Unpopular D&D Opinions

[PhoenixPhyre]

Really, it makes it a pain for tables with mixed levels of mastery. D&D3 works... reasonably well... for players that approach it in a pretty straightforward way. The problem is that the effectiveness cap for high mastery (even without getting into TO levels) is so much higher than the baseline of "person with a reasonable understanding of the system, making choices that appear reasonable".

But what "appears reasonable" to one person doesn't necessarily match the same thing for another person. D&D 3e is accidentally breakable in many ways--you can absolutely win at character creation. Pick druid, pick reasonable druid things. Someone else picks monk, picks reasonable-sounding monk things. The two can't really play in the same party without someone putting a serious thumb on the scale in one direction or another. So it doesn't work at the low-mastery end either.

Basically, it only works if everyone
1) has roughly the same levels of system mastery and that level is quite a bit above the floor
2) has firmly-set expectations for appropriate power levels and the fiction to be done

and the DM has the mastery required to rebuild all the monsters (and published adventures) to match that level as needed. And even then, you're drowning in red tape and edge cases to avoid, and an accidental shift can throw the whole thing off balance. 3e is exceedingly unstable and requires active management. Like a modern fighter, except there's no computer doing the fly-by-wire part and there's the "eject the engines" button prominently placed and mislabeled as the autopilot button.

[dafrca]

It's a typo joke. People search for porn on the internet, but fast typing leads to spelling it as pron and because of the closeness of the "o" and "0" keys on the keyboard that furthers the typo to pr0n.

Thank you Pex for taking my question serious rather than treating it as a joke.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Thank you Pex for taking my question serious rather than treating it as a joke.

I'll say that it's also commonly used to bypass filters and content flags. This can be either to discuss something (like the current use) or to try to slip spam past filters. As with most things, it's a double-edged sword.

[GravityEmblem]

I don't enjoy combat in D&D very much--I always find it takes too long, and there's much less "fun strategizing" than you might think. Though, maybe I just don't like strategizing.

[Bohandas]

Kender > Hobbits. Halflings were a joke before Kender drove them into a better direction. Fully on purpose too, the folks at TSR understood how lame hobbit-halflings were. I get that Kender are a different kind of joke, and total twerps at that. But they were necessary to break Halflings out of the Hobbit mold. Without them we wouldn't have had 3e nimble and lithe nomad halflings, and we wouldn't have had the fairly agile hobbits of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings either. Instead we would have just kept on with pot-bellied walking embarrassments. Kender, while not the best implementation, were the best thing to ever happen to halflings.

This. Agreed totally.

And on a semi-related note, spell slots are ridiculous. Gygax and Arneson seem to have had a tendency to take really idiosyncratic aspects of really specific fantasy worlds that wouldn't really work in any other setting, and then try to make them work in a different setting. You couldn't really do generic fantasy with what they originally put together, you could only do Dying Middle Earth

[KorvinStarmast]

This. Agreed totally.

And on a semi-related note, spell slots are ridiculous. Gygax and Arneson seem to have had a tendency to take really idiosyncratic aspects of really specific fantasy worlds that wouldn't really work in any other setting, and then try to make them work in a different setting. You couldn't really do generic fantasy with what they originally put together, you could only do Dying Middle Earth

They were not aiming for generic fantasy.
They were aiming for (1) swords and sorcery and (2) horror and (3) heroic knights in shining armor and (4) clever wizards carefully surviving to become masters of complex magic and (5) treasure hunting for things from lost or dead civilizations. And they wanted to go down under the earth to dig this things out of ancient crypts and tombs since for the century previous to that real life archaeologists had been doing the same and recovering treasures. Loads of pulp fiction covered stuff like that, and the mysterious magical dangers of dark hearted sorceres (see Clark Ashton Smith, cited in Men and Magic as an inspiration) - the both of them (as well as their circles of gaming friends) were very familiar with the pulps.

Your assertion of 'focus' or intent on "generic fantasy" (whatever the hell that is) is an incorrect post hoc assessment. (Now, has it, under its own momentum, experienced a tail chasing loop such that it slowly but surely evolved in that direction through the editions? Kind of, I think).

The cleric was there to turn undead.

As to spell slots, it was explained why that did that in Strategic Review. As EGG put it, there were roughly four 'schemes' to choose from and that's the one that seemed to fit what they were trying to do. It was a gamification of an idea that, as we have all seen, had its strengths and weaknesses insofar as playability goes.

[Easy e]

System mastery is a selling point for D&D, and helps retain its popularity.

It is a feature ( a profitable feature) and not a bug!

[KorvinStarmast]

System mastery is a selling point for D&D, and helps retain its popularity.

It is a feature ( a profitable feature) and not a bug!

Given the declining sales for 3.x and the steady and increasing sales of 5e, your assertion seems to be unsupported.
Caveat: given PF's success, there is still a market for a system mastery heavy game style.

[kyoryu]

Given the declining sales for 3.x and the steady and increasing sales of 5e, your assertion seems to be unsupported.
Caveat: given PF's success, there is still a market for a system mastery heavy game style.

A specific case of the general statement: "Different people like different things."

[Bohandas]

And they wanted to go down under the earth to dig this things out of ancient crypts and tombs since for the century previous to that real life archaeologists had been doing the same and recovering treasures. Loads of pulp fiction covered stuff like that, and the mysterious magical dangers of dark hearted sorceres (see Clark Ashton Smith, cited in Men and Magic as an inspiration)

In horror you can just spam spells at will as long as the conditions for casting them are met. It's almost a cliche for someone to cast some evil spell without even meaning to

[BRC]

In horror you can just spam spells at will as long as the conditions for casting them are met. It's almost a cliche for someone to cast some evil spell without even meaning to

IIRC, Spell Slots were because early D&D was primarily a logistics puzzle about going into a dungeon, getting as much treasure as possible, and getting out. The amount of treasure retrieved served as a score.

Things like ropes, 10 ft poles, throwing axes, Spell Slots, and character health were all resources that you were supposed to leverage against the dungeon. It wasn't about re-creating a specific feel of fantasy, so much as creating a specific strategic challenge (at least as far as the use of Vancian Casting).

[Anonymouswizard]

In horror you can just spam spells at will as long as the conditions for casting them are met. It's almost a cliche for someone to cast some evil spell without even meaning to

In your average fantasy setting the main limiting factors driving limited spell usage are 1) difficulty and 2) energy drain. D&D also models neither of those.

Tiered slots (which are not true Vancian magic) were, I believe, included for a mixture of resource management and avoiding looking anything like 'real' magical systems. It actually serves it's job site well, even if I personally hate it (I like HP or Fatigue as a limiting factor).

[KorvinStarmast]

In horror you can just spam spells at will as long as the conditions for casting them are met.

I recently read the complete HP Lovecraft. (Man, that's a lot of bloated prose telling the same story over and over again). didn't notice any of that.

What are you referring to?

My most recent Clark Ashton Smith pick up, the Dark Eidolon, was kind of 'high magic' but then, the spell caster in question was dealing with demigod as a servant, something like Aladin's genie but nowhere near as nice.

@BRC: Yes.

In your average fantasy setting the main limiting factors driving limited spell usage are 1) difficulty and 2) energy drain. D&D also models neither of those.

Tiered slots (which are not true Vancian magic) were, I believe, included for a mixture of resource management and avoiding looking anything like 'real' magical systems. It actually serves it's job site well, even if I personally hate it (I like HP or Fatigue as a limiting factor).

You might want to review the magic spell levels in Chainmail, 3rd edition. Spell complexity from that game maps amazingly well to spell level in D&D.

Having read a lot of Vance's dying earth stuff last year, it had been years, I am curious to learn what you mean by "True Vancian" in this case.

[icefractal]

Given the declining sales for 3.x and the steady and increasing sales of 5e, your assertion seems to be unsupported.

The declining sales for an edition which has been out of print for over a decade? Not sure how much that really indicates.

[Anonymouswizard]

You might want to review the magic spell levels in Chainmail, 3rd edition. Spell complexity from that game maps amazingly well to spell level in D&D.

Having read a lot of Vance's dying earth stuff last year, it had been years, I am curious to learn what you mean by "True Vancian" in this case.

An interesting read, thank you for sharing it.

'true Vancian' would be how spells work in the dying earth books: only one slot level and not strictly automatically cast correctly (although a trained wizard will almost always succeed, IIRC a spell fails twice, both times cast by somebody without any real experience who could only memorise one spell).

[tyckspoon]

I recently read the complete HP Lovecraft. (Man, that's a lot of bloated prose telling the same story over and over again). didn't notice any of that.

What are you referring to?

In many horror fictions, magic (or magic-like effects; 'an unbroken line of salt keeps supernatural gribblies at bay' may not be a spell, officially, but it occupies the same purpose as one) isn't a specific thing you learn to do, or requires any special effort from the 'caster'; it's why so many stories start with somebody accidentally summoning up or releasing some sort of Ancient Evil. All you have to do to cast the spell is perform the right actions, speak the right word, interact with the right object, and the magic happens. The teenagers messing with the 'neat old book I found in the attic' didn't spend five years being steeped in the Mysteries of the Arcane or learning to channel their life force to do that.
Admittedly those stories often don't look like they have a lot of magic, because there are usually just the two instances used by the protagonists - the first inciting spell/ritual/whatever, and the concluding one where they send back what they raised/undo the harm they caused, but the magic they do have is very easily accessed.

(Lovecraft, in particular, I want to say features magic a lot more in the extended universe than in Lovecraft's actual stories, where 'magic' is more of a 'this is the Real Science of the universe that you have suddenly been exposed to, isn't that SPOOOKY' kind of thing. You aren't casting a spell to summon eldritch beings any more than you cast a spell to open a door so your dog can go out - you're just learning how to interact with the greater universe.)

[Bohandas]

Lovecraft, in particular, I want to say features magic a lot more in the extended universe than in Lovecraft's actual stories

Admittedly in the original stories it's more often magical items than it is spells. The shining trapezohedron, the powder of ibn-ghazi (which Dr.Armitage cooks up in a secular college chemistry lab), the Yithian mind transfer device, Tillinghast's machine, the silver key, etc

I recently read the complete HP Lovecraft. (Man, that's a lot of bloated prose telling the same story over and over again). didn't notice any of that.

Dr.Willet (from Charles Dexter Ward) however, is an example of what I'm talking about. He hasn't any mystical initiation beyond poking around Ward and Curwen's lab and reading their notes and he can do the magic just fine by repeating what he's heard and read

In many horror fictions, magic (or magic-like effects; 'an unbroken line of salt keeps supernatural gribblies at bay' may not be a spell, officially, but it occupies the same purpose as one) isn't a specific thing you learn to do, or requires any special effort from the 'caster'; it's why so many stories start with somebody accidentally summoning up or releasing some sort of Ancient Evil. All you have to do to cast the spell is perform the right actions, speak the right word, interact with the right object, and the magic happens. The teenagers messing with the 'neat old book I found in the attic' didn't spend five years being steeped in the Mysteries of the Arcane or learning to channel their life force to do that.

This is indeed basically what I was talking about (although I suppose magical items are beyond tgis specific debate's scope as they generally don't require any special knowledge in D&D either, with the exception of staves, wands, and scrolls).

Two things that come straight to mind with regard to spells specifically are the Evil Dead franchise, and the 1990's version of The Mummy. In the Evil Dead universe the spells don;t ever require a sentient caster. In the first film the kandarian demons are summoned by the spell being played on a tape recording, and in the videogame Evil Dead: Fistful of Boomstick some professor reading from the necronomicon during a TV interview precipitates a deadite outbreak around every TV showing the interview.

[Mordar]

In horror you can just spam spells at will as long as the conditions for casting them are met. It's almost a cliche for someone to cast some evil spell without even meaning to

Having read your subsequent post, I think this fails to contemplate the cost of invoking this magic. There's often been an idea of balancing magic (not in game terms, but in fluff terms outside of D&D) that there is a cost to magic...and the cost of horror-genre magic is often things like immortal souls, unintended consequences (no, the evil death god you unleashed wasn't feeling particularly indebted to you...so you were eaten first), insanity/disfigurement/perpetual servitude. Call of C'thulhu captures this nicely IMO - learning magic spells costs the student. Casting spells can cost the caster. Items that don't require learning or casting almost always come complete with horrors unleashed.

There aren't many (any?) handy healing spells, or fireballs, or any of the typical D&D fare in the horror genre...certainly few things a PC would want to cast. D&D in particular attempted game balance by making magic very powerful at advanced levels, but hard as heck to live to those levels. Spell slots and physical characteristics combined to successfully limit wizard dominance.

- M

[Bohandas]

Having read your subsequent post, I think this fails to contemplate the cost of invoking this magic. There's often been an idea of balancing magic (not in game terms, but in fluff terms outside of D&D) that there is a cost to magic...and the cost of horror-genre magic is often things like immortal souls, unintended consequences (no, the evil death god you unleashed wasn't feeling particularly indebted to you...so you were eaten first), insanity/disfigurement/perpetual servitude.

For the prepared there's little limit. Curwen, Carter, and West had little trouble, and even Pickman ended up ok.

There aren't many (any?) handy healing spells

There's the one that raises up the dead from their essential salts. (Although I suppose that one involves so much time consuming chemistry to no longer qualify as handy)

[NichG]

I do rather like the idea of a system built around the idea that spells and magic have nothing to do directly with character build investment (though could be impacted orthogonally, e.g. investing in lore about magic or magical languages or so on), and are accessible to anyone as an in-game in-character pursuit. It feels difficult to pair with D&D though... The closest examples I can think of are from systems like Advanced d20 Magic and Slayers d20, where in principle a Fighter can learn and cast up to 3rd level spells so long as they can hit the casting DC, which can be modified by factors like performing large scale rituals or sacrificing components. If you remove the 3rd level limit, you could have situations where e.g. a low level, martial, feudal lord with access to millions of gp in resources could bring together a cult to cast a Gate or Planar Binding or whatever over the course of a month; while the dedicated high level caster character can just gesture to perform the same magic in the course of a round, but doesn't have exclusive access to it.

[Telok]

D&D needs to drop the automatic stat increases & feats, they need to be an option in the DMG & DM/world building sections of the splat books. They cover some nasty flaws in design about certain classes basically not changing over 20 levels while others get more and more tools to shape game play.

[KorvinStarmast]

In many horror fictions, magic (or magic-like effects; 'an unbroken line of salt keeps supernatural gribblies at bay' may not be a spell, officially, but it occupies the same purpose as one) isn't a specific thing you learn to do, or requires any special effort from the 'caster'; it's why so many stories start with somebody accidentally summoning up or releasing some sort of Ancient Evil. All you have to do to cast the spell is perform the right actions, speak the right word, interact with the right object, and the magic happens. The teenagers messing with the 'neat old book I found in the attic' didn't spend five years being steeped in the Mysteries of the Arcane or learning to channel their life force to do that.
Admittedly those stories often don't look like they have a lot of magic, because there are usually just the two instances used by the protagonists - the first inciting spell/ritual/whatever, and the concluding one where they send back what they raised/undo the harm they caused, but the magic they do have is very easily accessed.

And in these books magic is, in the main, dark, powerful, terrifying, and comes at a cost. (Good point on the items, though).

Having read your subsequent post, I think this fails to contemplate the cost of invoking this magic. There's often been an idea of balancing magic (not in game terms, but in fluff terms outside of D&D) that there is a cost to magic...and the cost of horror-genre magic is often things like immortal souls, unintended consequences (no, the evil death god you unleashed wasn't feeling particularly indebted to you...so you were eaten first), insanity/disfigurement/perpetual servitude. Call of C'thulhu captures this nicely IMO - learning magic spells costs the student. Casting spells can cost the caster. Items that don't require learning or casting almost always come complete with horrors unleashed.

With great power comes great risk. FWIW, Robin Hobb did a neat take on this with how she evolved magic/psionics (The Skill) in her Farseer books. Using magic has a cost, and a risk.

D&D needs to drop the automatic stat increases & feats, they need to be an option in the DMG & DM/world building sections of the splat books.

I am not sure what you mean by that. "Automatic stat increases and feats" - 5e, all WoTC D&D ... what? (Feats are optional in 5e).

[Telok]

I am not sure what you mean by that. "Automatic stat increases and feats" - 5e, all WoTC D&D ... what? (Feats are optional in 5e).

Drop the 5e ASIs, feats, multiclassing, and other optional rules. Check how things play in different scenarios at 1, 5, 10, 15, 20. And I don't mean theory crafted scenarios designed to show off the known good spots of the game, but actual things people do with the game. You'd need to get 25-50 DMs to submit homemade campaigns & situations in addition to checking a bunch of AL games during play to get a good variety of game situations.

[Quertus]

I'm generally a fan of a role-playing game being, you know, a role-playing game. So requiring workshopping each PC's turn as a group, or implementations of time clocks that prohibit being able to ask the questions necessary to see things from the characters' PoV are not exactly things I'm a fan of.

So I guess I discriminate between necessary and unnecessary sloth.

It's good to play with people who can generally take their turns quickly. It's good to learn the system under someone who gets it.

Similarly, I guess I generally prefer in character chatter (Armus saying, "I'll take the big one") to group workshopping optimal tactics for Stabby McBlood vs vs Blasty.

"Next on deck" - and predictable turn order in general - is good for planning for "biological needs", but goes against paying attention to table talk strategy. Which means… Armus' player needs to pay attention, and remind Stabby / Blasty what the plan was when their turn comes up.

I strongly agree that the perfect is the enemy of the good. When all you care about is "the good", and the good is plenty good enough, turns can be (and, IME, are) very quick.

However, I do not see a strong relationship between the previous statement and rocket tag. In fact, if anything, my "rocket tag" parties, by virtue of having the skill to build characters capable of rocket tag, tended to also have the skill to take their turns quickly.

I, obviously, generally attribute sloth to, or equate sloth with, player incompetence. That may be my "unpopular opinion" of the day.

I do, however, see a strong correlation between "my eyes are bleeding" sloth and "challenge". So, to make games faster, we need only dial back the "Challenge" aesthetic. That seems pretty straightforward.

Point buy is better than classes.

Why can I see pitchforks in the distance?

Okay, 'unpopular' might be pushing it here. But honestly, while I've liked a few games with classes those have tended to be very narrow and providing the suitable archetypes (like Scum & Villainy). Most of the time I want the ability to build my character as I want, with all the weird things I can think of.

If I'm playing a wizard and want healing spells I should be able to just pick the healing spells (maybe in a logical order). I shouldn't have to multiclass into Cleric (or Bard), or pick a specific character option, just to get them.

Yes it's harder to balance, but I'm actually going to agree with the 'balance is overrated' camp. We do want a rough kind of balance, but we should admit that there's some kind of usefulness in going broad as well as deep. Point totals do that just as well as level totals.

Have you tried 2e? Super simple character creation… with numerous options (from kits to Skills and Powers to a complete "build your own class" point buy) to "complicate" things enough to allow nearly any concept.

[KorvinStarmast]

Drop the 5e ASIs, feats, multiclassing, and other optional rules. Check how things play in different scenarios at 1, 5, 10, 15, 20. And I don't mean theory crafted scenarios designed to show off the known good spots of the game, but actual things people do with the game. You'd need to get 25-50 DMs to submit homemade campaigns & situations in addition to checking a bunch of AL games during play to get a good variety of game situations.

Assume point buy or the pathetic "standard array" (which is quite frankly wrong based on math)? As I understand your proposal, you create the character at level 1 with die rolls (the default), or one of those options, and then play them with no stat increases. Right?
What is your assumption on magic item accumulation for this scenario? (Under your scheme, magic items become more important)

[PhoenixPhyre]

Drop the 5e ASIs, feats, multiclassing, and other optional rules. Check how things play in different scenarios at 1, 5, 10, 15, 20. And I don't mean theory crafted scenarios designed to show off the known good spots of the game, but actual things people do with the game. You'd need to get 25-50 DMs to submit homemade campaigns & situations in addition to checking a bunch of AL games during play to get a good variety of game situations.

ASIs aren't optional rules. And the system does expect some growth there (although not nearly as much or as fast as the forums would tell you)--it's fine with starting at a 14-15 (+2 modifier) in your prime stat and a positive CON mod and any secondary modifiers for your class. By level 20, it expects (based on actual monster parameters and some assumptions about hit rates) an 18-19 (+4 modifier) in your prime stat and about a +2 in any secondary stats. That's either 2 or 3 ASIs (starting from the standard array without any race synergy), less with a synergistic race choice.

[Hytheter]

or the pathetic "standard array" (which is quite frankly wrong based on math)?

What do you mean by this?

[Telok]

Look guys, the nitpicking is nice but the opinion is that 5e has problems with some classes and procedures that the ASIs seminpatch over and try to hide. This means that ASIs and especially feats can become trap options for people who take what rhe books say at face value or who don't grok system math.

What happens if the "its ok to have a 14 main stat" sword & board fighter dumps 4 asi into charisma & dex to fit the players character concept?

[JNAProductions]

Look guys, the nitpicking is nice but the opinion is that 5e has problems with some classes and procedures that the ASIs seminpatch over and try to hide. This means that ASIs and especially feats can become trap options for people who take what rhe books say at face value or who don't grok system math.

What happens if the "its ok to have a 14 main stat" sword & board fighter dumps 4 asi into charisma & dex to fit the players character concept?

Then they’ll switch to Rapier and Shield, or be slightly behind.

“It is possible to build a bad character” is not a strong critique of a game. If it’s EASY, that’s an issue, but simply being possible isn’t bad.

[KorvinStarmast]

What do you mean by this?

I am not sure how many time it is required to post the anydice link for this. https://anydice.com/articles/4d6-drop-lowest/

Looking at the results, the average rolled array should be 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9.

The 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 standard array is lower.