at 2nd Level our 4-man group had found...

A +1 Dagger
A +5 Dagger of Slaying
An Alchemy Jug
A +3 Necklace of Protection
A Bag of holding
A Ring of Fire Absorption and Redirection
6 Exploding Arrows (30ft blast radius for 2D6 Damage)
A suit of +1 Studded Leather
A Deck of Many Things

All found in just 6 sessions of adventuring. I have warned the DM that "Monty Haul Campaigns" (try explaining this expression to a 28-year old Millenial) NEVER end well but I was told "We aren't playing Vietnam-Style AD&D" (apparently this is what "boot-stapping campaigns are called now). This is probably just my veteran perspective (as an actual combat vet, RESTORE HOPE '93) but I'm probably close to the same age and experience as you are.

noob

2019-01-13, 08:11 PM

A Deck of Many Things

Did someone end the campaign after getting it?
Does the Deck of many things keeps its campaign ending power in 5e?

olskool

2019-01-13, 08:22 PM

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

What he is bringing up is actually occurring in some playgroups and could be considered an issue. I have experienced it (with doors) and even seen it (with Climb & Jump DCs) in an Adventurer's League compliant game. It is a product of a certain type of DM who seems to not understand that they have the power to adjudicate an arbitrary obstacle written into a module can be ignored. Others are just using them to "defeat" the Characters because they really do NOT grasp that the game is NOT a contest. In addition to my issue with doors in our session last night (before the Dragon poisoned me to death), In our first session, we had to jump a 4-foot wide, 6-foot deep creek and our Cleric failed his jump test (10 DC). He fell into the 6-foot deep creek and suffered 5 (1D6) FALLING DAMAGE from that failed test. He only had 10 hp so we had to waste a healing spell to top him off before we entered the cave.

Particle_Man

2019-01-13, 08:36 PM

5e is fine (and I would anticipate no problems for someone coming from 2e) but you don't have to take my word for it. The basic rules are available legally and for free online:

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules

That gives you four races, four classes (no points for guessing which races/classes!), some backgrounds, some spells, some monsters, a few magic items, and the rules. It doesn't contain the optional rules (multi-classing, feats, etc.) that a DM might choose to add or not to add.

So have a look and see if this is your cup of tea or not.

EggKookoo

2019-01-13, 08:45 PM

olskool

2019-01-13, 08:46 PM

Did someone end the campaign after getting it?
Does the Deck of many things keep its campaign ending power in 5e?

NOPE! That's WHY my Wizard's dead. One of our comrades got 50,000 EXP and a wondrous item. The Bugbear Barbarian/Bard (yes he's a Barbarian AND a Bard with max stats) is now 5th/5th Level. The +5 Dagger of Slaying was drawn by our Thief after said Thief lost ALL his magic items from a previous drawn card. Our Monk got his soul sucked out of his body and imprisoned in a gem, I refused to draw at all (knowing the danger through Detect Magic and an Arcanna check) and the Cleric had left the cave with a bunch of wounded captive townsfolk. Keep in mind this was a LEVEL ONE encounter in a Goblin Cave. The big issue was that the Monk PC was also being played by the DM (people it is ALWAYS A BAD IDEA FOR THE DM TO PLAY A PC TOO!). When Scrim got "soul sucked," our DM was actually distraught.

FAST FORWARD...

Investigating the town last night, we advance on a ruined tower with an attached cottage. I detect magic. I TRY to send my squirrel Familiar to recon the tower BUT the DM say that no matter what he tries he CANNOT climb that tower. The DM KNOWS that IF I KNOW that the Dragon is nesting in the tower, I'll flee. The problem is that Scrim is imprisoned in a gem in the Dragon's horde and our DM wants us to rescue him. So we (me, our thief, and the Bugbear Barbarian/Bard) enter the cottage attached to the tower and then open the tower door. The dragon confrots us and our overconfident Barbarian/Bard decides to cast a Cantrip (stealthily) as I negotiate for our lives. The Dragon sees this... Roll for Initiative... Dragon wins and breaths poison gas that IMMEDIATELY DROPS Me AND the Thief while taking a huge bit out of the Barbarian's HP. Barbarian goes next and slams the door to the tower then grabs the Hafling thief (they are on the same side of the door) who is at like -6 HP and runs. Dragon hunts them for half an hour before returning to his lair (and presumably eating me). The Dm felt bad and is going to let me make... a NEW SECOND LEVEL CHARACTER soooo... we can go back, slay the Dragon and rescue Scrim??!!

I'm not feeling good vibes with this gaming group. In the DM's defense, it is his FIRST TIME as a DM.

olskool

2019-01-13, 08:50 PM

You're talking about Lost Mine of Phandelver. The doors were specifically described as old, swollen, and stuck. It's not like you have to make a check to open doors in general, which is what noob was implying about the stairs.

Also, just to be clear, your wizard didn't die because of stuck doors. My party of 2nd or 3rd level PCs handled the (optional side-quest) dragon. They talked to him and made some persuasion checks.

Read my post just put up. My issue is with the DMs that are showing up to gamemaster. The DC issues ARE REAL. I have seen a DC 15 slope (listed at 28 degrees? for the record you walk that slope a hundred times a day), a climb described as 10 feet with good hand holds at DC 10, and of course our damaging ditch crossing in the first encounter of the module.

Ignimortis

2019-01-13, 08:50 PM

The Class system is a little hard to take after playing "Classless, Skills-Based systems" like Mythras (which I cannot recomend highly enough). Some features like Concentrate for certain spells is kind of broken because WOTC looked at them from a "combat perspective" instead of from an "exploratory viewpoint." The game (especially FEATS) has a "Video gamey" vibe that I just cannot shake. This is reinforced by AUTOMATIC Characteristic increases, everyone getting Magic at some point, and the unlimited castings of Cantrips.

Not sure where you see everyone getting magic at some point. One of the classes in the game explicitly doesn't get magic at all (Barbarian), and two more get magic only in one of their many archetypes (Fighter, Rogue). Unless you count a single 1-st level spell that can be fluffed as not being a spell (Speak with Animals) for a Totem Barbarian, but a Berserker doesn't even get that much, it's just a slab of meat with a sharp and/or heavy stick. Monk is somewhat magick-y with Ki points, but Open Hand Monk, which is the "vanilla" one, also doesn't get anything explicitly magical.

OverLordOcelot

2019-01-13, 08:54 PM

Unfortunately, I'd disagree with your statement that there is no "stair climbing" mechanic in 5e. This type of obstacle does appear in certain published modules from WOTC and they are a thing. I just had a Level 2 Elvan Wizard DIE last night in a ridiculously written module where you had to make a STR check to open EVERY DOOR in an abandoned town. I failed the DC 10 roll about half the time with my STR 10 Wizard. Then we encountered the 12 HD DRAGON that had been written into the module and it breathed poison gas on us. I failed my save and took 44 points of damage to my 14 HP Wizard (a pregen that came with the boxed set/module). Half the party died and the rest fled from that 12HD Dragon that the writers put into what is supposed to be a Level 1 thru 3 adventure. The balance of 5e modules as written, SUCKS.

What''s the name of the module? It sounds like either it was really awful or the DM was running it completely wrong. Also, while giving every door a STR check sounds obnoxious, why were you having one wizard open the doors alone? Take someone with the highest STR in the party, have them pair up with anyone else for the help action, and you're rolling at advantage every time, and can add another d4 if there's someone with guidance.

A +5 Dagger of Slaying
A +3 Necklace of Protection
A Ring of Fire Absorption and Redirection
6 Exploding Arrows (30ft blast radius for 2D6 Damage)

Note to the OP: This has nothing at all to do with 5e D&D - those items aren't even 5e items. There isn't a necklace of protection in standard 5e rules, and the ring and cloak of protection only have +1 versions. The exploding arrows and ring of fire absorbtion and redirection also aren't in the rules, and magical weapons only go +1 to +3; +5 weapons were a thing in older versions. If you roll for treasure in 5e, the charts won't give top tier items at low levels or in only six sessions either. No version of D&D has any ability to stop a DM from making up any item that they want and handing it out whenever they want.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-13, 08:57 PM

And +3 is as high as magic items go. Edit: and those are legendary, showing up rarely in the upper teen levels at best.

Bad DMs will DM badly in any system. No rules will stop them. Only people refusing to play with them will stop them.

olskool

2019-01-13, 09:01 PM

Not sure where you see everyone getting magic at some point. One of the classes in the game explicitly doesn't get magic at all (Barbarian), and two more get magic only in one of their many archetypes (Fighter, Rogue). Unless you count a single 1-st level spell that can be fluffed as not being a spell (Speak with Animals) for a Totem Barbarian, but a Berserker doesn't even get that much, it's just a slab of meat with a sharp and/or heavy stick. Monk is somewhat magick-y with Ki points, but Open Hand Monk, which is the "vanilla" one, also doesn't get anything explicitly magical.

The Ritual Caster FEAT or you multiclass the Barbarian with another class.

olskool

2019-01-13, 09:07 PM

What''s the name of the module? It sounds like either it was really awful or the DM was running it completely wrong. Also, while giving every door a STR check sounds obnoxious, why were you having one wizard open the doors alone? Take someone with the highest STR in the party, have them pair up with anyone else for the help action, and you're rolling at advantage every time, and can add another d4 if there's someone with guidance.

Note to the OP: This has nothing at all to do with 5e D&D - those items aren't even 5e items. There isn't a necklace of protection in standard 5e rules, and the ring and cloak of protection only have +1 versions. The exploding arrows and ring of fire absorbtion and redirection also aren't in the rules, and magical weapons only go +1 to +3; +5 weapons were a thing in older versions. If you roll for treasure in 5e, the charts won't give top tier items at low levels or in only six sessions either. No version of D&D has any ability to stop a DM from making up any item that they want and handing it out whenever they want.

If Chris Baskins is right it's the Lost Mines of Phandelver.

Several of the items were "awarded" by the Deck of Many Things found in the Goblin Cave on our first session... Monty haul DMs (shakes head)....

EggKookoo

2019-01-13, 09:25 PM

If Chris Baskins is right it's the Lost Mines of Phandelver.

Yeah, it's an abandoned village where the elements have essentially fused most of the doors shut. They're swollen and stuck, requiring the Strength checks. It makes sense in context. The problem I have is that noob was implying you need a check just to go up normal stairs, and you (olskool) were essentially corroborating it with needing a check to open doors. But normal doors don't need checks, just the stuck ones.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-13, 09:25 PM

If Chris Baskins is right it's the Lost Mines of Phandelver.

Several of the items were "awarded" by the Deck of Many Things found in the Goblin Cave on our first session... Monty haul DMs (shakes head)....

But even the canon DoMT can't give a +5 weapon--those explicitly don't exist. +3 is as high as it goes without homebrew (in which case the DM never read the DMG which strongly warns against doing so).

Particle_Man

2019-01-13, 09:40 PM

The Ritual Caster FEAT or you multiclass the Barbarian with another class.

Feats and multi-class rules are optional; not all dms use them and not all players use them even when they are allowed by a DM.

olskool

2019-01-13, 09:44 PM

But even the canon DoMT can't give a +5 weapon--those explicitly don't exist. +3 is as high as it goes without homebrew (in which case the DM never read the DMG which strongly warns against doing so).

Which is why I warned the original poster about the issues with "kids" coming in from video games like Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, or the other games that award "superpowers" during play. They expect a certain amount of "power increase" per session which can break a game like D&D5e without hard limits on power. These issues are why I ALWAYS removed Limited Wish, Wish, or any Alter Reality Spell with permanent effects from my Spell Lists. These spells will break an AD&D game.

Overall, the game has some promise for a class-based game system. I'd just have to tweak some spells, nerf FEATS, and reintroduce a few concepts from 2e that will suit 5e even better.

Knaight

2019-01-13, 09:53 PM

Which is why I warned the original poster about the issues with "kids" coming in from video games like Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, or the other games that award "superpowers" during play. They expect a certain amount of "power increase" per session which can break a game like D&D5e without hard limits on power. These issues are why I ALWAYS removed Limited Wish, Wish, or any Alter Reality Spell with permanent effects from my Spell Lists. These spells will break an AD&D game.
These "kids" are largely coming in from games with power progressions vastly lower than any edition of D&D, and if we want to talk about superpowers the entire spell system from day 1 has been exactly that.

Overall, the game has some promise for a class-based game system. I'd just have to tweak some spells, nerf FEATS, and reintroduce a few concepts from 2e that will suit 5e even better.
Feats* are entirely optional, so you can just not use them.

*Why the capitalization? It's not an acronym.

olskool

2019-01-13, 10:18 PM

These "kids" are largely coming in from games with power progressions vastly lower than any edition of D&D, and if we want to talk about superpowers the entire spell system from day 1 has been exactly that.

Feats* are entirely optional, so you can just not use them.

*Why the capitalization? It's not an acronym.

The Spell power progression is one of the things that drove me away from AD&D to other systems in the early '90s.

I did, in fact, tell the OP to NOT use FEATS because they are not entirely "optimized" yet in my first post. Unfortunately, most of the younger player DEMAND they are used in our local gaming community. The OP may have trouble recruiting players if he doesn't use them or he may have to deal with them as a player.

Capitalization of FEATS is a habit from another forum that I've been posting in for years. It is used to indicate or single out a game mechanic in your text so the reader knows you're discussing something about that mechanic. You will also see be doing it for words like ACTIONS (usually referring to either initiative or an action type), or EFFECTS (like for spell effects). Old habits die hard.

Malifice

2019-01-13, 10:57 PM

Wait, how do you focus on the short rest players, if you can the short rests at 2? Do you some days just say. Today you can take 3 short rests

One of the problems with short rests is the 1 hour time requirement. Many parties are reluctant to hole up for a whole hour in a hostile environment (i.e. a dungeon). In addition, our group finds sudden 1 hour breaks to be jarring and runs against the narrative.

A (largely handwaved) 5 minute 'quick map check, bind wounds, swig of water, breather and refocus' works better for both - it's not jarring to the senses (it makes sense that you'd spend a few minutes here or there while exploring a dungeon to stop and take a breather, bind some wounds, and then press on) and importantly it also encourages use of Short rests (players are more likely to pause for 5 minutes, than a whole hour).

The limit of 2 per short rest is because I tend to aim for a median of 6 encounters per long rest, with slightly more hard encounters than medium. That way 'short rest'resources are expected to last around 2 encounters, and 'long rest' resources around 6. I also dont want to see abuse of the 5 minute short rests (spaming them constantly).

When I math out class DPR and so forth, most classes balance around that mark (roughly 6 encounters per long rest of around 5 rounds each, with 2 short rests in that time) At the 3 short rests per long rest, the short rest classes start to pull in front of long rest classes.

On shorter adventuring days (3-5 encounters), the party can still reliably get 2 short rests. On days with just the single encounter, the long rest classes shine.

If you have a really long adventuring day (7+ encounters that day) you can always allow an extra short rest if you choose to provide a nice buff for the short rest classes and give them a day to shine. It's as simple as: 'it's been a long day fellas; you can all benefit from a short rest now if you want?'.

Malifice

2019-01-13, 11:00 PM

As I said you still have average people have 20% chance of failing to climb stairs..

Wut?

Climbing stairs is 'no check required' Same with climbing ladders, or trees, or ropes with walls to brace on if you have time etc.

Do you honestly have PCs make checks to climb stairs?

A routine task is something an average person can do with little to no chance of failure. You dont roll for them, it just happens.

Envyus

2019-01-13, 11:28 PM

If Chris Baskins is right it's the Lost Mines of Phandelver.

Several of the items were "awarded" by the Deck of Many Things found in the Goblin Cave on our first session... Monty haul DMs (shakes head)....

Deck of Many Things can't award +5 items. It also can't be found in the Goblin Cave, in fact there are no Magic Items in the Goblin Cave.

All the issues you are bringing up are entirely the fault of your DM not the game. Edit: Also there was no way for your Familar to get trapped in a gem in the Dragon's Hoard ether.

But I do ask why you were having the Wizard try to bash the stuck doors, when you likely have stronger party member that could do it instead. (And be assisted at it)

Everything I am saying is kind of stupid

None of this stuff works the way you are saying it does, I don't get why you are being obtuse, if there are no stakes you don't roll. Stairs can't impede characters. The very easy DC only applies to tasks that have a chance of failure. Why are you trying to muck up this thread :smallmad:

Unfortunately they aren't good adventures.

Heavily disagree. There are quite a few good solid adventures here.

Anyway to to help the OP D&D Beyond is the place for you to get digital copies of the game as other people have said. As no one else has I will provide a link https://www.dndbeyond.com/

Particle_Man

2019-01-14, 12:44 AM

Personally, having grown up with first edition and b/x and played through all other editions I think that fifth ed is great. I have both run it and played it.

Malifice

2019-01-14, 12:55 AM

Personally, having grown up with first edition and b/x and played through all other editions I think that fifth ed is great. I have both run it and played it.

I started on BECMI in the early 80's. Moved to AD&D, then 2nd editon, then 3rd and 3.P. Skipped 4E (played it a few times, but it wasnt for me) and 5E then brought me back.

It's the best edition of the game yet. Has all the strengths of those earlier editions, while learning from a lot of the mistakes those earlier edtions made.

Still some wonkiness in some areas (I would have preferred more skill mechanics like abilities that let you treat a roll of 2-8 as an 8 - a mechanism that protects bounded accuracy, leaves room for failure, while making skilled PCs look pretty a mazing, and the DMG needs a re-write, but otherwise it's a fantastic system that feels like DnD.

Ignimortis

2019-01-14, 01:05 AM

It's the best edition of the game yet. Has all the strengths of those earlier editions, while learning from a lot of the mistakes those earlier edtions made.

Still some wonkiness in some areas (I would have preferred more skill mechanics like abilities that let you treat a roll of 2-8 as an 8 - a mechanism that protects bounded accuracy, leaves room for failure, while making skilled PCs look pretty amazing, and the DMG needs a re-write, but otherwise it's a fantastic system that feels like DnD.

That much is questionable. It doesn't have either 3.P's strengths (absolute tons of content, fun subsystems, incredibly wide and steep power curve from level 1 to level 20) or 4e's strengths (tactical combat, attempts at giving everyone fun stuff to use often). I'm not as well-versed in 2e, which might also be better in some aspects. It also feels like D&D mostly if your ideal of D&D is E6 for 3.5, or the first ten to twelve levels of AD&D. Personally, 5e to me feels like maybe 25% of D&D, like the first tome of the trilogy that never goes anywhere after that.

I'd say that 5e is the most tolerable to people who like different editions but want to play together, and noob-friendly. But if I ever want to run a campaign again, it will be a heavily houseruled 3.P, not 5e, because even then I would have to do much more work on 5e to make it as good as 3.5 for my vision of D&D.

But 5e is good for those DMs who used to plague 3.5 with their "low-magic, grim quasi-heroic fantasy game" nonsense (and believe me, those people were abundant and I'd say that before 5e came out, about 70% of the games I've seen recruiting online were like that), because 5e actually works for them.

roryb

2019-01-14, 02:54 AM

Knaight

2019-01-14, 03:48 AM

Perhaps a last question from me... How much investment does it require compared to other versions in terms of: time to grok to DM-level confidence (if perhaps a shaky one), prepare sessions (from scratch adventure)? I suspect less than 3e or 4, but more than 1e/2e. Am I wrong? What are the rule reference demands during play? No worse than 2e, or more?

It looks like it would probably be the easiest to get from scratch, but I can't really say as it was hardly the first system I learned. Or in the first 50, for that matter, which has thrown off my sense of system learning ease a bit. That said it's not the first system you're learning either, and the core system concepts are similar enough to other D&D editions to learn particularly easily once you know them.

Generally the more systems you know the easier it is to learn one more, especially if they're not particularly far from your existing base of familiarity (knowing every edition of D&D doesn't make jumping to GURPS much easier, knowing D&D+GURPS doesn't make learning Dramasystem earlier, etc.). All D&D editions are pretty tightly clustered here, and 5e is at a bit of a middle point in that cluster.

Theodoric

2019-01-14, 04:09 AM

Perhaps a last question from me... How much investment does it require compared to other versions in terms of: time to grok to DM-level confidence (if perhaps a shaky one), prepare sessions (from scratch adventure)? I suspect less than 3e or 4, but more than 1e/2e. Am I wrong? What are the rule reference demands during play? No worse than 2e, or more?
5e doesn't have much in the ways of tables to memorise or reference. The core mechanics not being terribly deep helps a lot here. A 5e DM needs to adjucate quite a few things, but that's got more to do with confidence and judgement than needing to know fiddly modifiers. Once you know how to set a skill check DC and how Advantage/Disadvantage works you're pretty much good to go.

Session prep is probably a bit more than 4e (which was very plug-and-play, especially for monsters) and less than 3e, but it really depends on your DM-ing style. There's such a thing as over-preparation, and 5e's flexible enough that you can improvise without having to dive into the PHB/DMG to figure out how every time (seriously, I mostly look at my DM screen for conditions and alcohol prices). You can run 5e adventures with a loose script and do well.

noob

2019-01-14, 05:19 AM

5e doesn't have much in the ways of tables to memorise or reference. The core mechanics not being terribly deep helps a lot here. A 5e DM needs to adjucate quite a few things, but that's got more to do with confidence and judgement than needing to know fiddly modifiers. Once you know how to set a skill check DC and how Advantage/Disadvantage works you're pretty much good to go.

Session prep is probably a bit more than 4e (which was very plug-and-play, especially for monsters) and less than 3e, but it really depends on your DM-ing style. There's such a thing as over-preparation, and 5e's flexible enough that you can improvise without having to dive into the PHB/DMG to figure out how every time (seriously, I mostly look at my DM screen for conditions and alcohol prices). You can run 5e adventures with a loose script and do well.

You can also run 3.5 adventures with a lose script and do well.
Both 5e and 3.5 change when the adventurers reach too high level and stops being possible to play with a lose script(In 5e when the wizard can start recruiting an army and gains the kind of spells that kills armies and teleportation then it starts becoming a weird strategy game and in 3.5 the problem is not as much with armies but rather the get anywhere do anything factor where the adventurers can start using radar nets through the planet to find imprisoned people then dig toward those people or thousands of different options)

EggKookoo

2019-01-14, 06:37 AM

Perhaps a last question from me... How much investment does it require compared to other versions in terms of: time to grok to DM-level confidence (if perhaps a shaky one), prepare sessions (from scratch adventure)? I suspect less than 3e or 4, but more than 1e/2e. Am I wrong? What are the rule reference demands during play? No worse than 2e, or more?

In general I'd say about the same as 2e. The game isn't all that different. If you're talking about combat encounters, be aware of a few specific things that change the action economy. Things like actions vs. bonus actions vs. reactions, and how the concentration mechanic works. Also, 5e uses the word "attack" often to mean a specific kind of action: an attack that uses an attack roll i.e. a d20 that is meant to overcome a target's AC. This can catch you if you're not aware of how the term is used. And sometimes characters get multiple attacks, which is not the same thing as multiple actions.

Regarding actions and bonus actions, a lot of players get confused about if they have a bonus action or what. I like my bucket-and-tag visualization: you have two buckets, one labeled action and another labeled bonus action. Everything you do has a tag on it with the same words: action or bonus action. Whenever you do something, you put the item in the bucket with the same tag. If you don't happen to have an item with a bonus action tag, you can't take a bonus action that turn. Otherwise you can. Each bucket can hold one item, and you empty them out at the beginning of the round.

If you get into the weeds, just post questions in the this forum. People are typically pretty helpful.

mephnick

2019-01-14, 08:01 AM

It doesn't have either 3.P's strengths (absolute tons of content, fun subsystems, incredibly wide and steep power curve from level 1 to level 20).

These were also its greatest weaknesses. Tons of content that wasn't balanced, fun, or designed well, creating a massive barrier to entry. Tons of subsystems that bogged the system down to a muddy mess and a power curve that basically turned the game from standard D&D fantasy at low levels, to super hero rocket tag by level 5, to unplayable "choose your own reality" at 10+. High level 5e is still ridiculous, but it's at least manageable. I DMed 3.5/Pathfinder for almost a decade because it was the only game going in my small town and eventually just gave up. Got a small group of friends going on some less known systems and 5e brought me back to DnD after I swore it off.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-14, 08:42 AM

These were also its greatest weaknesses. Tons of content that wasn't balanced, fun, or designed well, creating a massive barrier to entry. Tons of subsystems that bogged the system down to a muddy mess and a power curve that basically turned the game from standard D&D fantasy at low levels, to super hero rocket tag by level 5, to unplayable "choose your own reality" at 10+. High level 5e is still ridiculous, but it's at least manageable. I DMed 3.5/Pathfinder for almost a decade because it was the only game going in my small town and eventually just gave up. Got a small group of friends going on some less known systems and 5e brought me back to DnD after I swore it off.

I agree. Strengths and weaknesses are often (but not always) subjective. I'd rather have much less content but have that curated well. I'd take 10 options that all work over 100 options, of which 85 are crap and the rest are decent, even though that leaves 15 workable options. But I have to wade through 85 crap ones to get there, which spoils it for me.

The other big strength (IMO) of 5e is that the "sweet spot" for balance is relatively wide (despite what people say). You can pick up just about any supported "build" (within limits) and be fine, if not optimal. And the difference between fine and optimal is not that big outside of white-room scenarios (or the Sorcerer King!). Yes, there are theoretical weaknesses (hiring an army). But those very rarely come up in play, because most scenarios don't allow for it--either there's no where to buy an army, no time to buy an army and get them into position, no room to put an army near the objective, or the whole thing revolves around armies in the first place. As well, there's a firm culture of table pressure--instead of "the rules say I can, so you can't stop me" individual entitlement mentality, it's more of a "Nah, that's not fun for everyone" group-consensus mentality where the DM can easily put a stop to such shenanigans.

opaopajr

2019-01-14, 09:12 AM

As a "grognard" :smallamused: it is the only version of WotC D&D I will deign to play, it's that good. :smallsmile: It's even better houseruled! :smallcool:

Ignimortis

2019-01-14, 09:19 AM

These were also its greatest weaknesses. Tons of content that wasn't balanced, fun, or designed well, creating a massive barrier to entry. Tons of subsystems that bogged the system down to a muddy mess and a power curve that basically turned the game from standard D&D fantasy at low levels, to super hero rocket tag by level 5, to unplayable "choose your own reality" at 10+. High level 5e is still ridiculous, but it's at least manageable. I DMed 3.5/Pathfinder for almost a decade because it was the only game going in my small town and eventually just gave up. Got a small group of friends going on some less known systems and 5e brought me back to DnD after I swore it off.

As I've said, 5e is fine for people who didn't want 3.5 to go beyond level 6 or so (and probably was made at least with them in mind). As someone already said on these forums, 5e is basically E6 stretched out over 20 levels. And I don't know how high-level 5e is ridiculous, really. It's very, incredibly tame even at level 14. I've never had a chance to play at level 17+, but I doubt things change that much.

Subsystems were the best thing about 3.5, IMO, because the most unbalanced piece of crap in 3.5 was the PHB. If you ditched the PHB classes and retained, say, Bard, Barbarian and Rogue out of it, and then used the splatbooks, you could make a much better game than a Core-only game. 5e just doesn't bother about expanding or changing the conventions set up in 5e PHB, and it shows. 3.5 was open to experimentation to some degree, and we got gems like ToB and Binders and proper Warlocks out of it, which the new editions promptly ditched and were worse off for it (5e Warlocks are terrible compared to 3.5 Warlocks, and while 4e Fighters tried to be Warblades, Warblades and their martial adept ilk were probably the most fun I ever had with D&D).

I agree. Strengths and weaknesses are often (but not always) subjective. I'd rather have much less content but have that curated well. I'd take 10 options that all work over 100 options, of which 85 are crap and the rest are decent, even though that leaves 15 workable options. But I have to wade through 85 crap ones to get there, which spoils it for me.
.

That's a difference in views, I think. I never actually bothered to "search for the best things", and instead worked out a concept and then looked for things that would enable that concept. 3.5 was much, much better at enabling concepts than 5e. It wasn't as good at keeping them at an equal power level, but it's to be expected, seeing as there are just so many more possible concepts.

Willie the Duck

2019-01-14, 10:34 AM

Hmm, that’s somewhat troubling. Are the guidelines for balance easy, and do they work?

It is worth noting that a lot of the ways that 5e is considered 'easy' are akin to a video-game with 'easy,' 'medium,' and 'hard,' on the start-up screen, with the cursor by default pointing to the 'easy' selection. The game is, by default, easy, but it has very well established rules right there in the Dungeon Master's Guide explaining (and encouraging) people to take actions to up the challenge level through fairly straightforward methods (increase the challenge of encounters, slow down the recuperation of expended resources, lower the magical treasure benefits, use some of the more stringent optional rules, etc.).

It's crazy, cause narrative type games have been around forever, and have been super popular since VtM came out 28 years ago, but modern (newer) roleplayers seem to think that they didn't exist until the PbtA games.

Using the game to recreate LotR or Prince Valiant or Arthur and Merlin or whatnot has been part of the game since before the little brown books made it to the printer in '74. The idea that 'old school' was exclusively playing the game like a dungeon-crawling game where your characters were glorified board game pieces and no narrative action took place is a retroactive revision that some in the hobby like to perpetuate for tribalism-related reasons.

Perhaps a last question from me... How much investment does it require compared to other versions in terms of: time to grok to DM-level confidence (if perhaps a shaky one), prepare sessions (from scratch adventure)? I suspect less than 3e or 4, but more than 1e/2e. Am I wrong? What are the rule reference demands during play? No worse than 2e, or more?

I do have the basic rules now, so thanks for the recommendations. I may get to the starter set if I’m still drawn to it and go through the adventure there next.

I would recommend the starter adventure. As to prep time, honestly once you recognize that you are learning a new system and will have to learn it rather than use your old skill-based without modification, I don't think that there is any specific D&D that would be faster. Even B/X, you still need to learn how much your players' characters can actually take on, about save-or-dies, and a bunch of other things which require DM's gaining skill as much as the nuances of 5e.

MoiMagnus

2019-01-14, 10:35 AM

From all the D&D I've tested, the best one (in my opinion) I've played were 5e, and an heavily house-ruled 4e.
But the most interesting character creations I've done were in 3.5 and Pathfinder.

For me, character creation is "half of the game" in 3.X. And it comes with a lot of plus (creating characters you will never play is actually interesting, and building a team too), and a lot of minus (the part where you play your character wasn't as great as other systems).

While 5e is an edition optimized for interesting gameplay, at the cost of any interest in technical character creation (background are still interesting to create). And 4e is basically not a true D&D, so not really comparable, but character creation suffer from the need of a balanced "wargame" whatever the choices you make.

The few games I've made in 1e, and the few things I've read on 2e convinced me they were obsolete, at least in the way they're written. (Seriously, game design and writing of game rules had made a lot of "level up" during those last decades). But I have no doubt a good DM could make them interesting to play.

EggKookoo

2019-01-14, 11:47 AM

Using the game to recreate LotR or Prince Valiant or Arthur and Merlin or whatnot has been part of the game since before the little brown books made it to the printer in '74. The idea that 'old school' was exclusively playing the game like a dungeon-crawling game where your characters were glorified board game pieces and no narrative action took place is a retroactive revision that some in the hobby like to perpetuate for tribalism-related reasons.

This is so true it hurts. If there was ever an era of D&D just being pure dungeon crawls, it was very short-lived. Well before 2e was a thing, I was playing games heavy with investigation, social interaction, and non-combat challenges. And D&D's peers were no different. I think what perpetuates this idea that OD&D was just combat and dungeons (aside from the game's name suggesting it was something like that) was that there have always been people on both ends of the spectrum. In the 90s, a kind of "narrative first" dogma appeared, despite narrative never really being second for most players. Games like Vampire: The Masquerade got a lot of PR mileage our of not being a dungeon crawl, to the point where the combat mechanics were borderline nonsensical and often couched in LARP terminology. Once people perceived a schism, reality-based or not, it took on a life of its own.

While 5e is an edition optimized for interesting gameplay, at the cost of any interest in technical character creation (background are still interesting to create). And 4e is basically not a true D&D, so not really comparable, but character creation suffer from the need of a balanced "wargame" whatever the choices you make.

It does depend on your definition of "interesting." I'd be much happier in a game where every PC was a clone of each other, but the rules encouraged creative at-the-table gameplay, over a game where you could trick out your character a hundred different ways but the gameplay was clunky and overloaded. In fact, pre-3e D&D (and a lot of its peers) worked like the former. There were mechanical differences between classes, of course, but Fighter Bob was almost identical to Fighter Sue, and what made them different was how the players ran them.

The few games I've made in 1e, and the few things I've read on 2e convinced me they were obsolete, at least in the way they're written. (Seriously, game design and writing of game rules had made a lot of "level up" during those last decades). But I have no doubt a good DM could make them interesting to play.

I read an article a year ago or so where someone revisited the 1e PHB and DMG and tried to present the material in a more modern way. The result was... interesting. The game was certainly easier to understand but still very cumbersome to play. The big problem with 1e -- which the manuals masked -- was a lack of an underlying game-design philosophy. As has been said, 1e feels like a bunch of different game systems jammed together, and 2e went a long way toward unifying that.

KorvinStarmast

2019-01-14, 12:00 PM

Some gms decide that all the cases are special.
Stairs are commonly known as being evil.
I mean there is tons of people who die in stairs and there is even videogames where you can trip and fall down the stairs and die from a 10 centimeters fall in stairs.e Please consider not spreading misinformation in this thread.

roryb

2019-01-14, 12:09 PM

5e doesn't have much in the ways of tables to memorise or reference. The core mechanics not being terribly deep helps a lot here. A 5e DM needs to adjucate quite a few things, but that's got more to do with confidence and judgement than needing to know fiddly modifiers. Once you know how to set a skill check DC and how Advantage/Disadvantage works you're pretty much good to go.

Session prep is probably a bit more than 4e (which was very plug-and-play, especially for monsters) and less than 3e, but it really depends on your DM-ing style. There's such a thing as over-preparation, and 5e's flexible enough that you can improvise without having to dive into the PHB/DMG to figure out how every time (seriously, I mostly look at my DM screen for conditions and alcohol prices). You can run 5e adventures with a loose script and do well.

This is quite encouraging. Charts all have a certain charm, but often less so during actual play.

I’ll continue with my plan (basic + starter + mines). I may come back with specific questions. Thank you all!

KorvinStarmast

2019-01-14, 12:12 PM

I’m getting a good picture, especially from those who share my particular demographic, so thank you all for the responses.

Perhaps a last question from me... How much investment does it require compared to other versions in terms of: time to grok to DM-level confidence (if perhaps a shaky one), prepare sessions (from scratch adventure)? I suspect less than 3e or 4, but more than 1e/2e. Am I wrong? What are the rule reference demands during play? No worse than 2e, or more?

I do have the basic rules now, so thanks for the recommendations. I may get to the starter set if I’m still drawn to it and go through the adventure there next. If you want to DM the game, run the starter set ... but take a good hard read through it first. Then go into the current basic rules (http://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/DnD_BasicRules_2018.pdf) and look at encounter building (http://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/DnD_BasicRules_2018.pdf#@page=165) on pages 165-167. It's a rough tool, and will take a bit of customizing until it works for you just the way you want it to, but it's a decent tool.

For a bit more content, and one of each kind of character class, the SRD has some good stuff (http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SRD-OGL_V5.1.pdf).

When I started DMing 5e, I had a ready reference sheet of all "conditions" from appendix A handy at all times. Sped play up a lot until I knew how the worked.
Stunned, prone, poisoned .. each has a fiddly detail, so it's handy to have that reference available right up front.

MoiMagnus

2019-01-14, 12:18 PM

It does depend on your definition of "interesting."

You're right, what I wanted to say is that 5e is optimized an polished for a certain vision of interesting (not that 5e is the best whatever the metric you use). Mechanics of 5e are polished and (with few exceptions) well-designed and thought. They tried to got rid of everything that was not needed for their vision of "interesting".

I I'd be much happier in a game where every PC was a clone of each other, but the rules encouraged creative at-the-table gameplay

I do that (characters that have almost no differences except backgrounds) quite often, though only in one-shot, not campaigns. We just don't call it D&D, because people expect from D&D to have some tactical complexity and optimization dilemmas.

Willie the Duck

2019-01-14, 12:19 PM

This is so true it hurts. If there was ever an era of D&D just being pure dungeon crawls, it was very short-lived. Well before 2e was a thing, I was playing games heavy with investigation, social interaction, and non-combat challenges. And D&D's peers were no different. I think what perpetuates this idea that OD&D was just combat and dungeons (aside from the game's name suggesting it was something like that) was that there have always been people on both ends of the spectrum. In the 90s, a kind of "narrative first" dogma appeared, despite narrative never really being second for most players. Games like Vampire: The Masquerade got a lot of PR mileage our of not being a dungeon crawl, to the point where the combat mechanics were borderline nonsensical and often couched in LARP terminology. Once people perceived a schism, reality-based or not, it took on a life of its own.

I think the idea of a monolithic gaming culture was maybe the first myth. People are usually aware of West Coast/East Coast/TwinCities-Lake Geneva schism, but there was also divisions based on whether you started gaming as a (usually college or post-college) historical wargamer, a kid, one of the SCA-like organizations, or something else entirely.

The focus on (and complaints about) "narrative first" definitely also predate the 90s. I know part of 2e's goals were to capture more of the (now known as) "Paladins and Princesses" play that AD&D was taking on, and the original Dragonlance adventure models were considered a step towards more narrative focus (a positive or negative reputation, depending).

Petrocorus

2019-01-14, 12:30 PM

EggKookoo

2019-01-14, 12:33 PM

I’ll continue with my plan (basic + starter + mines). I may come back with specific questions. Thank you all!

I see you trying to close out this thread in a sensible fashion. Unfortunately, GitP doesn't seem to have an "off" button. :smallsmile:

2D8HP

2019-01-14, 12:35 PM

Ha. Being a rather recent comer myself, I don't know that I'm really qualified to sell you, but seriously, this is the biggest reason to play 5e:

You can play it with real-life human beings....

So much this.

I started in '78 as a DM with the Holmes "bluebook", and then as a player in '79 with the LBB's and the Monster Manual, and then I mixed some of the rest of AD&D as a DM in the 1980's, played a little B/X, a lot of other games, took a long glance at 3e, short glances at 2e, 3.5, and 4e, and have played some 5e.

If the adventures appeal to you and the players of 5e appeal than it's worth it.

In some ways 5e is simpler than AD&D, and it's only a lot more complex than B/X if you want it to be, a red pencil for editing is your friend.

I also am an old Grognard that came from 2e. I have the last couple of years restarted playing D&D with my old mates that I used to play with 25+ years ago. We went with 5e and it have been great, the mechanics are easy and feels old school - they are not really, but they feel that way and that is what counts.

I can only recommend giving it ago.

A warning, beware old grognards! Modern roleplayers are more into narrative style gaming than what us old grognards are used too, so that is a much more difficult transition if you are to play with youngish gamers than what rule system you use.

Yes.

Some of the assumptions of some players who grew up with different styles (all encounters should be melee, et cetera) grate, but that's not rules that's players.

I’m getting a good picture, especially from those who share my particular demographic, so thank you all for the responses.

Perhaps a last question from me... How much investment does it require compared to other versions in terms of: time to grok to DM-level confidence (if perhaps a shaky one), prepare sessions (from scratch adventure)? I suspect less than 3e or 4, but more than 1e/2e. Am I wrong? What are the rule reference demands during play? No worse than 2e, or more?

I do have the basic rules now, so thanks for the recommendations. I may get to the starter set if I’m still drawn to it and go through the adventure there next.

The options in the DMG give you a good feel for "house ruling" to taste, the PHB is mostly player options you may ignore, the free rules and maybe the Starter Set are all you need.

As a "grognard" :smallamused: it is the only version of WotC D&D I will deign to play, it's that good. :smallsmile: It's even better houseruled! :smallcool:

@opaopajr speaks truly!

Here's a fine statement on 5e:

Yes... provisionally.

So, 2e was my game.

I started playing D&D in or around 1993. I was a young geekling just taking their first steps into true nerddom. I walked into a comic and gaming shop called "The Bookmark" to buy some magic cards and saw some people playing a game I didn't know anything about... so I sat in.

Within a couple of weekends, I was rolling up a Mage that was horribly derivative of Raistlin for the Dragonlance campaign Toby (The DM) was running. I was easily distracted, unfocused, annoying, and constantly needed help to do literally anything from character creation to rolling the dice because the rules didn't make sense, yet.

And it was kind of fun. Mostly I think I enjoyed having so many older teens focused on me in a positive way, sharing something they enjoyed, was a precious feeling that I'll never forget. Over the next few years my brother and I got a real "Feel" for what roleplaying and Dungeons and Dragons were about.

It wasn't long before both of us were running our own games. Sometimes at home, sometimes at the Bookmark. My parents were delighted because the family was pretty poor at the time, but people were happy to loan us their books if it meant someone else was the DM, y'know? My parents would drop us off at the Bookmark on Weekends and due to the way gaming worked at the shop, we'd get a decent meal without it costing the family precious food stamps...

I traveled the Sea of Silt in a skiff. My brother walked through the doors of Sigil. We fled from Darkon with riches untold, and died at the teeth of countless fantastic beasts. The game was fantasy, and escape, and warmth of camaraderie. Surrounded by people who would die for me, even if it was only in a game of imagination.

Over time, we scrimped and saved enough to buy a few sourcebooks, the Dark Sun Boxed Set, and the core rulebooks. But Norman grew out of tabletop gaming and, without my knowledge, sold all of the books for some cash so he could buy tickets to a Metallica Concert. I was devastated.

Still. I borrowed books. I wrote until my wrist hurt. I memorized charts and tables of attacks and experience and I continued to run games to the best of my ability, and play in them.

Third Edition came out while I was in Job Corps. I had been unable to get to a tabletop game for over a year, and satisfied myself with reading GURPS books and the like or trying to play in some ridiculous games that had as much focus as a camera with no lens dipped in bacon grease. These weren't even beer and pretzels games, folks, they were hollow attempts at self-aggrandizement by the GM while everyone else tried and failed to do anything interesting.

My boyfriend and I bought the core books for 3e somewhere around 2001. I started running games pretty much immediately and pretty much nonstop. I used old campaign notes and adapted monsters to the new stats and systems, but it all felt... wrong. The stories didn't feel supported by the rules, being things of deadly seriousness while the rules were too lenient with the players, giving them endless solutions and choice paralysis.

The feeling of real RISK was gone. My players? Loved it. So I ran.

3.5 came along and, for a brief time, it was a bit better. With the changes they made, there, helped to limit some of the shenanigans, but soon the massive glut of rulesets bogged everything down, again. Endless new classes and prestige classes and feat trees created mires that left my stories by the wayside... Most of my old campaign notes and adventures were lost around that time. I just gave up on ever hoping to have that feeling, again.

4e was a mess. I had minimal interest in it. But Pathfinder was a new and interesting take on 3e's systems while killing off the 3.5 glut. New class design and features shifting things around and made the overwhelming quantity of tables and rules-infringements disappear... at least until they made it all 3.5 compatible.

At that point, I more or less left tabletop gaming behind for the second time in my life, and threw myself into MMORPGs and Internet Chat RP to scratch that escapist itch. It's where I eventually met my husband (A different story, altogether!) and the best friend we both have. This best friend? He does tabletop gaming online. And brought us into it, full force. Mutants and Masterminds, Pathfinder, 4th Edition D&D, some small measure of Savage Worlds... None of it felt -exactly- like home, but it was warm, and friendly, and I loved it.

5th edition came down the pipeline. By this point in my life, I was a systems design nerd. I love breaking down the mechanics of how a game determines successes or damage, balances different characters, and more. So 5th edition initially drew me in on -that- basis.

But as I played, I started feeling that old feeling, again. Just glimmers of it, here or there. The feeling I had, sitting at a table of friends, looking up from character sheets to dice and shouting with delight at the result. OF being truly -excited- by the game, by the friends, by the outcomes. Feeling nervous when I rolled a die. Feeling like there was a real weight in my hand...

It still wasn't perfect. Not until I started running Tyranny of Dragons. I know. I know. It's so simplistic and railroady and site-to-site... But my players don't always hold to the rails. Don't always follow the plan. They're players like that. And during one of the first encounters in that game, the whole table, scattered across the US as we are, felt the excitement, the weight of the dice. The feelings I'd not truly felt in almost two decades crystallized in that moment, into perfect clarity.

And suddenly I was a kid, sitting at the table with my friends, watching a die bounce in slow motion, feeling the trepidation and hope for how it would land, the fifth death save of my husband's character, bouncing across the digital playspace as a computer generated image of a polyhedral dice...

And the feeling stayed. It hasn't faded, yet.

When I look at 5e D&D I feel that joy, again, that unbridled exuberance. Like a sleeping dragon finally taking to the skies, anew, after a decades long slumber. And the glory of the world is blinding and bold. Worlds. From Athas to Faerun to Golarion and Krynn. Across Oerth and the Planes I'm ready, again, to step forth onto a skiff to cut across the sea of silt. To step into the dungeon-tomb of Acererak. To plunder Undermountain and to stand Against the Giants.

5th edition isn't for everyone. 5th edition won't rekindle everyone's childhood feeling of what D&D truly -was-. It's not a perfect system, by a long shot. And it's definitely not 2nd edition. But it's closer, in my opinion, than anything has ever been. And it did it while moving forward, while learning from 2e's mistakes and making new ones that it'll learn from as it goes on.

I highly recommend it.

roryb

2019-01-14, 12:35 PM

Bite me. This always annoy me.
And it's not just for shelves space. It's so much more convenient to carry the PHB and a tablet or even a mini-PC than 3+ books. Notably if you have a lot of other mateiral to carry.

And i don't think it's efficient in fighting piracy. Because people who wants PDF will find them. This is more an incentive not to buy some of the books.

Not to mention the convenience of electronic bookmarks and copying important text.

I see you trying to close out this thread in a sensible fashion. Unfortunately, GitP doesn't seem to have an "off" button. :smallsmile:

No worries. I’m still following, so people can feel free to continue posting their insights, which have been helpful.

DrowPiratRobrts

2019-01-14, 12:37 PM

I want a game that’s supported that might allow me to run games in several modes: standard crawls, intrigue-based, or even more freeform player-driven action in which I can improv.

Is 5e for me? Does it run (from the DMs side of things) fast and loose enough for a ‘casual gamer’?

This is 5e exactly! It's streamlined but so deep, and like fine wine or good cheese it gets better with age. That's to say, the more you play the more you really start to hit your stride. I've played relatively little 3e and 4e (and nothing before then), but I understand those systems pretty well. I really really like 3.5, but this version is better for me and why I like to play. It's also so so so so so much simpler to teach new players than 3e. You can get into the weeds with mechanics if you want, or you can go as far away from the rules as they do in The Adventure Zone podcast and the system holds up either way. It's all about fun, improvised storytelling, and being adaptable to every group style and DM table.

Dude. It's the best version of the game since either 1E or 3.0 depending on your tastes. 5E is a greatest hits edition, and it hits a very nice sweet spot.

This is coming from someone who's been playing for 33 years, and worked at the publisher of the game for a little over a 1/3rd of that time.

I agree with the greatest hits sentiment. Even though I haven't played anything prior to 3e, I do know a decent amount about those editions. It seems to really condense most of the best aspects of all previous editions into one light, digestible package.

...but — and I should have noted this in my initial observations before asking here — there is no pdf version?! That’s a dealbreaker for me. I don’t have the shelf space for large gamebooks. At most, I might be able to add one or two digest-sized volume of any size to my collection.

Sheesh. I guess this is to combat piracy? What century are we in now? :smallmad:

The online SRD is free at places like Roll20. Also, I've run several games before with just the PHB. I got my monsters from Roll20 and the like, sometimes retooling goblins to be human pirates or something. So I'd say if you can just buy the PHB and stuff it under your mattress for storage, you'll be good to go. I have several more books now, but I made it for years as both a player and a DM with just the PHB.

Unfortunately they aren't good adventures.

Maybe not all of them, but there are some pretty great ones for 5e. Dragon Heist and Tomb of Annihilation are two of my favorites and extremely well constructed. Depending on the group's interests, Dungeon of the Mad Mage and Curse of Strahd can also be amazing.

DrowPiratRobrts

2019-01-14, 12:44 PM

I’m getting a good picture, especially from those who share my particular demographic, so thank you all for the responses.

Perhaps a last question from me... How much investment does it require compared to other versions in terms of: time to grok to DM-level confidence (if perhaps a shaky one), prepare sessions (from scratch adventure)? I suspect less than 3e or 4, but more than 1e/2e. Am I wrong? What are the rule reference demands during play? No worse than 2e, or more?

I do have the basic rules now, so thanks for the recommendations. I may get to the starter set if I’m still drawn to it and go through the adventure there next.

Missed this with my first comment. As a word of encouragement, I taught my friend to play who had never played before and he was our DM after our first session or two. He's been the best DM I've ever had and has been going strong for about two years now with our current group. Granted, he's had me to lean on when rules questions come up, but those aren't common anymore.

Edit: He had pretty extensive knowledge of most mechanics within the first 4 sessions or so I'd say.

GlenSmash!

2019-01-14, 12:48 PM

5e has a couple good things going for it.

It's popular and it's good enough to run games where you can fight things, get loot, be heroes or villains if you want in a manner that's fairly streamlined. Oh and it has a number of games being streamed using it which can give you an idea of how certain tables play it.

These are good enough for me to keep using it even if I would rather have few things changed.

Petrocorus

2019-01-14, 12:58 PM

Did someone end the campaign after getting it?
Does the Deck of many things keeps its campaign ending power in 5e?
With careless players, yes.
I gave it to one of my table. They wished to gain the XP they would gain from killing an ancient gold dragon. But of course, they worded it so poorly, history was rewritten so that they actually killed an ancient gold dragon. Hence, many heroes and dragons now on the tail their 6th level *selves*.

Several of the items were "awarded" by the Deck of Many Things found in the Goblin Cave on our first session... Monty haul DMs (shakes head)....
There were absolutely no magic item in the Cragmaw Hideout. The LMoP is a bit more generous than the base guideline when it comes to magic items, but this kind of magic item at level 1 with new players.
I gave it to 6th level PC and it was already too early.

Not to mention the convenience of electronic bookmarks and copying important text.

Copy-pasting rules on the character sheet for instance, or extracting your own bestiary specific to the current adventure.

Jophiel

2019-01-14, 01:42 PM

Just another player of 1e here who switched to 5e and has enjoyed it. I started off grumbling about the usual stuff ("Dwarf wizards? Lock picking isn't a thief exclusive skill? This is stupid") but after a couple sessions, let go of that stuff and enjoyed the game for what it is. Plus, as previously mentioned, it has the benefit of actually being played at numerous places and not requiring me to try to play with my Class of 1991 high school buddies.

A warning, beware old grognards! Modern roleplayers are more into narrative style gaming than what us old grognards are used too, so that is a much more difficult transition if you are to play with youngish gamers than what rule system you use.
It's funny because I see old 1e/2e players grumble and bitch about how they tried to RP at a 5e table and everyone threw Mt Dew cans at them because "This video game generation just ROLL plays, man! They only care about the combat!". Then the next post is some grognard going on about how "This new generation thinks every game will be like Critical Role and how can you run a game when it's six wannabe actors pretending they're on Youtube!"

Not that it's a new 'debate' anyway. Go back into dusty issues of Dragon and the Letters section and Editorials have plenty about "Combat driven Monty Haul campaigns" and "People trying to turn AD&D into theater club"

Willie the Duck

2019-01-14, 02:39 PM

2D8HP

2019-01-14, 02:46 PM

I think the idea of a monolithic gaming culture was maybe the first myth. People are usually aware of West Coast/East Coast/TwinCities-Lake Geneva schism, but there was also divisions based on whether you started gaming as a (usually college or post-college) historical wargamer, a kid, one of the SCA-like organizations, or something else entirely....

I know that at my usual table we mostly played a conga-line of human Fighting-men (a 101+ Conan expy's) and at my first. DunDraCon finding that the majority of players (especially those old enough to grow beards which I wasn't yet) played Magic-Users instead seemed weird.

KorvinStarmast

2019-01-14, 03:09 PM

it has the benefit of actually being played at numerous places and not requiring me to try to play with my Class of 1991 high school buddies. I currently am in a campaign, 5e, with my Class of 1976 high school buddies. :smalleek: We play on roll20 since we are all over the country.

Go back into dusty issues of Dragon and the Letters section and Editorials have plenty about "Combat driven Monty Haul campaigns" and "People trying to turn AD&D into theater club" Yeah, the letter section used to induce eye rolling in this subscriber.

I think the idea of a monolithic gaming culture was maybe the first myth. People are usually aware of West Coast/East Coast/TwinCities-Lake Geneva schism, but there was also divisions based on whether you started gaming as a (usually college or post-college) historical wargamer, a kid, one of the SCA-like organizations, or something else entirely. Yeah, good point.

JoeJ

2019-01-14, 03:16 PM

Not that it's a new 'debate' anyway. Go back into dusty issues of Dragon and the Letters section and Editorials have plenty about "Combat driven Monty Haul campaigns" and "People trying to turn AD&D into theater club"

And the foreward to Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes (published in 1976) complains, for what the editor hopes is the last time, about "Monty Hall" DMs.

olskool

2019-01-14, 05:24 PM

Deck of Many Things can't award +5 items. It also can't be found in the Goblin Cave, in fact there are no Magic Items in the Goblin Cave.

All the issues you are bringing up are entirely the fault of your DM not the game. Edit: Also there was no way for your Familar to get trapped in a gem in the Dragon's Hoard ether.

But I do ask why you were having the Wizard try to bash the stuck doors, when you likely have stronger party member that could do it instead. (And be assisted at it)

Anyway to to help the OP D&D Beyond is the place for you to get digital copies of the game as other people have said. As no one else has I will provide a link https://www.dndbeyond.com/

I am WELL AWARE of what magic can be awarded in 5e. The posting you read was a reply to another post after I warned the OP about certain types of DMs showing up to play 5e, specifically certain types of "power gamers" and "Monty Haul DMs" (if you are a fellow "grognard," you WILL recognize this term). It was a simple warning to the OP that 5e DOES NOT possess "hard limits" on power gaming and he will have to "install" them just as with 1e/2e. The second poster asked for an "elaboration" on my experience with this new group, so I gave it as a cautionary tale about how NOT TO DM.

If you read my posts, you see that my Familiar wasn't trapped in a crystal. The DM's PC that he was running in addition to DMing (a Monk called Scrim) was trapped in the jewel after drawing a card from the Deck. The DM was VERY upset by this and when we ventured to the ruined town where the Dragon built a lair in the tower, he was bent on our rescuing Scrim. I attempted to use my squirrel familiar to RECON the tower but the DM REPEATEDLY said "your squirrel CANNOT climb the tower, it's too smooth for him to climb." He wouldn't even let me use Mage Hand to lift my familiar up to a tower window because he KNEW if I knew there was a dragon inside the tower, I wouldn't go inside. Scrim would remain imprisioned in that gem. So the three of us (2nd lvl Wizard, 2nd lvl Thief, and a 5th lvl Barbarian/5th lvl Bard Bugbear) entered the keep and the dragon confronted us. As I was negotiating with the Dragon, the Bugbear tried to cast a cantrip (covertly) and the dragon attacked us with its breath weapon. I failed my save (taking 44 hp of damage to my 14 hp wizard) and DIED. The bugbear slammed the door between the tower and the cottage (grabbing the also dieing Hafling Thief who was on his side of the door) and fled the town. He did feel bad about my death and is letting me create another SECOND LEVEL Wizard so we can go slay the dragon and free Scrim. I guess he put a lot of time into Scrim. :smallconfused:

I was opening the doors because it was just me and the Hafling Thief exploring the town and I had the higher STR (10). The Barbarian/Bard was busy using his "animal handling" ability that he got for Totem Barbarian to catch and tame Twig Blights(?) so he could build an army of insect warriors to unleash on his enemies (he has a powerful Devil/Demon gunning for him thanks to a card from the Deck). It was an interesting 6 sessions.... :smallcool:

I reitterate my warning about Monty Haul Dms!

olskool

2019-01-14, 05:40 PM

In general I'd say about the same as 2e. The game isn't all that different. If you're talking about combat encounters, be aware of a few specific things that change the action economy. Things like actions vs. bonus actions vs. reactions, and how the concentration mechanic works. Also, 5e uses the word "attack" often to mean a specific kind of action: an attack that uses an attack roll i.e. a d20 that is meant to overcome a target's AC. This can catch you if you're not aware of how the term is used. And sometimes characters get multiple attacks, which is not the same thing as multiple actions.

Regarding actions and bonus actions, a lot of players get confused about if they have a bonus action or what. I like my bucket-and-tag visualization: you have two buckets, one labeled action and another labeled bonus action. Everything you do has a tag on it with the same words: action or bonus action. Whenever you do something, you put the item in the bucket with the same tag. If you don't happen to have an item with a bonus action tag, you can't take a bonus action that turn. Otherwise you can. Each bucket can hold one item, and you empty them out at the beginning of the round.

If you get into the weeds, just post questions in the this forum. People are typically pretty helpful.

This sums up the issues you might have pretty well. I'd run it "narrow" or "hardlined" like you'd run 2e until you get used to the system. No FEATS, no Multiclassing/Dual Classing until you understand the ramifications of these in game and watch "custom builds" that might use supplements you don't possess like Mordenkainen's Guide to Everything. Watch for "bonus actions" requests that don't line up with the reality of a 6-SECOND COMBAT ROUND (no more 1 minute rounds in 5e). You will enjoy the ADVANTAGE and DISADVANTAGE Mechanic. I honestly believe this is the best game mechanic WOTC ever developed when you consider it's flexability and simplicity.

Good Luck man.

EggKookoo

2019-01-14, 05:43 PM

If you read my posts, you see that my Familiar wasn't trapped in a crystal. The DM's PC that he was running in addition to DMing (a Monk called Scrim) was trapped in the jewel after drawing a card from the Deck. The DM was VERY upset by this and when we ventured to the ruined town where the Dragon built a lair in the tower, he was bent on our rescuing Scrim. I attempted to use my squirrel familiar to RECON the tower but the DM REPEATEDLY said "your squirrel CANNOT climb the tower, it's too smooth for him to climb." He wouldn't even let me use Mage Hand to lift my familiar up to a tower window because he KNEW if I knew there was a dragon inside the tower, I wouldn't go inside. Scrim would remain imprisioned in that gem. So the three of us (2nd lvl Wizard, 2nd lvl Thief, and a 5th lvl Barbarian/5th lvl Bard Bugbear) entered the keep and the dragon confronted us. As I was negotiating with the Dragon, the Bugbear tried to cast a cantrip (covertly) and the dragon attacked us with its breath weapon. I failed my save (taking 44 hp of damage to my 14 hp wizard) and DIED. The bugbear slammed the door between the tower and the cottage (grabbing the also dieing Hafling Thief who was on his side of the door) and fled the town. He did feel bad about my death and is letting me create another SECOND LEVEL Wizard so we can go slay the dragon and free Scrim. I guess he put a lot of time into Scrim. :smallconfused:

I was opening the doors because it was just me and the Hafling Thief exploring the town and I had the higher STR (10). The Barbarian/Bard was busy using his "animal handling" ability that he got for Totem Barbarian to catch and tame Twig Blights(?) so he could biuld an army of insect warriors to unleash on his enemies (he has a powerful Devil/Demon gunning for him thanks to a card from the Deck). It was an interesting 6 sessions.... :smallcool:

This is just... comedy.

I reitterate my warning about Monty Haul Dms!

I don't think I have much praise for your DM, but based on your description above I don't see how a Monty Haul mindset factors in. I mean, he may have been trying to run a Monty Haul style game, but that appears to be beside the point.

olskool

2019-01-14, 05:50 PM

With careless players, yes.
I gave it to one of my table. They wished to gain the XP they would gain from killing an ancient gold dragon. But of course, they worded it so poorly, history was rewritten so that they actually killed an ancient gold dragon. Hence, many heroes and dragons now on the tail their 6th level *selves*.

There were absolutely no magic item in the Cragmaw Hideout. The LMoP is a bit more generous than the base guideline when it comes to magic items, but this kind of magic item at level 1 with new players.
I gave it to 6th level PC and it was already too early.

Copy-pasting rules on the character sheet for instance, or extracting your own bestiary specific to the current adventure.

YEP! It did a very good job breaking the campaign on the 3rd Session in. I tried to warn our DM about "Monty Haul Syndrome," but I was told by all the players "we aren't playing 'Vietnam AD&D' here where you just scrape by for a bit of gold and a +1 sword. We're heros and this is the NEW D&D!" To each his own, I guess. I'll probably head back to Mythras unless I can find a sensible group to game with.

olskool

2019-01-14, 05:56 PM

This is just... comedy.

I don't think I have much praise for your DM, but based on your description above I don't see how a Monty Haul mindset factors in. I mean, he may have been trying to run a Monty Haul style game, but that appears to be beside the point.

This is one issue with the Monty Haul Campaign, you never know HOW your game is going to "implode."

If you are a new DM, I implore you, BE STINGY and cautious both with treasure/magic AND your Encounters. You can always ramp up the reward or the danger once you gain an understanding of both the system AND (MORE IMPORTANTLY) your group's dynamic. It's always easier to lighten up than tighten down!

Envyus

2019-01-14, 06:35 PM

This is one issue with the Monty Haul Campaign, you never know HOW your game is going to "implode."

If you are a new DM, I implore you, BE STINGY and cautious both with treasure/magic AND your Encounters. You can always ramp up the reward or the danger once you gain an understanding of both the system AND (MORE IMPORTANTLY) your group's dynamic. It's always easier to lighten up than tighten down!

This is not doing is a Monty Haul Campaign. This is giving the Campaign destroying Deck of Many Things in the first session.

ad_hoc

2019-01-14, 07:29 PM

Ghatt

2019-01-14, 11:21 PM

I'd say it's much more of a sequel to 2e than 1e. 1e was notable for having a ton of disconnected tables, rules systems that didn't integrate with each other, and incredibly convoluted rules with tons of exceptions and special cases. Just look at the difficulty people have in figuring out how 1e initiative works, and how the magic, melee, and ranged pieces seem to each be from a different game. (And then add in the psionics rules) There were also clearly different philosophies at work in different parts of the book; for example, if a player attracted 5th-8th level followers, they would arrive with much more magical equipment than a PC starting at 5th-8th level and using the chart for magic items for PCs starting at higher levels. 2e without all of the splat books tried to keep most of the feel of 1e in play and 'stat blocks' (to the point that you can use 1e and 2e modules pretty much interchangeably), but tried to cut out weird special cases and bizarrely complicated rules (again, look at initiative) and use a more consistent rules philosophy.

Maybe. I’ve never played 2e, so I wouldn’t know. I’ll take your word for it though.

Malifice

2019-01-15, 02:07 AM

The only people I have personal experience with who have trouble understanding 5e are 3e players.

And those people who dont read the rules.

For the first few sessions, stop and read each rule as it comes up so you're familiar with it. First combat you have, read the rulebook Combat section to make sure you're doing Surprise, Initiative, Movement, Actions etc correctly.

Encourage rules lawers in this first session or two. Heck; award Inspiration any time you get a rule wrong, and a player correctly calls you on it.

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 02:16 AM

I have had people who I taught the game to and played for a couple sessions buy some books and start up their own game. They had no problems. It's very intuitive. The rules are designed so that if a table guesses what a rule is they're probably right.

...as long as you're prepared to ignore official WotC spokesman Jeremy Crawford's tweets telling them that the rule is actually supposed to be this totally opposite thing either (1) because of technicality XYZ in jargon of the rules text, or (2) because Jeremy Crawford has an opinion different than the rules text.

In other words, 5E's rules are simple in the same way all RPG rules are simple when you interpret them simply. They're quite a bit more complicated than OD&D's rules, and are about as complicated as AD&D's rules once you finish accounting for bonus actions and different kinds of feats and exception-based class abilities. AD&D's complexity shows up mostly in the form of certain tables that you need to consult for e.g. saving throws or thief skills; 5E's complexity shows up in the form of rule exceptions that you need to remember to apply in certain situations. But if you don't sweat mistakes too much, neither form of complexity will prevent you from having a good time with your friends this game session.

noob

2019-01-15, 07:11 AM

This is not doing is a Monty Haul Campaign. This is giving the Campaign destroying Deck of Many Things in the first session.

You can make a campaign be about 4 persons drawing 3 cards each from the deck of many things then having to fix all the problems they created.(if they do not all die)

Willie the Duck

2019-01-15, 08:43 AM

You can make a campaign be about 4 persons drawing 3 cards each from the deck of many things then having to fix all the problems they created.(if they do not all die)

Well sure, if you are making the campaign about the deck of many things, than clearly it isn't going to destroy the existing campaign. I think the general point is that olskool inferred that 5e was a significant contributor in the game he was playing going off the rails, and then proceeded to explain that the DM had decided to utilize a plot event (finding a DoMT) which is designed to introduce maximum randomness into a campaign (and Envyus was pointing out that much more significant contributing factor). Exactly what small part the game being 5e (as opposed to another D&D edition) was supposed to play in this is just not clear (and massively dwarfed by this DM's apparent desire to play a mad circus, something you really have to turn your eyes and squint to say that one edition does differently than another).

KorvinStarmast

2019-01-15, 09:12 AM

Watch for "bonus actions" requests that don't line up with the reality of a 6-SECOND COMBAT ROUND (no more 1 minute rounds in 5e). 5e isn't simulationist, so this makes no sense. But I agree that one needs to be attentive to when one does, or does not, have a bonus action. It is worth keeping track of.

If you are a new DM, I implore you, BE STINGY and cautious both with treasure/magic AND your Encounters. You can always ramp up the reward or the danger once you gain an understanding of both the system AND (MORE IMPORTANTLY) your group's dynamic. It's always easier to lighten up than tighten down! This is decent advice for any beginning DM.

For the OP: it took a few reviews of the game's combat rules for me to understand the flow of combat. One thing that was different for me is that there was no roll for surprise. Surprise is mostly a DM call in this edition of the game.

Next it the "action economy" of what takes place in a round. (Six second round) Here are the five things:

---------------
Action(attack, cast a spell, dodge ..)
Move (you can always move)
Bonus Action (a game feature, a class feature or a spell usually gets you this. There isn't one available by default. So it's worth knowing who and what has a bonus action)
Reaction Also happens situationally, and most often in the early going it involves an opportunity attack.
Interact with an object (open door, draw weapon, kick over a barrel, etc)
----------

Had I understood this better during our first session I'd have had a better grasp of what to do in combat.

Also, coming from older editions, the word "Turn" is used differently.

Combat happens during a round. Each character and NPC has a Turn inside that round.

Example: three PC's versus two wolves.
The round lasts (notionally) 6 seconds. There are five turns in this round. Each PC has a turn, and each wolf has a turn.

This takes us to the reaction: it usually happens on someone else's turn. One of our PC's moves away from the wolf after attacking and missing, which movement offers the wolf an Opportunity Attack as a Reaction. This is the wolf making an attack even though it was the PC's turn.

EggKookoo

2019-01-15, 11:13 AM

Also, coming from older editions, the word "Turn" is used differently.

Oh, right. Man, I completely forgot in AD&D a "turn" was something like 10 rounds?

This takes us to the reaction: it usually happens on someone else's turn. One of our PC's moves away from the wolf after attacking and missing, which movement offers the wolf an Opportunity Attack as a Reaction. This is the wolf making an attack even though it was the PC's turn.

The reaction concept was a major part of what sold me on 5e. I love reactions. When I create my own magic items, I try to give them features that leverage them.

Jophiel

2019-01-15, 11:33 AM

Oh, right. Man, I completely forgot in AD&D a "turn" was something like 10 rounds?
Yeah, which would be a minute (10 rounds @ 6 sec) and is probably why even now a lot of spells last for one minute.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-15, 11:37 AM

Yeah, which would be a minute (10 rounds @ 6 sec) and is probably why even now a lot of spells last for one minute.

Or one minute is a nice, round amount of time meaning basically "for one fight" since fights rarely go to 10 rounds but you rarely have less than 30 seconds between fights, and if you do they're really one fight in two chunks.

The durations are basically

* Now (instantaneous, single rounds)
* 1 fight (1 minute)
* a couple fights but not all day (1 hour)
* all day, but not 24 hours (8 hours)
* a long time (24+ hours)

Willie the Duck

2019-01-15, 11:50 AM

Oh, right. Man, I completely forgot in AD&D a "turn" was something like 10 rounds?

Yeah, which would be a minute (10 rounds @ 6 sec) and is probably why even now a lot of spells last for one minute.

A turn in TSR-D&D was always 10 minutes, but how long a round was varied between editions (10 seconds, 1 minute, possibly something else). Regardless, it was always linguistically challenging because you also wanted to use the term as it is in 5e ('your turn,' 'their turn,' etc. in combat or similar). Not that we don't still have dungeon levels, character levels, class levels, spell levels (both spell and slot, now), and so on...

Jophiel

2019-01-15, 12:42 PM

A turn in TSR-D&D was always 10 minutes
Haha, you're right. I laugh because I originally thought this, then thought "I should double check" and Googled it, the top result was a GitP thread titled AD&D - 10 rounds in 1 turn and so I thought "Hey, guess I was remembering wrong and a turn was one minute which makes sense"

There's a lesson there but I haven't figured it out yet

EggKookoo

2019-01-15, 12:53 PM

Haha, you're right. I laugh because I originally thought this, then thought "I should double check" and Googled it, the top result was a GitP thread titled AD&D - 10 rounds in 1 turn and so I thought "Hey, guess I was remembering wrong and a turn was one minute which makes sense"

There's a lesson there but I haven't figured it out yet

I made the same mistake.

Envyus

2019-01-15, 03:18 PM

...as long as you're prepared to ignore official WotC spokesman Jeremy Crawford's tweets telling them that the rule is actually supposed to be this totally opposite thing either (1) because of technicality XYZ in jargon of the rules text, or (2) because Jeremy Crawford has an opinion different than the rules text.

In other words, 5E's rules are simple in the same way all RPG rules are simple when you interpret them simply. They're quite a bit more complicated than OD&D's rules, and are about as complicated as AD&D's rules once you finish accounting for bonus actions and different kinds of feats and exception-based class abilities. AD&D's complexity shows up mostly in the form of certain tables that you need to consult for e.g. saving throws or thief skills; 5E's complexity shows up in the form of rule exceptions that you need to remember to apply in certain situations. But if you don't sweat mistakes too much, neither form of complexity will prevent you from having a good time with your friends this game session.

Crawford has also said you are free to ignore any of his rulings on Twitter.

Well sure, if you are making the campaign about the deck of many things, than clearly it isn't going to destroy the existing campaign. I think the general point is that olskool inferred that 5e was a significant contributor in the game he was playing going off the rails, and then proceeded to explain that the DM had decided to utilize a plot event (finding a DoMT) which is designed to introduce maximum randomness into a campaign (and Envyus was pointing out that much more significant contributing factor). Exactly what small part the game being 5e (as opposed to another D&D edition) was supposed to play in this is just not clear (and massively dwarfed by this DM's apparent desire to play a mad circus, something you really have to turn your eyes and squint to say that one edition does differently than another).

Also the Deck of Many Things is a campaign destroying risk in any edition of D&D.

KorvinStarmast

2019-01-15, 03:26 PM

A turn in TSR-D&D was always 10 minutes, but how long a round was varied between editions (10 seconds, 1 minute, possibly something else). Regardless, it was always linguistically challenging because you also wanted to use the term as it is in 5e ('your turn,' 'their turn,' etc. in combat or similar). Not that we don't still have dungeon levels, character levels, class levels, spell levels (both spell and slot, now), and so on... And then there are/were segments. *hair pulling commences*

We did the segment thing for a while, and it only worked when one of the players assisted the DM by keeping track of which segment it was and who was up in a given segment ... when a DM had to keep track of that by him/her self, arrrggghhh.

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 03:27 PM

Crawford has also said you are free to ignore any of his rulings on Twitter.

Sure, and that's my point: you can simplify any game. E.g. you can ignore the saving throw tables in AD&D and just make up numbers that sound pretty good, especially if the player rolls a high number which you're pretty sure would pass even if you did look it up). In AD&D or 5E, you can avoid assigning class levels to unimportant enemy wizards and just assign them HP and a few choice spells that they'll cast at first opportunity.

Once you account for the fact that DMs don't need to do useless work, every game gets pretty simple. But 5E starts at a relatively high level of complexity before you do that simplification, which is why WotC has an official "rules manager" with a Twitter account.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-15, 03:32 PM

Sure, and that's my point: you can simplify any game. E.g. you can ignore the saving throw tables in AD&D and just make up numbers that sound pretty good, especially if the player rolls a high number which you're pretty sure would pass even if you did look it up). In AD&D or 5E, you can avoid assigning class levels to unimportant enemy wizards and just assign them HP and a few choice spells that they'll cast at first opportunity.

Once you account for the fact that DMs don't need to do useless work, every game gets pretty simple. But 5E starts at a relatively high level of complexity before you do that simplification, which is why WotC has an official "rules manager" with a Twitter account.

Honestly? I'm anti-complexity myself, and 5e isn't that complex. It's way easier to run than 4e, where I started. Because there are fewer interacting parts. And unless you mess with the core parts, changes are relatively limited. And few stacks of modifiers, especially conditional modifiers. The numbers are static and you don't have to look up a dozen different rules just to run a single monster. Spell-casters are the worst, but since they don't tend to live long and concentration's a thing, it doesn't end up being that bad. Cast a concentration spell on turn 1 and do simple stuff from there.

The problem people have with 5e is that they try to pull the rules out of the underlying philosophy. They skim through looking for numbers and miss the soul. They confuse mechanics with rules and ignore the descriptions. That, or they're loophole hunting. Which afflicts all systems to one degree or another.

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 03:38 PM

Honestly? I'm anti-complexity myself, and 5e isn't that complex. It's way easier to run than 4e, where I started. Because there are fewer interacting parts. And unless you mess with the core parts, changes are relatively limited. And few stacks of modifiers, especially conditional modifiers. The numbers are static and you don't have to look up a dozen different rules just to run a single monster. Spell-casters are the worst, but since they don't tend to live long and concentration's a thing, it doesn't end up being that bad. Cast a concentration spell on turn 1 and do simple stuff from there.

The problem people have with 5e is that they try to pull the rules out of the underlying philosophy. They skim through looking for numbers and miss the soul. They confuse mechanics with rules and ignore the descriptions. That, or they're loophole hunting. Which afflicts all systems to one degree or another.

Well, yeah. 4E is more complex and widget-y. But the OP isn't coming from 4E, he's coming from TSR-era D&D, so 4E isn't a useful point of comparison for him.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-15, 03:50 PM

Well, yeah. 4E is more complex and widget-y. But the OP isn't coming from 4E, he's coming from TSR-era D&D, so 4E isn't a useful point of comparison for him.

I've only read the 2E PHB/DMG. And that was so complex (how many different, mutually-incompatible ways of resolving actions were there? 23? 999? (being hyperbolic there)) and so table-driven (and so poorly laid out and edited) that I gave up halfway through, even though I'd played Baldur's Gate and other Infinity Engine games so I know the "flow."

I'd say 5e is orders of magnitude less complex that TSR era D&D outside of maybe Basic.

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 04:03 PM

I've only read the 2E PHB/DMG. And that was so complex (how many different, mutually-incompatible ways of resolving actions were there? 23? 999? (being hyperbolic there)) and so table-driven (and so poorly laid out and edited) that I gave up halfway through, even though I'd played Baldur's Gate and other Infinity Engine games so I know the "flow."

I'd say 5e is orders of magnitude less complex that TSR era D&D outside of maybe Basic.

It's as easy to ignore an AD&D table as it is to ignore a 5E rule like "Create Thrall only imposes the charmed condition on your 'thrall', it doesn't do anything useful like make him obey you." (Arguably that one is more a lack of a 5E rule but whatever.)

In TSR-era AD&D, the focus was on the game fiction first and foremost, so adjudicating rules and exceptions is easy: you just think, "What would be a realistic outcome?" The tables you see are an outgrowth of that naturalism, because most things in real life are more complex than an ability check can represent, but you are free to ignore those tables or make up your own or just wing it. (5E generally just expects the DM to wing it for everything outside of combat, so it doesn't even make non-combat rules in the first place.)

5E expects DMs to come up with a realistic outcome, and then shoehorn that outcome into the ability check framework (compare d20 + mods against a fixed DC) so that class abilities like Reliable Talent and Lucky can apply. It empowers the players more, because they have more control than they would over an AD&D-style ad hoc ruling, but it is more complex.

EggKookoo

2019-01-15, 04:07 PM

There's also a difference between being complicated because there are unique rules and systems for each different facet of the game (1e/2e) and being complicated because there are variations or overrides for a single core set of rules (3e+). Then there's complicated for DMs (2e/3e) and simple for DMs (1e/5e, not sure about 4e).

I think 3e brought a lot to the table by unifying rules and streamlining a lot of concepts. Love or hate the d20 system itself, at least it gave D&D a single, unified mechanic that it could hang most everything else off of. At the same time, I think it was a mistake to encourage so many minor +/- bonuses, and as a DM I find the concept that NPCs should be built around the same rules as PCs to be terribly misguided.

So "complex" can mean different things. As a programmer, I can write very complex code, but I try to approach a project with a code-design philosophy that uses (and reuses) simple concepts.

EggKookoo

2019-01-15, 04:19 PM

5E expects DMs to come up with a realistic outcome, and then shoehorn that outcome into the ability check framework (compare d20 + mods against a fixed DC) so that class abilities like Reliable Talent and Lucky can apply. It empowers the players more, because they have more control than they would over an AD&D-style ad hoc ruling, but it is more complex.

I see 5e as acknowledging that the mechanics are ultimately just showing you the result of what happened, rather than being a driving force for what happens. That's why, for example, advantage doesn't stack. The actual probability of something succeeding is way too complicated to calculate with great precision, so we at the table just get the results to the nearest 5%.

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 04:21 PM

Love or hate the d20 system itself, at least it gave D&D a single, unified mechanic that it could hang most everything else off of.

But it doesn't--it just makes DMs ignore all mechanics that don't fit into that single unified mechanic.

Look at what happened to morale checks and Reaction rolls over the course of the past few editions. In AD&D, when you meet a monster, if they're not obviously hostile, you have a chance to parley with them and test their reactions. In AD&D, Charisma influences this to a minor degree but it's mostly up to luck and the DM's judgment. I didn't play 3E, but from what I understand, they converted it into a Persuasion roll and then discovered that was stupidly overpowered, and in 5E this has become an odd combination of "the DM decides if they're friendly/hostile/whatever" and "you can change hostiles into neutrals or friendlies with a successful Persuasion check, if the DM thinks that's plausible." What's really happened here is that because Reaction rolls don't fit well into the ability check framework (too easy to game), the mechanic has gone away almost entirely.

Other examples are numerous, but it should be obvious for example that the mechanic for the economic effects of opening a new trade route are not well-modeled with a d20 ability check. "How much will my barony's income increase if I clear the giants out of the Sondheim Mountain Pass so that merchants can go through it?" It doesn't make sense for things like Expertise and Enhance Ability to change these results, so either you wind up inventing your own mechanics anyway, just like you would have in AD&D, or do a bad job of it and the players eventually give up and stop doing stuff like that, and stick to killing monsters. That's not an improvement over AD&D. It's not even simpler, it's just more simplistic.

There are a number of other 3E-driven "simplifications" that have harmed the game over the years, and I'll cite cyclic initiative as probably the worst one, but the point is that too much emphasis on unified mechanics is sometimes harmful to play.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-15, 04:21 PM

In TSR-era AD&D, the focus was on the game fiction first and foremost, so adjudicating rules and exceptions is easy: you just think, "What would be a realistic outcome?" The tables you see are an outgrowth of that naturalism, because most things in real life are more complex than an ability check can represent, but you are free to ignore those tables or make up your own or just wing it. (5E generally just expects the DM to wing it for everything outside of combat, so it doesn't even make non-combat rules in the first place.)

But in AD&D did an absolutely miserable job of actually telling you that, and an even worse job of actually being realistic. Its tables were arbitrary and reflected all sorts of horrifically wrong assumptions about reality. And didn't account for the fact that reality need not apply to a fictional world.

And simulationism and fiction-first are actually at odds. Because the rules don't give anything like the fiction. No playable set of rules can ever give you anything like reality. That's why nobody played AD&D straight--it was the most house-ruled thing ever. Because doing it straight just gave you garbage. And not even fun garbage in my opinion. You had to ignore things or the game just didn't work (or wasn't playable). 5e doesn't have that issue because it consciously separates the rules from the fiction. The rules are there merely for the game to play smoothly, not for the underlying fiction.

And 5e does have non-combat rules, they're just not hard-and-fast ones because it realizes that reality is way too complex to codify. They're more like guidelines. AD&D tried to give these rules (reaction rules among others) and fell down hard. 3e doubled down on that and ended up with diplomancy.

Not that 5e is perfect, but it's a substantial improvement on the earlier editions in every meaningful way from my point of view. I think of it as the "best parts" version of D&D. Take the parts that worked well from every edition and add some new "glue". Leave out the parts that were borken.

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 04:28 PM

But in AD&D did an absolutely miserable job of actually telling you that, and an even worse job of actually being realistic. Its tables were arbitrary and reflected all sorts of horrifically wrong assumptions about reality. And didn't account for the fact that reality need not apply to a fictional world.

And simulationism and fiction-first are actually at odds. Because the rules don't give anything like the fiction. No playable set of rules can ever give you anything like reality. That's why nobody played AD&D straight--it was the most house-ruled thing ever.

Seems like those DMs didn't have any trouble getting the message.

The lack of unified mechanics is one of the things that makes AD&D easy to house-rule. You can change the way invisibility works, for example you can import 5E's disadvantage mechanic for invisible foes instead of giving a -4 to-hit penalty, and nothing breaks because the system is loosely coupled. No 3E-style exploits emerge.

The downside of course is that because the system is so decoupled, players have less power to influence the narrative in AD&D. You don't have heavily mechanical class abilities like a 5E PC does (bonus action Hide and +17 to Stealth by level 3!) that give you confidence you're prepared for almost anything the game throws at you. You're more at the mercy of whatever happens in play and what the DM decides is realistic. It's a very different style of play, and the OP should be aware of the differences before believing people who tell him that 5E is "simple."

Because doing it straight just gave you garbage. And not even fun garbage in my opinion. You had to ignore things or the game just didn't work (or wasn't playable). 5e doesn't have that issue because it consciously separates the rules from the fiction. The rules are there merely for the game to play smoothly, not for the underlying fiction.

And 5e does have non-combat rules, they're just not hard-and-fast ones because it realizes that reality is way too complex to codify. They're more like guidelines. AD&D tried to give these rules (reaction rules among others) and fell down hard. 3e doubled down on that and ended up with diplomancy.

Not that 5e is perfect, but it's a substantial improvement on the earlier editions in every meaningful way from my point of view. I think of it as the "best parts" version of D&D. Take the parts that worked well from every edition and add some new "glue". Leave out the parts that were borken.

I thought you said you didn't even play 2E, you just read the book once? What's the source for your opinions about AD&D gameplay?

EggKookoo

2019-01-15, 04:36 PM

But it doesn't--it just makes DMs ignore all mechanics that don't fit into that single unified mechanic.

Look at what happened to morale checks and Reaction rolls over the course of the past few editions. In AD&D, when you meet a monster, if they're not obviously hostile, you have a chance to parley with them and test their reactions. In AD&D, Charisma influences this to a minor degree but it's mostly up to luck and the DM's judgment. I didn't play 3E, but from what I understand, they converted it into a Persuasion roll and then discovered that was stupidly overpowered, and in 5E this has become an odd combination of "the DM decides if they're friendly/hostile/whatever" and "you can change hostiles into neutrals or friendlies with a successful Persuasion check, if the DM thinks that's plausible." What's really happened here is that because Reaction rolls don't fit well into the ability check framework (too easy to game), the mechanic has gone away almost entirely.

I'm not sold on that conclusion. It seems just as likely to me that attempting to model a complex roleplaying aspect with a single roll felt wrong to the players. Or there simply weren't enough players who bothered to parlay. Gotta get your phat lewt after all.

If it were that simple, D&D would have done away with hit points. That doesn't use anything like a d20 check. I've actually toyed with the idea of bypassing HP and going with a kind of Constitution "did I get badly injured?" check but I've come to realize having a nice simple linear degradation of health is intuitively comfortable for play. I didn't mean to imply that every last mechanic needed or should have been made into a d20 check, just that most of them were. Those that operate outside that mechanic often do so for a reason.

Other examples are numerous, but it should be obvious for example that the mechanic for the economic effects of opening a new trade route are not well-modeled with a d20 ability check. "How much will my barony's income increase if I clear the giants out of the Sondheim Mountain Pass so that merchants can go through it?" It doesn't make sense for things like Expertise and Enhance Ability to change these results, so either you wind up inventing your own mechanics anyway, just like you would have in AD&D, or do a bad job of it and the players eventually give up and stop doing stuff like that, and stick to killing monsters. That's not an improvement over AD&D. It's not even simpler, it's just more simplistic.

I would argue you shouldn't be trying to wrap something that complex into a single mechanic in the first place. Going further extreme for the sake of illustration, you certainly wouldn't want the game to consist of you creating your first level character and then immediately making a "level up" check to see if they jump to 2nd (and then so on). The economic effect of opening a new trade route isn't a mechanic -- it's playing the game. Ideally you'd run that without dice at all.

There are a number of other 3E-driven "simplifications" that have harmed the game over the years, and I'll cite cyclic initiative as probably the worst one, but the point is that too much emphasis on unified mechanics is sometimes harmful to play.

I was a "reroll init each round" purist for decades until I finally tried just rolling it once at the beginning of combat. I even had another old school 2e player in my group who expressed resistance to the idea. First fight we tried it, we were both immediate converts. Although I'm tempted to try popcorn my next campaign...

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 04:48 PM

I would argue you shouldn't be trying to wrap something that complex into a single mechanic in the first place. Going further extreme for the sake of illustration, you certainly wouldn't want the game to consist of you creating your first level character and then immediately making a "level up" check to see if they jump to 2nd (and then so on). The economic effect of opening a new trade route isn't a mechanic -- it's playing the game. Ideally you'd run that without dice at all.

If you want a game that has lots of action around economics and opening up trade routes (as a motivation for adventuring), you will need mechanics for what happens when players succeed in their action (opening up this particular trade route), so they can make an informed decisions about the risk/rewards involved. Meaningful play requires informed decisions, not just about the consequences of actions but also about the action space. See The Alexandrian's writings on game structures for an example, but in short, when the DM says "What do you do?" if you want the answer to be "We try to open a new trade route!" the players need to both know that "open a new trade route" is a valid action declaration (akin to "we go through the north door"), and what is likely to happen if they declare it (e.g. "the DM will roll a new dungeon on the Obstacles table and plop us down outside it, and if we neutralize the inhabitants of the dungeon we get to roll on the Economic Rewards table").

I've played games like this in 5E, and they work, but 5E is no help at all for running such campaigns because 5E only really has rules for combat. AD&D isn't much more help, but at least AD&D is used to having lots of ad hoc tables and non-unified mechanics, and it has better pacing and more options for resolving said challenges in a non-combat-oriented way (like negotiating with the dungeon's monstrous inhabitants to join your barony as your vassals instead of killing them).

EggKookoo

2019-01-15, 05:06 PM

If you want a game that has lots of action around economics and opening up trade routes (as a motivation for adventuring), you will need mechanics for what happens when players succeed in their action (opening up this particular trade route), so they can make an informed decisions about the risk/rewards involved. Meaningful play requires informed decisions, not just about the consequences of actions but also about the action space. See The Alexandrian's writings on game structures for an example, but in short, when the DM says "What do you do?" if you want the answer to be "We try to open a new trade route!" the players need to both know that "open a new trade route" is a valid action declaration (akin to "we go through the north door"), and what is likely to happen if they declare it (e.g. "the DM will roll a new dungeon on the Obstacles table and plop us down outside it, and if we neutralize the inhabitants of the dungeon we get to roll on the Economic Rewards table").

I guess I'm baffled why any player would ever think "we open a trade route" wouldn't be a valid course of action (if a bit simplistic -- it's really a series of actions). The idea that I would have a player say "we decided to open a trade route" and then expect to roll on a table (or for me to) to determine the final result is just downright alien. As a DM, I'd say "ok, how do you plan to do that?" to which I'd expect the players to form some kind of plan. Maybe they plan to dig up some investors. Maybe they try to persuade the king. Whatever it is, we'd play it out from there.

I've played games like this in 5E, and they work, but 5E is no help at all for running such campaigns because 5E only really has rules for combat. AD&D isn't much more help, but at least AD&D is used to having lots of ad hoc tables and non-unified mechanics, and it has better pacing and more options for resolving said challenges in a non-combat-oriented way (like negotiating with the dungeon's monstrous inhabitants to join your barony as your vassals instead of killing them).

The 5e DMG has plenty of rules for worldbuilding and non-combat encounters. I bet you could even find something to help you work out an "open a trade route" adventure. What you won't find is a single "open a trade route" mechanic with the expectation that you just roll a die and POOF you have a trade route.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-15, 05:09 PM

Knaight

2019-01-15, 05:21 PM

Sure, and that's my point: you can simplify any game. E.g. you can ignore the saving throw tables in AD&D and just make up numbers that sound pretty good, especially if the player rolls a high number which you're pretty sure would pass even if you did look it up). In AD&D or 5E, you can avoid assigning class levels to unimportant enemy wizards and just assign them HP and a few choice spells that they'll cast at first opportunity.

Once you account for the fact that DMs don't need to do useless work, every game gets pretty simple. But 5E starts at a relatively high level of complexity before you do that simplification, which is why WotC has an official "rules manager" with a Twitter account.

It's pretty far from every game. There's really no way around Phoenix Command being a total mess besides just not using it, there's more than a few that take serious effort to even understand, written by people who make Gygax look like a lucid writer. More than that some games strip down better than others. Take GURPS, which is intentionally very modular where you can just remove one module and it doesn't take anything else with it. Compare to 3e D&D where all the pieces are connected and if you pull one out you get to go edit the rest to accommodate.

5e is on the crunchy side, and the whole idea that it's rules light is hilarious (rules light games don't have 900+ pages of core rules books. 9, sure. 90, maybe, though that's either at the edge of rules light and doesn't use very dense text or is really setting heavy. 900? No.) 5e is pretty modular, and can be streamlined pretty easily.

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 05:31 PM

I guess I'm baffled why any player would ever think "we open a trade route" wouldn't be a valid course of action (if a bit simplistic -- it's really a series of actions). The idea that I would have a player say "we decided to open a trade route" and then expect to roll on a table (or for me to) to determine the final result is just downright alien. As a DM, I'd say "ok, how do you plan to do that?" to which I'd expect the players to form some kind of plan. Maybe they plan to dig up some investors. Maybe they try to persuade the king. Whatever it is, we'd play it out from there.

There's the disconnect--you don't know a game structure for trade routes, so you're treating "we open a trade route" as an invalid action declaration that has to be translated into a series of smaller action declarations instead of a valid action declaration which triggers known procedures. I know this is happening in your head because you say right here that you'd decline to let the players declare "we open a trade route," and you'd wind up asking them to rephrase their action at a different level of detail. This is like The Alexandrian's example of a player who tries to declare "we go to the inn" and the DM who only knowns dungeon crawling procedures and starts describing all of the streets in the town and asking "do you go north, south, east, or west?"

It's not that dungeon crawling procedures are wrong, and it's not that every campaign should use trade routes as game structures--you only do that if you want trade routes to be important in your campaign, and that's the whole point. The point is that game structures are the bridge between "what do the PCs do?" and "how do the players and the DM do it?" Play gravitates to areas of structure, so campaigns with a trade route game structure (and a default action of "open a new trade route") are going to have a certain sandboxy style, and campaigns where all of the game structure is about who gets to make an attack roll next in combat are going to have a completely different hack-and-slash style ("I hit it with my axe"). No one game structure is the right tool for every campaign, but the more game structures you know, the more kinds of games you are capable of running well.

It may take you a couple of rereads to really grok it, but I cannot recommend this series of blog posts highly enough. It should be required reading for non-hack-and-slash DMs: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/game-structures Posts 1-5 and #14 are especially good, and this follow-up post is useful too: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37995/roleplaying-games/game-structure-party-planning

The 5e DMG has plenty of rules for worldbuilding and non-combat encounters. I bet you could even find something to help you work out an "open a trade route" adventure. What you won't find is a single "open a trade route" mechanic with the expectation that you just roll a die and POOF you have a trade route.

I.e. what you won't find is game structures.

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 05:34 PM

It's pretty far from every game. There's really no way around Phoenix Command being a total mess besides just not using it, there's more than a few that take serious effort to even understand, written by people who make Gygax look like a lucid writer. More than that some games strip down better than others. Take GURPS, which is intentionally very modular where you can just remove one module and it doesn't take anything else with it. Compare to 3e D&D where all the pieces are connected and if you pull one out you get to go edit the rest to accommodate.

5e is on the crunchy side, and the whole idea that it's rules light is hilarious (rules light games don't have 900+ pages of core rules books. 9, sure. 90, maybe, though that's either at the edge of rules light and doesn't use very dense text or is really setting heavy. 900? No. However 5e is also pretty modular, and can be streamlined pretty easily.

I defer to your greater knowledge of games, Knaight. Thanks for the correction.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-15, 05:54 PM

noob

2019-01-15, 05:59 PM

There is no way "I open a trade route" is a single, one-character action in any reasonable game. It's always going to be a long, drawn-out, multi-step action involving lots and lots of people over many occasions. And if you abstract it away to a single resolvable action...you're playing a very different game. Which does not resemble a single-character-focused, single-point-of-view system like D&D has ever been at all.

Well once you start having a whole city under your control(because you are the employer of most businesses) and that you have to declare the opening of each shop and to create routes between production sites, storage, shops and markets and place each building on a map if you need to say at each time "I go meet planner guy A and tell him to go recruit a merchant and buy the housing at the spot I pointed at the map and then tell the merchant ....." it can feel very heavy especially if there is like 50 kinds of different logistic problems to manage and that you each time have to meet people and tell them stuff and so due to that have to cast spells to tell if they are lying and also have to ask them to confirm they understood what you meant and so on the game will drag on and on.

As the scale of the actions of the adventurers goes up it makes sense as long as it is not something that they could fail that the overall problem stays at a constant declaration complexity thus possibly making actions that would have been long to describe but with no or low chance of mistake into simple actions.(you can still probably roll a dice for possible complications such as delays or oppositions)

Knaight

2019-01-15, 06:05 PM

There is no way "I open a trade route" is a single, one-character action in any reasonable game. It's always going to be a long, drawn-out, multi-step action involving lots and lots of people over many occasions. And if you abstract it away to a single resolvable action...you're playing a very different game. Which does not resemble a single-character-focused, single-point-of-view system like D&D has ever been at all.

It depends on who these characters are, and the level of focus being put forth. If the PCs are all the rulers of nation states and the scope of the game is the process of years then it absolutely could be a single, one character action entirely reasonably, where they issue an order and it's done - and the focus of the game is put on the interesting stuff, like the political maneuvering that went into determining where that trade route goes.

Any action can be broken down into smaller actions, or abstracted into bigger actions. Where you draw the line depends on the focus of the game. In some, even featuring more normal characters, "I spend the next few weeks talking with various merchants to establish a trade route" is reasonable. In others you get to actually play out every conversation with every merchant involved, along with the acquisition of everything that you end up bargaining with them. Neither option is wrong, but some fit some campaigns much better than others.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-15, 06:09 PM

As the scale of the actions of the adventurers goes up it makes sense as long as it is not something that they could fail that the overall problem stays at a constant declaration complexity thus possibly making actions that would have been long to describe but with no or low chance of mistake into simple actions.

"As long as it's not something that they could fail..." is doing all the work here. Yes, if, for any step there's no chance of failure (or no interesting failure), you just narrate that part. That's what 5e tells you to do, by the way. But still, in opening a trade route you've got all the interesting, failable parts along the way. The negotiations. The clearing the route. The dealing with rivals. All of those are separable and failable. And failing one can influence the rest without causing the whole to fail. So abstracting those into a single roll is like abstracting an entire adventure into a single roll. Ie missing the entire point IMO.

Edit: Note the "single, single-character" thing. Even if you're a king, opening a trade route isn't something you can do alone. It's a series of actions, each of which could succeed or fail and each of which involves multiple parties with different attitudes. So neither are the roller's circumstances fixed, nor are the opponents' circumstances fixed.

JoeJ

2019-01-15, 06:15 PM

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 06:18 PM

"As long as it's not something that they could fail..." is doing all the work here. Yes, if, for any step there's no chance of failure (or no interesting failure), you just narrate that part. That's what 5e tells you to do, by the way. But still, in opening a trade route you've got all the interesting, failable parts along the way. The negotiations. The clearing the route. The dealing with rivals. All of those are separable and failable. And failing one can influence the rest without causing the whole to fail. So abstracting those into a single roll is like abstracting an entire adventure into a single roll. Ie missing the entire point IMO.

One of the things that's going on here is that you're confusing granularity of action declaration with granularity of action resolution. Simple example from a dungeon crawl game structure:

DM: You're in a room with exits to the north and east. What do you do?
Player A: We go east. [Action declaration]
DM: In that room there are two ghouls who leap to attack you. [Transition to combat game structure...] [...after combat] You find treasure on the ghouls' bodies. There's nothing else in the room, but there are doors to the west and the south. What do you do?

The action resolution doesn't have to be a "single roll", and it could consist of a transition to a completely different level of game structure--you'll note that the original example given was that the result of "We open a new trade route" was a whole dungeon, which would be played using traditional dungeon crawling procedures. Then you transition back to the Trade Routes game structure, claim your reward, and do something else which could be opening a new trade route or maybe something else like securing a dynastic alliance or responding to a random event like a hobgoblin invasion.

Game structures shape gameplay, and the more game structures (and especially scenario structures) you know, the more kinds of adventures/games you can run well.

Edit: incidentally, in 5E, nothing consists of a "single [die] roll." It's always stuff like "choose a DC in your head, communicate to the players what ability/skill influences success, ask for the roll, wait to see if anyone is going to use a Portent die on this roll, roll the dice, see if anyone is going to use Bardic Inspiration or Cutting Words to influence the roll and if so roll those dice, check if anyone is using Lucky dice, add modifiers, declare a success or failure, wait to see if anyone is going to use Indomitable or Shield to influence the outcome of that success or failure, etc." This is what makes even simple procedures complicated in the 5E ruleset.

With apologies to von Clauswitz: "In WotC games, everything is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult."

Jophiel

2019-01-15, 06:42 PM

With apologies to von Clauswitz: "In WotC games, everything is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult."
Most of that stuff still happens swiftly and near-automatically (if no one declares they're using inspiration/Portent/etc then it's a half second pause). It's like overwrought descriptions of pouring a cup of coffee: "First you need to walk to the cupboard, then you need to see if there's a clean coffee cup, then you need to PICK a coffee cup unless they're all dirty, then you need to get a dirty cup and turn on the faucet, then you need to pick up a sponge..." when really it's a two second process.

Nothing is ever a single die roll in any version anyway. You're always comparing it to a number to be matched (be it a DM's DC or a chart), adding in any bonuses, etc. If you got hit by a lightning bolt in 1e, you're pulling out a saving throw chart, determining if the lighting was from a Spell, Wand/Staff, Dragon Breath, etc, cross referencing that against class and level, determining if they have a bonus due to any equipment or spell effects, and so on. But, again, just a second or two of real life energy.

MaxWilson

2019-01-15, 06:48 PM

Most of that stuff still happens swiftly and near-automatically (if no one declares they're using inspiration/Portent/etc then it's a half second pause). It's like overwrought descriptions of pouring a cup of coffee: "First you need to walk to the cupboard, then you need to see if there's a clean coffee cup, then you need to PICK a coffee cup unless they're all dirty, then you need to get a dirty cup and turn on the faucet, then you need to pick up a sponge..." when really it's a two second process.

I don't really disagree--in practice you also figure out which abilities/interactions are likely to actually be present in your group, and ignore all the rest. E.g. if you have a Lucky PC in your group, the DM may adjust the way he rolls monster dice to give the Lucky guy more time to decide if he's using his luck.

It still illustrates the point about different kinds of complexity though. Looking up saving throws in the AD&D PHB is also something which quickly becomes automatic (you just write them on your character sheet), and which doesn't require the DM to adjust his DMing procedures. Different, but both complex in their own ways.

Nothing is ever a single die roll in any version anyway. You're always comparing it to a number to be matched (be it a DM's DC or a chart), adding in any bonuses, etc. If you got hit by a lightning bolt in 1e, you're pulling out a saving throw chart, determining if the lighting was from a Spell, Wand/Staff, Dragon Breath, etc, cross referencing that against class and level, determining if they have a bonus due to any equipment or spell effects, and so on. But, again, just a second or two of real life energy.

Yeah, the total effort is similar in both cases. Just like how people like to rag on THAC0 and negative AC, but it's not actually more complex than 5E's way--THAC0 works better for large homogenous groups (rolling attacks for 12 orcs at once) and 5E's way works better for small groups, which might be one reason why 5E combats tend to be small.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-15, 07:34 PM

It's a realm action in Birthright.

Which is not a single, one-character action. So the point still stands.

Regardless, I've had 2 groups now create lasting alliances as part of their campaigns. Not because I planned for them--in fact, one did so against the natural inclinations of the parties involved. Nether one did so by declaring it as an action. Both took the steps to set one up over many sessions. Finding common ground. Fighting common enemies. Persuading reluctant participants. All things that have mechanics or are trivial to adjudicate. The final act didn't need a mechanic either--if they set the groundwork, it succeeded. Otherwise, it failed.

JoeJ

2019-01-15, 07:45 PM

Which is not a single, one-character action. So the point still stands.

Actually, it is. Realm actions are single actions taken by a regent, who can be a PC or NPC, during a domain turn.

Envyus

2019-01-15, 11:23 PM

Max you are coming across as very disingenuous and pedantic here.

The game is not very complex compared to its other editions.

Theoboldi

2019-01-15, 11:37 PM

There is no way "I open a trade route" is a single, one-character action in any reasonable game. It's always going to be a long, drawn-out, multi-step action involving lots and lots of people over many occasions. And if you abstract it away to a single resolvable action...you're playing a very different game. Which does not resemble a single-character-focused, single-point-of-view system like D&D has ever been at all.

In addition to Birthright, which has already been named, Godbound, which is awesome and works quite well, also allows a single character to do this kind of stuff without much effort as a single action (That takes a week or so in-game, of course.).

Mind, this is because that game is about playing demigods who are above such lowly mortal challenges, and the mechanic is supposed to represent their ability to quickly reshape the world, without getting bogged down in the details every time you want to do something trivial but time-consuming. It stays single point of view the entire time, though. All that is represented by this mechanic is a greater deal competency on part of the characters.

Also, more impossible changes that would actually be a challenge for a good do explicitely require you to solve a number of problems determined by the GM, so that's closer to how you say you would run this.

I do recommend that you check those rules out, given that the game is free. It may give some perspective to your, in my opinion, rather broad claim.

Malifice

2019-01-15, 11:50 PM

Well, yeah. 4E is more complex and widget-y. But the OP isn't coming from 4E, he's coming from TSR-era D&D, so 4E isn't a useful point of comparison for him.

5E is roughly equal in complexity to BECMI for mine (with all 5 boxed sets in pay).

It's less complex than AD&D 1E (Core books plus UA and the Wilderness/ Dungeon survival guide, and a Campaign boxed set/ book) and 2E (Presuming spat existence).

The 5E 'Core 3' are much less complex than the AD&D 1 and 2E Core 3. Both in terms of rules simplicity (no THACO, attack and save matrixes, weird rules, lack of a unifying mechanic, fiddly bonuses, varying stat mods, bolted on sub-systems like Psionics in 1E, vague rules wordings etc).

Id feel a lot more comfortable handing a newbe player a copy of the 5E PHB than I would handing them a copy of the AD&D 1E PHB.

MaxWilson

2019-01-16, 12:21 AM

Max you are coming across as very disingenuous and pedantic here.

You might want to look up the definition of "disingenuous" before using it in conversation again.

roryb

2019-01-16, 03:22 AM

Id feel a lot more comfortable handing a newbe player a copy of the 5E PHB than I would handing them a copy of the AD&D 1E PHB.

You’re not joking here (even though I’m still reading up in the 5e basic rules on classes). My experience was BECMI then onto 2e. Recently a copy of the 1e players handbook came into my possession. I had played it a few times in the late 80’s but never owned nor read a copy.

Good lord, what a convoluted, indecipherable, unnecessarily obtuse hot mess!

Malifice

2019-01-16, 04:37 AM

You’re not joking here (even though I’m still reading up in the 5e basic rules on classes). My experience was BECMI then onto 2e. Recently a copy of the 1e players handbook came into my possession. I had played it a few times in the late 80’s but never owned nor read a copy.

Good lord, what a convoluted, indecipherable, unnecessarily obtuse hot mess!

Oddly back in the day its arcane convoluted nature was a feature. Understanding how it all worked together was kind of part of the package of what made it what it was. Neckbeards that full grasped the rules were held in quite high regard.

The free online Basic 5E rules are easier to understand than the Red boxed set basic rulebook of BECMI for mine (without the extra crap from the Expert and Companion and Master sets). Rolling all those 4 boxed sets together, and you're basically at the same level as Core 5E + Xanathars/ SCAG splat.

Even then I'd still call 5E easier to understand due to its core unified mechanic (d20 + Prof + Stat +/- Adv/Disadv).

The trick to 5E rests with the DM. You (as DM) really need to understand the resource management aspect of the game (it's the games fundamental central mechanical underpinning) and understand how the 'X/ Short rest, X/ Long rest' abilities work together over the course of an 'adventuring day' featuring 1 or more encounters. These abilities are central to class power and balance in 5E (more so than fixed bonuses or static attributes like HP, to hit numbers, saves and so forth).

Once you get a good feel for how they all work together (and accept the game is best balanced around the 6 encounter/ 2ish short rest 'adeventuring day') your work is 90 percent done.

noob

2019-01-16, 07:04 AM

JAL_1138

2019-01-16, 09:47 AM

THAC0 works better for large homogenous groups (rolling attacks for 12 orcs at once) and 5E's way works better for small groups, which might be one reason why 5E combats tend to be small.

In both systems you’re taking twelve rolls, applying applicable modifiers, and sorting out whether each one hits somebody’s AC.

If the 2e Orc has a THAC0 of 19, you roll twelve dice, subtracting the roll from the THAC0 for each individual roll. Or if you’re working from a known AC, for example 5, figuring “to hit AC 5, they need to roll 14 or better.”

If the Orc has +5 to hit, you roll twelve dice, and add 5 to the result of each roll. Or if you’re working from a known AC, for example 19, you can simply figure up “To hit AC 19, they need to roll 14 or better.”

How is one method of calculating hits better for large groups than the other?

EDIT: The reasons you saw larger groups in AD&D than 5e is that the action economy tended to be simpler so larger combats went somewhat faster, AoE spells tended to scale much more with level, enemies (and PCs and their hirelings for that matter) tended to have lower HP and thus die more easily to those AoEs and so could be cleared faster, players were more likely to have groups of hirelings/henchmen with them who could also help counteract the larger enemy numbers, and suchlike. At least at higher levels; at lower levels, large groups of enemies could be quite fatal (heck, even a single ordinary squirrel could potentially be fatal to a low-level AD&D character who rolled low on HP), and also AD&D didn’t have encounter building guidelines that cared quite so much about whether a PC got fed through a Cuisinart and poured down the garbage disposal. Not because the to-hit method was simpler.

Willie the Duck

2019-01-16, 09:47 AM

You might want to look up the definition of "disingenuous" before using it in conversation again.

<head-desks>
Well, you definitely showed the second part to be accurate.

MaxWilson

2019-01-16, 09:52 AM

If the 2e Orc has a THAC0 of 19, you roll twelve dice, subtracting the roll from the THAC0 for each individual roll. Or if you’re working from a known AC, for example 5, figuring “to hit AC 5, they need to roll 14 or better.”

If the Orc has +5 to hit, you roll twelve dice, and add 5 to the result of each roll. Or if you’re working from a known AC, for example 19, you can simply figure up “To hit AC 19, they need to roll 14 or better.”

How is one method of calculating hits better for large groups than the other?

If there are twelve orcs, all attacking AC 5, you subtract 19-5=14, then roll twelve dice and count how many are at least 14. Instead of doing twelve additions you are doing only one subtraction.

Yes, the two methods are equivalent--you can convert one into the other seamlessly. If that's your point I agree. But when people criticize THAC0 they usually say something about how human brains prefer addition over subtraction, and I'm pointing out that subtraction is simpler for this case.

Mith

2019-01-16, 10:16 AM

If there are twelve orcs, all attacking AC 5, you subtract 19-5=14, then roll twelve dice and count how many are at least 14. Instead of doing twelve additions you are doing only one subtraction.

Yes, the two methods are equivalent--you can convert one into the other seamlessly. If that's your point I agree. But when people criticize THAC0 they usually say something about how human brains prefer addition over subtraction, and I'm pointing out that subtraction is simpler for this case.

I just use the "attack matrix" and just roll and check my table. Means I'm not doing any maths during combat.

Jophiel

2019-01-16, 10:21 AM

Not because the to-hit method was simpler.
In fact, between weapon speeds, space requirements and "Armor Type" modifiers, the to-hit method in 1e was much more bogged down to the point where those rules were frequently ignored.

Pelle

2019-01-16, 10:37 AM

It may take you a couple of rereads to really grok it, but I cannot recommend this series of blog posts highly enough. It should be required reading for non-hack-and-slash DMs: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/game-structures Posts 1-5 and #14 are especially good, and this follow-up post is useful too: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37995/roleplaying-games/game-structure-party-planning

I.e. what you won't find is game structures.

I love those series of articles, game structures are cool. But I don't get your complaint, none of those are in conflict with 5e. Game structures are ways for the GM to organize what happens in the game, those are system independent, and don't belong in the 5e rule books IMO.

I don't want the rules to tell me that if I want to run a party, I need to include 10+ npcs, have 3-5 events etc. Sure, you can devote space to GM tips and best practice, but you can get that elsewhere.

In my current 5e game the players have a ship, and are sailing from port to port. I have made a simple framework for buying and selling trade goods. How that work is world building decisions, and as a DM, I want the system rules to stay away from those. The resolution mechanics are enough to get started.

EggKookoo

2019-01-16, 10:55 AM

There's the disconnect--you don't know a game structure for trade routes, so you're treating "we open a trade route" as an invalid action declaration that has to be translated into a series of smaller action declarations instead of a valid action declaration which triggers known procedures. I know this is happening in your head because you say right here that you'd decline to let the players declare "we open a trade route," and you'd wind up asking them to rephrase their action at a different level of detail. This is like The Alexandrian's example of a player who tries to declare "we go to the inn" and the DM who only knowns dungeon crawling procedures and starts describing all of the streets in the town and asking "do you go north, south, east, or west?

I think the disconnect is over what different players consider rules, as compared to what they consider content. For me, content feels a lot like "this is what you're dealing with, what do you choose to do about it?" Whereas rules is more like "ok, you've decided to do that thing, let's see if you succeeded or failed and/or to what degree."

So in light of this, combat is both content and rules. The content aspect comprises things like: choosing to attack the goblins or not; working out tactics with other members of the party; should I hit that goblin or heal the fighter?; hey, that goblin ran off, let's go get him!; and anything else that basically comes down to a decision made by one or more players about how to proceed. The rules aspect is more straightforward: roll my d20 to see if my attack hit; force the goblins to make saving throws against my fireball; move X amount of my overall movement to better serve the tactical decision made back in the "content" phase; and other things that most of us think of as mechanical "rules" to the game. While there may be some overlap between them, most things fall pretty firmly into one aspect or the other.

When I hear "open a trade route" my mind immediately goes to that being a content-driven experience. It's going to be a series of decisions made by the PCs in response to the specific circumstances set up by their particular scenario (i.e. adventure, module). Each decision may spawn off more content-driven play, or may result in a rules-based step. Just like I wouldn't want a combat table that you roll on to determine the content-based elements (1-2: You attack nearest enemy, 3-4: You heal the fighter), I'd wouldn't want to resolve the trade route just by some table. Sure, I'd want a general structure for how to handle long-term fiscal/economic enterprises. Something that would cover any kind of business, which running a trade route would qualify as. And the 5e DMG has structure in place for that.

Yes, the two methods are equivalent--you can convert one into the other seamlessly. If that's your point I agree. But when people criticize THAC0 they usually say something about how human brains prefer addition over subtraction, and I'm pointing out that subtraction is simpler for this case.

It's not that for me. It's that in AD&D you subtract for some things, add for other things, and there's little rhyme or reason why. Initiative uses a d10 in 2e (a d6 in 1e). Rolling high for an attack is good, rolling high for a saving throw or initiative is bad. High hit points are good but high AC is bad. It's not the worst thing in the world as a DM to keep track of this, but it feels weak to explain it to players who make rolls, get excited because the result is high, only to remind them that, no, in this case they wanted low. It's distracting and feels cobbled together. It drives home the arbitrary nature of the rules.

With 3e and (almost!) everything becoming a d20 where higher is always better, we can all stop spending brain bookkeeping cycles on keeping up with the weird quirks and biases of the game designers and just get on with it. It's not that adding is easier than subtraction, it's that you no longer have to worry about which one you use in a given situation. Whenever I played 2e (or a lot of other games of the era, which suffered from a lot of similar weirdness), I often felt like I wanted to fix the rules. With 5e I feel like I want to extend the rules.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-16, 11:00 AM

I love those series of articles, game structures are cool. But I don't get your complaint, none of those are in conflict with 5e. Game structures are ways for the GM to organize what happens in the game, those are system independent, and don't belong in the 5e rule books IMO.

I don't want the rules to tell me that if I want to run a party, I need to include 10+ npcs, have 3-5 events etc. Sure, you can devote space to GM tips and best practice, but you can get that elsewhere.

In my current 5e game the players have a ship, and are sailing from port to port. I have made a simple framework for buying and selling trade goods. How that work is world building decisions, and as a DM, I want the system rules to stay away from those. The resolution mechanics are enough to get started.

Agreed, especially since matters of pacing, scope, and such vary wildly even within a single sub-genre, let alone between different sub-genres. What works for my Thursday "gather allies in a ruined city against a demon" campaign won't work on Friday with my "explore a cursed battlefield/prison and counter chaos cult machinations" game, both because the region is different and, more importantly, the players are different. One group loves combat; the other disfavors it, preferring sneaky or talky ways through. One group is pretty straightforward, the other group loves them some curveballs.

And all that is within a single setting and the same time format (1.5 hours/week after school).

I want the game to present a toolkit and advice on what to watch out for as I use the tools. I would love to see more discussion of the basic assumptions and philosophy behind the game. What the designers had in mind and what assumptions cause mass breakage if relaxed. Also I'd like to see more worked examples (for item or monster design especially). Especially helpful would be examples showing why certain things deviate from the guidelines.

I don't want the DMG to tell me how I have to play the game. The most freeing realization I made as an early DM (in 4e, by the by) was that the game rules exist solely to take a burden off the players. Freeform is the default, but freeform is exhausting (especially with more than two participants). Additional "rules" (resolution mechanics and packaged events/outcomes) are there to simplify the players' life and spread the load. That's it. They're not a binding contract, they're not the game. They're not restrictions on what can be done--they're merely there to cover common cases of what might be done. They're pre-built jigs, stencils. But the painting doesn't have to stick to stencils--I can paint outside the lines. With this realization, "Rule 0" isn't really a rule--it's just a statement of universal fact. The rules cannot constrain a table unless the table chooses to be constrained (which they might). The only real constraint on any player is the other players at the table, and everyone should use their words and advocate for themselves.

MaxWilson

2019-01-16, 12:00 PM

It's not that for me. It's that in AD&D you subtract for some things, add for other things, and there's little rhyme or reason why. Initiative uses a d10 in 2e (a d6 in 1e). Rolling high for an attack is good, rolling high for a saving throw or initiative is bad.

Saving throws, like attack rolls, are a roll-over mechanic, so rolling high is good. Initiative is the only exception and frankly you can just as easily invert that if you care to: roll d10 and subtract your weapon speed instead of adding it, then count down from highest to lowest. (I don't personally think that's necessary because it makes sense that 1 (first) goes before 10 (tenth). Making 10 go first makes high rolls good, yes, but it makes 10th faster than 1st, which is weird.)

Willie the Duck

2019-01-16, 12:07 PM

MaxWilson

2019-01-16, 12:30 PM

Doesn't this fall into the category of sure-you-can-modify-it,-but-the-DMs-don't-need-to-do-useless-work?

I don't understand your question. Can you please rephrase or elaborate? I don't understand how those two quotes are related to each other in your mind. One's about how AD&D initiative is fine already but easily modified; the other about skipping over details that don't matter. What's going on in your head that makes you juxtapose them, and what point are you trying to make?

KorvinStarmast

2019-01-16, 12:32 PM

Oddly back in the day its arcane convoluted nature was a feature. Understanding how it all worked together was kind of part of the package of what made it what it was. Even people without beards attained system mastery. :smallwink:
The free online Basic 5E rules are easier to understand than the Red boxed set basic rulebook of BECMI for mine (without the extra crap from the Expert and Companion and Master sets). Rolling all those 4 boxed sets together, and you're basically at the same level as Core 5E + Xanathars/ SCAG splat. Concur.

Even then I'd still call 5E easier to understand due to its core unified mechanic (d20 + Prof + Stat +/- Adv/Disadv). Also concur.

The trick to 5E rests with the DM. You (as DM) really need to understand the resource management aspect of the game (it's the games fundamental central mechanical underpinning) and understand how the 'X/ Short rest, X/ Long rest' abilities work together over the course of an 'adventuring day' featuring 1 or more encounters. These abilities are central to class power and balance in 5E Bingo. It took me a while to begin to grok that.

AD&D didn’t have encounter building guidelines that cared quite so much about whether a PC got fed through a Cuisinart and poured down the garbage disposal. *chortle*
In fact, between weapon speeds, space requirements and "Armor Type" modifiers, the to-hit method in 1e was much more bogged down to the point where those rules were frequently ignored. Yes to both. The AC modifier began in Greyhawk. By the time I hit AD&D 1e as a DM, I had canned them as to much to bother with.
Game structures are ways for the GM to organize what happens in the game, those are system independent, and don't belong in the 5e rule books IMO. I have made a simple framework for buying and selling trade goods. How that work is world building decisions, and as a DM, I want the system rules to stay away from those. The resolution mechanics are enough to get started. Tailored to the table.

Freeform is the default, but freeform is exhausting (especially with more than two participants). Arneson would agree ... and that was "the spark" which comes with a caveat: his model hinged upon the "great man theory" in that what was in his little black notebook changed as he learned (IMO a good thing) and was not common knowledge. The ultimate in DM dependency as a game system. He was also a huge fan of genre fusion, as were all of the proto D&D and early D&D leads. (As was Barker with EPT). We have reached a point in time that there are so many RPGs out there serving so many genres, that D&D has (for IMO economic reasons and branding) chosen to settle into the high fantasy niche with some room for lower magic swords and sorcery. While it's still wide open in a lot of ways, the boundaries seem to me to have moved toward a given center.

And that, as well as the unified mechanic Malifice pointed to (concisely) lowers barriers to entry.

The KISS principle has man virtues; 5e has enough KISS to be accessible, and enough room for complexity to go that way if you want to. It's an interesting fusion.

EggKookoo

2019-01-16, 12:44 PM

Saving throws, like attack rolls, are a roll-over mechanic, so rolling high is good. Initiative is the only exception and frankly you can just as easily invert that if you care to: roll d10 and subtract your weapon speed instead of adding it, then count down from highest to lowest. (I don't personally think that's necessary because it makes sense that 1 (first) goes before 10 (tenth). Making 10 go first makes high rolls good, yes, but it makes 10th faster than 1st, which is weird.)

Oh, right, it's the "DC" that goes down as you level up, and not even according to a formula as near as I can tell. So much more intuitive than just applying a math-derived bonus to your roll. :smallsmile:

With 5e, if you tell me your Constitution ability score, your level, and whether or not you're proficient in Con saves, I can tell you the chance you making or failing a save against typical poison (usually DC 13 or so) without consulting anything in any manual. I can't do that in 2e without checking or memorizing tables. They're completely different cognitive experiences. To make things worse, in 5e once you understand that your ability bonus is just your ability score minus 10, halved, and rounded down, and your proficiency bonus is just your level divided by 4, rounded up, plus one, you can work out a huge chunk of mechanics. In 2e everything has its own special chart without any kind of consistent mathematical underpinning. You have to learn all these esoteric progressions, or at least be able to reference them quickly, to run a game.

I'm not really knocking 2e -- I've spent many years enjoying it. It's just not elegant. Well, except for the general approach to classes. I loved that there were four class archetypes and everything was based off those. I was sad to see that go in 3e and if there was something I wish 5e did, it would have been to go back to that.

MaxWilson

2019-01-16, 01:33 PM

With 5e, if you tell me your Constitution ability score, your level, and whether or not you're proficient in Con saves, I can tell you the chance you making or failing a save against typical poison (usually DC 13 or so) without consulting anything in any manual. I can't do that in 2e without checking or memorizing tables. They're completely different cognitive experiences. To make things worse, in 5e once you understand that your ability bonus is just your ability score minus 10, halved, and rounded down, and your proficiency bonus is just your level divided by 4, rounded up, plus one, you can work out a huge chunk of mechanics. In 2e everything has its own special chart without any kind of consistent mathematical underpinning. You have to learn all these esoteric progressions, or at least be able to reference them quickly, to run a game.

Speaking of cognitive experiences... the game fiction is better in 2E. In 5E, if I'm going without water for three days, it matters enormously whether the DM calls for a "Constitution check" or a "Constitution save" (and 5E has contradictory rules calling for both), despite the fact that all you're really doing is modeling how well your body holds up to extended thirst. There's no fiction there to distinguish between them, but in one case the Fighter and the Sorcerer and the Barbarian get to add +Proficiency to their check, and in the other case the Bard can use Bardic Inspiration and Guidance can potentially grant +1d4 to the check.

In AD&D you'd probably just read the descriptions for all the saving throws and settle on it being a saving throw vs. paralyzation/poison/death magic, because it most closely matches that description.

This illustrates perfectly the difference between 5E complexity and AD&D complexity: AD&D has more tables and more emphasis on the game fiction, and more variety of mechanical resolutions (which helps it match certain fictions better). 5E has more math, a unified mechanic for most things, and more emphasis on build options. The 5E way is nice in the sense that it gives players lots of customization options (caters to Expression, in the language of the Eight Types of Fun) but it's definitely not simpler. It's complex in a different way.

At this point though the OP has long since made up their mind, and perhaps has even given 5E a shot and is now forming their own opinions, so hopefully they can decide for themselves if 5E is "a game for grognards."

EggKookoo

2019-01-16, 02:10 PM

Speaking of cognitive experiences... the game fiction is better in 2E. In 5E, if I'm going without water for three days, it matters enormously whether the DM calls for a "Constitution check" or a "Constitution save" (and 5E has contradictory rules calling for both), despite the fact that all you're really doing is modeling how well your body holds up to extended thirst. There's no fiction there to distinguish between them, but in one case the Fighter and the Sorcerer and the Barbarian get to add +Proficiency to their check, and in the other case the Bard can use Bardic Inspiration and Guidance can potentially grant +1d4 to the check.

In AD&D you'd probably just read the descriptions for all the saving throws and settle on it being a saving throw vs. paralyzation/poison/death magic, because it most closely matches that description.

I do wish 5e was more clear on the difference between checks and saves. I know the shorthand is a check is for when you're trying to make something happen that otherwise wouldn't (and is therefore usually an action), whereas a save is for when you're trying to avoid or prevent something from happening. Walk across a tightrope is a Dex check. Not falling off the tightrope when it's shaken is a Dex save. But there are definitely places where it's unclear which should be used, and it does make a difference in the possible outcomes.

Regarding if going without water is a Con check or a Con save, the spirit of the rules is that it would be a save. That it says "check" in the Con description is almost certainly an oversight. I wish they'd address that in an errata.

At this point though the OP has long since made up their mind, and perhaps has even given 5E a shot and is now forming their own opinions, so hopefully they can decide for themselves if 5E is "a game for grognards."

I think it's pretty clear how edition argument threads go... :smallbiggrin:

OverLordOcelot

2019-01-16, 03:57 PM

Speaking of cognitive experiences... the game fiction is better in 2E...
In AD&D you'd probably just read the descriptions for all the saving throws and settle on it being a saving throw vs. paralyzation/poison/death magic, because it most closely matches that description.
This illustrates perfectly the difference between 5E complexity and AD&D complexity: AD&D has more tables and more emphasis on the game fiction, and more variety of mechanical resolutions (which helps it match certain fictions better).

Is "pick an arbitrary line from a table" actually what is meant by good game fiction? I really don't get how 'make a saving throw that has nothing to do with the character's constitution but does depend highly on class and level to determine how long you go without water' supports better game fiction. The idea that clerics inherently survive better without water than fighters even though fighters do more physical training (and can get more benefit from constitution normally), but magic users survive worse even though they're not wearing heavy armor and presumably are not physically exerting themselves as much seem weird from a game fiction perspective. And the fact that a high level fighter or cleric can last almost indefinitely without water (failing the roll only on a 1 or 2) but a magic user or rogue can't because their saves top out higher makes for some really odd fiction.

I find most of the '1e/2e was better' claims tend to involve completely ditching the game rules and making an arbitrary ruling, which isn't edition dependent. The fact that the default action is not to use any published rule but just to do an arbitrary save says a lot about how the game was played in practice vs theory. (there definitely were dehydration rules in the Dungeoneers and Wilderness Survival Guides, though oddly there were none in the 2nd edition DMG even though the 2e PHB refers to them). It's the same way people say that 1e 'to hit' determination was easier to do for large groups than 5e; any rule system is easy to apply to a large group if you completely ignore the majority of the rules involved like weapon length on opening round, speed factor vs speed factor later, weapon vs armor type every round.

MaxWilson

2019-01-16, 05:06 PM

Is "pick an arbitrary line from a table" actually what is meant by good game fiction? ... The fact that the default action is not to use any published rule but just to do an arbitrary save

Calm down. That is the published rule. It's right there in the definition of what the paralyzation/petrification/death saving throw represents.

Saving Throw Priority
Sometimes the type of saving throw required by a situation or item isn’t clear, or more than one category of saving throw may seem appropriate. For this reason, the saving throw categories in Table 60 are listed in order of importance, beginning with paralyzation, poison, and death magic, and ending with spells.

Imagine that Rath is struck by the ray from a wand of polymorphing. Both a saving throw vs. wands and a saving throw vs. polymorph would be appropriate. But Rath must roll a saving throw vs. wands because that category has a higher priority than polymorph.

The categories of saving throws are as follows:

Save vs. Paralyzation, Poison, and Death Magic: This is used whenever a character is affected by a paralyzing attack (regardless of source), poison (of any strength), or certain spells and magical items that otherwise kill the character outright (as listed in their descriptions). This saving throw can also be used in situations in which exceptional force of will or physical fortitude are needed.

Save vs. Rod, Staff, or Wand: As its name implies, this is used whenever a character is affected by the powers of a rod, staff, or wand, provided another save of higher priority isn’t called for. This saving throw is sometimes specified for situations in which a character faces a magical attack from an unusual source.

Save vs. Petrification or Polymorph: This is used any time a character is turned to stone (petrified) or polymorphed by a monster, spell, or magical item (other than a wand). It can also be used when the character must withstand some massive physical alteration of his entire body.

Save vs. Breath Weapon: A character uses this save when facing monsters with breath weapons, particularly the powerful blast of a dragon. This save can also be used in situations where a combination of physical stamina and Dexterity are critical factors in survival.

Save vs. Spell: This is used whenever a character attempts to resist the effects of a magical attack, either by a spellcaster or from a magical item, provided no other type of saving throw is specified. This save can also be used to resist an attack that defies any other classification.

(Emphasis added.)

Death saves are used for great physical stress, and no other save has a higher priority, so a death save is exactly what the rules tell you to use in this situation (dehydration), which makes fighters better at surviving without water in a desert than wizards. The only question here is whether or not to use a save at all, and at least unlike 5E, the 2nd edition rulebooks aren't pointing you to two similar-but-contradictory mechanics to resolve the situation (ability checks and saving throws).

Don't even get me started on how silly 5E Dex saves are. They don't change your position, they don't consume your reaction, they don't render you prone, they don't consume movement. Just what exactly are you doing when you "make a Dex save" to take half damage against a Fireball? You're clearly not dropping to the floor to shield yourself, or dodging behind a wall, so what are you doing besides rolling a die?

KorvinStarmast

2019-01-16, 05:16 PM

Yes, 5e is indeed a game for grognards. (Or it can be) Six of eight players in my first 5e campaign (2014) started D&D in the 70's ...

I recently read a post by Rob Conley (who figures in the OSR movement, and runs a fun to read blog (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/)) where he made a positive review of the 5th edition. (The specific post was IIRC to do with 5e starter set).

EggKookoo

2019-01-16, 05:22 PM

Don't even get me started on how silly 5E Dex saves are. They don't change your position, they don't consume your reaction, they don't render you prone, they don't consume movement. Just what exactly are you doing when you "make a Dex save" to take half damage against a Fireball? You're clearly not dropping to the floor to shield yourself, or dodging behind a wall, so what are you doing besides rolling a die?

Generally, you're angling yourself so that you take less of a direct hit to more vulnerable parts of your anatomy. Failed Dex save = staring right into the blast. Successful Dex save = throwing your arm over your face. Unless you're a rogue, in which case successful Dex save = jumping briefly into hammerspace?

Remember, damage isn't only or even necessarily structural. It's also about pain, shock, fatigue, and disorientation.

roryb

2019-01-16, 06:08 PM

MaxWilson

2019-01-16, 06:15 PM

Thanks for the heads up. I’ll start following his blog.

Might be good to touch base with Rob Conley and see if he's still playing 5E today.

Malifice

2019-01-16, 11:20 PM

Calm down. That is the published rule. It's right there in the definition of what the paralyzation/petrification/death saving throw represents.

(Emphasis added.)

Death saves are used for great physical stress, and no other save has a higher priority, so a death save is exactly what the rules tell you to use in this situation (dehydration), which makes fighters better at surviving without water in a desert than wizards. The only question here is whether or not to use a save at all, and at least unlike 5E, the 2nd edition rulebooks aren't pointing you to two similar-but-contradictory mechanics to resolve the situation (ability checks and saving throws).

Don't even get me started on how silly 5E Dex saves are. They don't change your position, they don't consume your reaction, they don't render you prone, they don't consume movement. Just what exactly are you doing when you "make a Dex save" to take half damage against a Fireball? You're clearly not dropping to the floor to shield yourself, or dodging behind a wall, so what are you doing besides rolling a die?

Wizards are bookish nerds.

Fighters are SAS or Navy SEAL action heroes. Professional warriors.

Fighters are trained to be hard bastards, and carry heavy loads long distances using nothing more than willpower and endurance and to survive without food and water.

Wizards teleport instead, or use magic to overcome their physical shortcomings and lack of physical conditioning, or just magic up some food or water or mode of transportation.

Seems to match the fiction just fine.

MaxWilson

2019-01-16, 11:56 PM

Wizards are bookish nerds.

Fighters are SAS or Navy SEAL action heroes. Professional warriors.

Fighters are trained to be hard -----, and carry heavy loads long distances using nothing more than willpower and endurance and to survive without food and water.

Wizards teleport instead, or use magic to overcome their physical shortcomings and lack of physical conditioning, or just magic up some food or water or mode of transportation.

Seems to match the fiction just fine.

Yes... in 2E, which is my point. In 5E the situation is rather different.

Malifice

2019-01-17, 01:37 AM

Yes... in 2E, which is my point. In 5E the situation is rather different.

In 5E Fighters are proficient in Con saves, and the Champion (the default Fighter) gets half proficiency in Con checks also.

Aint no way in hell I would allow Guidance or Bardic Inspiration to be spammed on a Con save or check for thirst. Your characters [in game] dont know when they're making such a save (and the save reflects 3 days of gradually increasing thirst or hunger), only that they're getting progressively thirsty or more tired over the course of several days.

Unless your party Cleric was spamming Guidance on you 1/ minute, every minute for those whole 3 days, in which case I would object to it on other grounds.

I mean, how does that play out in your mind?

Groxar the Warlock: 'Man, its been days since I've drunk any water. Hey Theodwin (looks to the parties Bard) care to play me a song for a bit? I have a suspicion I'm going to need a confidence boost in the next 10 minutes or so...'

OverLordOcelot

2019-01-17, 01:49 AM

Fighters are trained to be hard bastards, and carry heavy loads long distances using nothing more than willpower and endurance and to survive without food and water.

SAS and Navy SEALs can't last for weeks without water, and there's no training that lets you go for weeks without water intake. Having a high level fighter live for weeks without any water is just silly; it's a goofy result from an ad-hoc ruling, not some clever system that produces better game fiction.

OverLordOcelot

2019-01-17, 01:50 AM

Calm down. That is the published rule. It's right there in the definition of what the paralyzation/petrification/death saving throw represents.

No, that's not a published rule. That's a vague description of what a particular save generally represents, and the ad-hoc rule you came up with interacts poorly with the fiction and gives downright silly results, like a fighter living for weeks without drinking a drop of water (Which is an absurd result if you know much about dehydration). A published rule is like the clear one on page 185 of the PHB that says clearly what to do and when to do it. The vague mention under constitution states that a DM 'might' call for a constitution check in similar circumstances, but is not actually a contradictory rule. The fact that a DM can decide to handle a specific situation in a different way than the published rule doesn't change the fact that there is a clear, concise rule for how to handle the situation.

This weird argument that 2e is better because you can make weird ad hoc rulings that produce silly results while 5e provides an actual rule you can use, as well as guidance for making an ad hoc ruling if you want to do it differently just doesn't make sense.

Don't even get me started on how silly 5E Dex saves are. They don't change your position, they don't consume your reaction, they don't render you prone, they don't consume movement. Just what exactly are you doing when you "make a Dex save" to take half damage against a Fireball? You're clearly not dropping to the floor to shield yourself, or dodging behind a wall, so what are you doing besides rolling a die?

You mean they work like 2e saves against breath weapon or 2e saves against spells? It's not like 5e is a perfect system, but it has dex saves that work against a fireball or dragon's breath just like 1e, 2e, 3e, or 3.5e did (maybe 4e also), where you simply roll to save but don't change position or consume movement. Going on with a 'don't even get me started on how silly 5e dex saves are' when you're singing the praises of 2e, which handled saves against the same phenomena exactly the same way is, again, absurd. "

HappyDaze

2019-01-17, 02:12 AM

Wizards are bookish nerds.

Fighters are SAS or Navy SEAL action heroes. Professional warriors.

Fighters are trained to be hard bastards, and carry heavy loads long distances using nothing more than willpower and endurance and to survive without food and water.

Wizards teleport instead, or use magic to overcome their physical shortcomings and lack of physical conditioning, or just magic up some food or water or mode of transportation.

Seems to match the fiction just fine.

I got news for you: In 5e, even the Strength 8 Wizard can carry around 120 lbs. all day long without trouble. Sure, the Fighter can carry more, but the little can can certainly carry his own load.

Malifice

2019-01-17, 02:22 AM

SAS and Navy SEALs can't last for weeks without water, and there's no training that lets you go for weeks without water intake. Having a high level fighter live for weeks without any water is just silly; it's a goofy result from an ad-hoc ruling, not some clever system that produces better game fiction.

No, but they're trained to endure long periods without water (or food) over long distances, and how to find drinkable water and food when they have none (or to make do with filthy water and food).

I can assure you that if a College physics nerd and a Special Forces Operator were dumped in a Jungle somewhere with no food or water, and told to reach an area 100kms away, carrying 50kgs of crap with them, I know who I would have my money on getting there first (or indeed even just getting there at all).

Malifice

2019-01-17, 02:26 AM

I got news for you: In 5e, even the Strength 8 Wizard can carry around 120 lbs. all day long without trouble. Sure, the Fighter can carry more, but the little can can certainly carry his own load.

Err no, if a Strength 8 PC carries over 40lbs, he's encumbered and his speed drops by 10'.

If he carries over 80lbs, his speed drops by 20 feet and he has disadvantage on ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws that use Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.

Any Con checks or saves he needs to make for exhaustion, thirst, hunger or forced marches etc will be made at disadvantage.

HappyDaze

2019-01-17, 04:23 AM

Err no, if a Strength 8 PC carries over 40lbs, he's encumbered and his speed drops by 10'.

If he carries over 80lbs, his speed drops by 20 feet and he has disadvantage on ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws that use Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.

Any Con checks or saves he needs to make for exhaustion, thirst, hunger or forced marches etc will be made at disadvantage.

That's not the standard rules. Not everybody uses the variant encumbrance rules.

Malifice

2019-01-17, 04:39 AM

That's not the standard rules. Not everybody uses the variant encumbrance rules.

They're the encumbrance rules though.

HappyDaze

2019-01-17, 04:45 AM

They're the encumbrance rules though.

Which matters not at all since I was referring to carrying capacity (the word "carry" is the clue), not the variant rule of encumbrance.

Pelle

2019-01-17, 05:30 AM

Which matters not at all since I was referring to carrying capacity (the word "carry" is the clue), not the variant rule of encumbrance.

The thing is, if you don't use the variant encumbrance rules, you can't complain about that in 5e weak wizards have such a high carrying capacity, that sucks!. That's specifically what that rule solves, and if you are arguing against 5e on that merit you should include it in the comparison. Now, maybe you are not complaining about it, but someone else was.

EggKookoo

2019-01-17, 06:12 AM

You mean they work like 2e saves against breath weapon or 2e saves against spells? It's not like 5e is a perfect system, but it has dex saves that work against a fireball or dragon's breath just like 1e, 2e, 3e, or 3.5e did (maybe 4e also), where you simply roll to save but don't change position or consume movement. Going on with a 'don't even get me started on how silly 5e dex saves are' when you're singing the praises of 2e, which handled saves against the same phenomena exactly the same way is, again, absurd. "

Also, since at least 2e, your Dexterity factors into your AC in most cases. So if it's silly that you can make a Dex save without moving, going prone, using your reaction, etc., then it's equally silly that an attack can miss you without you moving, going prone, etc.

KorvinStarmast

2019-01-17, 08:59 AM

Might be good to touch base with Rob Conley and see if he's still playing 5E today.
I think he was in the play test (can't be sure) and I know he has run the LMoP for his group, but I don't know if he still 5e's or not.

They started throwing Wisdom into saving throws in AD&D 1e, for certain mental / mind influencing magics.

Example: Wisdom of 18 had +4; Wisdom of 7 had -1

This adjustment applies to the saving throw of the character in question, the penalty for low wisdom, or the bonus for high wisdom, being used to alter the result of the die roll accordingly. The adjustment applies only to mental attack forms involving will force, i.e. beguiling, charming, fear, hypnosis, illusion, magic jarring, mass charming, phantasmal forces, possession, rulership, suggestion, telepathic attack, etc.

The Dex save in 5e seems built on the Reflex save in 3e and makes a certain amount of sense in terms of reflexive/instinctive actions. I don't see the complaint. There are a lot of gamist choices made so that a number in an ability score does something mechanically.

Willie the Duck

2019-01-17, 09:37 AM

I don't understand your question. Can you please rephrase or elaborate?

Little arcane, huh? Yeah, can't help. A day later, I have no idea what I was trying to say. Looks like I was drawing a parallel, not refuting something, but other than that, I don't remember. Good example of why if you are rushed to post something (I do know I had a meeting to go to right after that), it's best to wait and post later rather than confuse yourself.

Might be good to touch base with Rob Conley and see if he's still playing 5E today.

I don't think he ever was going to start playing it regularly, and that wouldn't really be the point. Rob is absolutely happy with the OSR as his primary avenue for gaming. He just noted that, yeah 5e was a fine choice too.

SAS and Navy SEALs can't last for weeks without water, and there's no training that lets you go for weeks without water intake. Having a high level fighter live for weeks without any water is just silly; it's a goofy result from an ad-hoc ruling, not some clever system that produces better game fiction.

Well, this is going back to the question of what a D&D PC (particularly the martial ones) are supposed to be. Are they realistic humans in a low-resolution reality simulator? Are they characters like folklore Robin Hood? Or more like a cinematic action hero? Or a character from some of the more fanciful folklore like King Arthur or Greek myth where heroes are nominally bound by laws of physics (they can't just fly, for instance), but clearly violate what could physically happen (stay awake for 40 days or the like)? If the later, than live for weeks without water is right in line with (and probably mollifies some of the complaints that, in a game with PC wizards, expecting nonmagical characters to conform to rigid reality is being selectively stringent, or however you want to frame that argument). However, I agree that I don't see it matching game fiction particularly well (since there's no agreement on what that is).

No, that's not a published rule. That's a vague description of what a particular save generally represents, and the ad-hoc rule you came up with interacts poorly with the fiction and gives downright silly results, like a fighter living for weeks without drinking a drop of water (Which is an absurd result if you know much about dehydration). A published rule is like the clear one on page 185 of the PHB that says clearly what to do and when to do it. The vague mention under constitution states that a DM 'might' call for a constitution check in similar circumstances, but is not actually a contradictory rule. The fact that a DM can decide to handle a specific situation in a different way than the published rule doesn't change the fact that there is a clear, concise rule for how to handle the situation.

This weird argument that 2e is better because you can make weird ad hoc rulings that produce silly results while 5e provides an actual rule you can use, as well as guidance for making an ad hoc ruling if you want to do it differently just doesn't make sense.

5e has both attribute saves and attribute checks (with fairly different interactions with other rules like bardic inspiration), and some of the guidance on when to use which seems pretty bizarre. 5e could have been tightened up on that and I consider it a reasonable critique of the system. 2e, OTOH, has plenty of this as well. Sticking with the enduring physical hardship scenario, there are proficiency checks, death saves, system shock, and resurrection survival %. In many cases, there's more guidance on which to use when (or at least a precedence, as no, it does not say to use death saves for thirst situation). However, I don't feel that the result is universally better in any way. Certainly not in terms of emulating fiction. Example: in the fiction, having a mad wizard (/witch/curse/whatever) turn you into a frog is supposed to be horrible because, well, you're a frog. In 2e, the ruleset makes one of the most horrible part of it being that you have to make two system shock checks (once when you are turned into a frog, and again when changed back) to survive the experience. Another example (this one perhaps unintended): Ghosts have the ability to possess a PC, as if using the magic jar spell. However, there is no jar, and by (a rigorously harsh interpretation of) the rules, that means that when the ghost is ejected from the possessed individual, the PC's soul/spirit has already left for the afterlife. Getting possessed by a ghost, in the fiction, is supposed to be horrible because someone else has taken control of your body, potentially harming your loved ones, and leaving you to explain your (their actions), not because possession is supposed to kill you.

OverLordOcelot

2019-01-17, 12:08 PM

Well, this is going back to the question of what a D&D PC (particularly the martial ones) are supposed to be. Are they realistic humans in a low-resolution reality simulator? Are they characters like folklore Robin Hood? Or more like a cinematic action hero? Or a character from some of the more fanciful folklore like King Arthur or Greek myth where heroes are nominally bound by laws of physics (they can't just fly, for instance), but clearly violate what could physically happen (stay awake for 40 days or the like)? If the later, than live for weeks without water is right in line with (and probably mollifies some of the complaints that, in a game with PC wizards, expecting nonmagical characters to conform to rigid reality is being selectively stringent, or however you want to frame that argument). However, I agree that I don't see it matching game fiction particularly well (since there's no agreement on what that is).

I don't know why people are so desperate to grasp at straws to defend old edition silliness, but the 'high level fighters and clerics can go for weeks without drinking water' is a silly result of an ad-hoc rule made up on the fly, and is wildly inconsistent with the other game fiction about their abilities. I say the ad-hoc rule because the 2e rules don't actually give that result; they don't tell you anything about how often to make saves for lack water - it's not really clear why you'd do one save per day and not per hour, or per turn, or whenever attempting strong exertion, or some other time increment?

5e has both attribute saves and attribute checks (with fairly different interactions with other rules like bardic inspiration), and some of the guidance on when to use which seems pretty bizarre. 5e could have been tightened up on that and I consider it a reasonable critique of the system.

No. P185 of the PHB has very clear and simple rules for how to handle lack of food and water that produce a realistic (and rather scary) result. Those rules lay out very clearly and simply how to handle a lack of food and water, and which checks to use. In 2e you can vaguely guess at 'well, this wording says maybe I'd use a saving throw at some timing under some circumstance for this', in 5e you get 'if you go with inufficient water, do X, if you go with no water, do Y, and a mention that you can do ad hoc rulings for other things. The fact that you have to do an ad hoc ruling with no significant guidance in 2e is not a strength of the system, and the fact that the example fails so badly at fitting the game fiction highlights this.

MaxWilson

2019-01-17, 12:09 PM

However, I don't feel that the result is universally better in any way. Certainly not in terms of emulating fiction. Example: in the fiction, having a mad wizard (/witch/curse/whatever) turn you into a frog is supposed to be horrible because, well, you're a frog. In 2e, the ruleset makes one of the most horrible part of it being that you have to make two system shock checks (once when you are turned into a frog, and again when changed back) to survive the experience. Another example (this one perhaps unintended): Ghosts have the ability to possess a PC, as if using the magic jar spell. However, there is no jar, and by (a rigorously harsh interpretation of) the rules, that means that when the ghost is ejected from the possessed individual, the PC's soul/spirit has already left for the afterlife. Getting possessed by a ghost, in the fiction, is supposed to be horrible because someone else has taken control of your body, potentially harming your loved ones, and leaving you to explain your (their actions), not because possession is supposed to kill you.

AD&D 2E's advantage isn't that it emulates a particular (folk tale-based?) genre fiction of how magic works--it's that it tends to define abilities in terms of game fiction and not game jargon. When AD&D tells you that bards can countercharm, it tells you what they're doing and why, and then gives a mechanical effect to apply stemming from that fiction. This makes it easier for a DM to adjudicate ad hoc questions like "what if the wizard Polymorphs me into something very similar to my true shape, like an ape? Does that still count as massive trauma which requires a system shock roll? Is being smooshed into a frog's body more traumatic than becoming an ape?" because everyone is thinking in game world logic already instead of in jargon.

You're right that ghost is bit of an exception here in that it just refers you to a spell that doesn't really work, although I'd say the strictest interpretation here is actually "the ghost does nothing" leading to the DM immediately rewriting the ghost to either have an actual Magic Jar object or having a different ability. As a rule though, AD&D is far less likely than 5E to give you bare mechanical descriptions shorn of fiction a la "you can use a bonus action to make a Perception roll" or "when you make an attack while Raging you gain N temporary hit points" or in fact the very rules for temp HP in the first place: why in game fiction terms does the Heroism spell cause Armor of Agathys to stop freezing your enemies when they hit you? mechanically it's clear that Armor of Agathys ends as soon as you accept temporary HP from another source, but that's a purely RAW jargon answer.

These things are WotCisms and they make 5E more complex than it appears at first glance.

EggKookoo

2019-01-17, 12:58 PM

As a rule though, AD&D is far less likely than 5E to give you bare mechanical descriptions shorn of fiction a la "you can use a bonus action to make a Perception roll" or "when you make an attack while Raging you gain N temporary hit points" or in fact the very rules for temp HP in the first place: why in game fiction terms does the Heroism spell cause Armor of Agathys to stop freezing your enemies when they hit you? mechanically it's clear that Armor of Agathys ends as soon as you accept temporary HP from another source, but that's a purely RAW jargon answer.

I don't mind the game providing a fiction-based explanation for some things and not others. Often, however, in 5e the fiction is used to support the mechanics, or vice versa. For example, the fiction for Bardic Inspiration says you "inspire others through stirring words or music." Then it describes the mechanic: "To do so, you use a bonus action on your turn to choose one creature other than yourself within 60 feet of you who can hear you." The "who can hear you" is part of the mechanic, which supports the idea that the bard is doing something verbal, which in turn is part of the fiction. Not saying 2e doesn't do the same but I have to jump into a meeting soon so I don't have time to look it up.

Regarding agathys and heroism, well, yeah, it's a quirky thing. I do wish they clarified that you get the cold damage while agathys is up as long as you have temp HP from any source (which is how I rule it as I do have a Levistus tiefling in my current party). It helps a bit to remember that HP, even temp HP, are an abstraction that encompasses a bunch of characteristics that roll up into "fit to fight." If you imagine the temp HP from heroism being a kind of momentary surge of determination and heroism drawn from the magic of the spell, you can (maybe?) visualize how it overrides or supersedes the sense of determination and power drawn from armor of agathys. The real question is, if you use up your temp HP from heroism and then the spell wears off, do you get your unspent agathys temp HP? I would rule yes but it's not clear from the manual.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-01-17, 01:03 PM

The real question is, if you use up your temp HP from heroism and then the spell wears off, do you get your unspent agathys temp HP? I would rule yes but it's not clear from the manual.

The RAW answer is no, and pretty clearly (IMO) so. You can only have one set of temp HP--if you switch sets, the previous ones are discarded rather than suppressed. More specifically, armor of agathys only gives the temp HP on cast, not on subsequent turns, so there's no way to get them back. If, however, it said that you got them every turn for the duration (like heroism), you'd have another source of them and you'd get to pick each turn which set to use.

HappyDaze

2019-01-17, 01:30 PM

The thing is, if you don't ... , you can't complain about ...
Sorry, that's not how the internet works, and that's not how real life works either.

olskool

2019-01-17, 10:07 PM

Well sure, if you are making the campaign about the deck of many things, than clearly it isn't going to destroy the existing campaign. I think the general point is that olskool inferred that 5e was a significant contributor in the game he was playing going off the rails, and then proceeded to explain that the DM had decided to utilize a plot event (finding a DoMT) which is designed to introduce maximum randomness into a campaign (and Envyus was pointing out that much more significant contributing factor). Exactly what small part the game being 5e (as opposed to another D&D edition) was supposed to play in this is just not clear (and massively dwarfed by this DM's apparent desire to play a mad circus, something you really have to turn your eyes and squint to say that one edition does differently than another).

D&D5e is a "significant contributor" to issues like the one I experienced because, LIKE EVERY OTHER EDITION OF D&D, 5e has NO hard limits on the player's power. The OP is coming back to D&D from other games. The majority of other games place hard limits on magic use and character advancement through a number of different methods but 5e never adopted such limits. When you combine this with the general attitude of players coming from 21st Century video games, that can create a "perfect storm" of potential abuse. My original post was a warning to the OP that if not kept in check, power gamers can do great damage to any campaign he might start. I then was asked by a third poster to elaborate about my own experience which I did. Somewhere along the way, other posters seemed to have confused my originally related concern about 5e with the description of what happened in my character's campaign. The story of my character's death was just an example I used of how power gamers CAN abuse a 5e campaign. Once again, I was trying to warn the OP that if you are coming to 5e from another system to be aware that there are NO Hard Limits on a player's power unless YOU introduce them yourself.

As a father example of the potential for abuse that exists just look at the poster comparing 3.5e to 5e. The person in this thread is complaining about how "nerfed" 5e is compared to 3.5e. This is just one more example of what I was warning the OP about. How is a game that gives Wishes as a SPELL in any way "nerfed?"

JoeJ

2019-01-17, 10:22 PM

How is a game that gives Wishes as a SPELL in any way "nerfed?"

The Wish spell is not unlimited; it has certain defined things it can do. Anything beyond that is explicitly gated behind DM permission, and carries a risk of never being able to use the spell again. Plus, it is only available in the end game; you have to be at least 17th level to cast it.

KorvinStarmast

2019-01-18, 03:30 PM

The Wish spell is not unlimited; it has certain defined things it can do. Anything beyond that is explicitly gated behind DM permission, and carries a risk of never being able to use the spell again. Plus, it is only available in the end game; you have to be at least 17th level to cast it.
Or find an efreeti bottle or a luck blade. :smallsmile:

JoeJ

2019-01-18, 03:32 PM

Or find an efreeti bottle or a luck blade. :smallsmile:

This is not under the player's control, however, since you can only find what the DM has put there to be found.

Willie the Duck

2019-01-18, 03:34 PM

D&D5e is a "significant contributor" to issues like the one I experienced because, LIKE EVERY OTHER EDITION OF D&D, 5e has NO hard limits on the player's power. The OP is coming back to D&D from other games. The majority of other games place hard limits on magic use and character advancement through a number of different methods but 5e never adopted such limits.

Really? Because I have played a lot of different TTRPGs and I'd be hard pressed to name one with limits so hard you can't go beyond if you use the same techniques one uses to get beyond limitations in D&D.

How is a game that gives Wishes as a SPELL in any way "nerfed?"

We will use this as an example. Outside of Wish being used as access to other spells, it has limits -- it has a 1 in 3 chance of permanently destroying your ability to cast it. The other option is to find it as a magic item. That's treasure, and comes at the cost-benefit expense of any other potential treasure. Those are fairly hard limits. Harder than most open-ended magic systems (be they the White Wolf 'Mage the ____' series, or Hero System, or Fate. If you could point to a specific system, perhaps we could do a compare/contrast, but from where I'm sitting, I can't think of one that has universally harder (as opposed to 'harder, if your primary rating method is XYZ arbitrary measure').

When you combine this with the general attitude of players coming from 21st Century video games, that can create a "perfect storm" of potential abuse

Oh yes, those kids and their video games. That's not an over-worn stereotype. I'm sorry, but I'm going to need an actual functional example of something someone might take from '21st Century video games,' how they might start expecting it in their TTRPGs, and how it will cause problems before I will even begin to take this seriously.

Or find an efreeti bottle or a luck blade. :smallsmile:

So, again gated behind DM permission, and presumably part of the party 'treasure' in which case it increasing the party total capacity is par for the course (and not unlike any other magic item).