D&D 5E Things through all the playtests I have not liked

Racial damage bonuses. It is unnecessary. For me it is enough to say dwarves like hafted weapons. It does not need to be hard coded into the system and force a players acceptance of those weapons for that race. And why do only PC races get it? It just needs to go.

1d6 damage reduction for being drunk, please just remove this. Add temporary HP if you think people have to be able to take more damage while drunk.

Contested rolls, they are too random. Opposed rolls should be against the save of the opponent. both roll. if one succeeds and another fails there is a victor. If both fail it continues, if both succeed it continues. This is really key in the arena of stealth.

The HD dice pool. I am not sold that the added complication generates that much added benefit. Just say you can heal up to your HP total per day. Have 20 HP you can heal 20 HP per day. You need to initiate a heal with a short rest and binding wounds as usual.

Coupe de Grace: two hits kills anything. this is extremely weak vs. low HP monsters and extremely good vs. high HP monsters. There needs to be a scale in there or at minimum a save, or something. IDK what but something.

INT and CHA saves are ill defined. Need I say more? They need to be more cut and dry. I like WIS to notice stuff, INT to figure out stuff, and CHA to resist mental stuff. It can be mixed in a different way, it just needs some definition.

Missing concept - weapon size. I think weapon size was a great move forward with 3e. Removing it in 4e was a step backwards. I do not mind simplifying the system but a giants greatsword should do more damage than a humans, it is just that simple. I am not seeing that happen in any kind of consistent way across the rules.

I think that is about it for the problems that inhabits all of the packets. ED is a big problem but that is only in the last two packets.

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Weapon sizes can be simplified even within the medium-sized PC category. If you add a stat, such as Minimum Strength Mod Required, you can easily assign a penalty of -1 per str mod that you are lacking, actively discouraging extremely weak characters from even attempting to use a Finessable weapon like the Katana without investing at least some strength into their character.

What I'd like to see is something similar to Max Dex +2 for medium armors, but for weapons. A dagger could benefit from up to a +1 str bonus, short sword is +2, longsword +3, bastard sword +3 but requires +1 to use one-handed without a penalty (something I'm familiar with because I'm not quite strong enough to wield my real bastard sword effectively with one hand...that said, it's quite a bit heavier than a bastard sword should be, but the point remains). What I'd like to see is if you get a belt of giant strength, you can grab that huge sword or tree trunk and whack your enemies with it, as if you were a giant of that size!!! That's maybe a little too anime for some, but I could see a massive two-handed sword being wielded by Conan but would make lesser men unable to even lift it.

If you're strong enough to throw a horse or a tree, you're strong enough to swing it.

Sadrik said:

Racial damage bonuses. It is unnecessary.

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Agreed. If they want, make a (theme/specialty) for Dwarven Axe Rager or Elven Wood Archers or whatever.

1d6 damage reduction for being drunk, please just remove this.

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Agreed.

Contested rolls, they are too random. Opposed rolls should be against the save of the opponent. both roll. if one succeeds and another fails there is a victor. If both fail it continues, if both succeed it continues. This is really key in the arena of stealth.

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Err, what? This sounds like a whole lot of rolling back and forth for no good.

The HD dice pool. I am not sold that the added complication generates that much added benefit. Just say you can heal up to your HP total per day. Have 20 HP you can heal 20 HP per day. You need to initiate a heal with a short rest and binding wounds as usual.

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I'm not opposed to hit dice, but I'm also fine with the max hp = what you can heal in a day method. The problem is that people tend to object if cure light wounds can't heal someone cause "they've healed enough" today.

Coupe de Grace: two hits kills anything. this is extremely weak vs. low HP monsters and extremely good vs. high HP monsters. There needs to be a scale in there or at minimum a save, or something. IDK what but something.

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Sorta disagree... it'd make a certain sense to allow the person doing it to deal max damage or crit, but I don't feel any need to require more than two for anyone.

Depends how easy they make it to make things helpless. No save (or extraordinarily difficult save)? Maybe.

Missing concept - weapon size. I think weapon size was a great move forward with 3e. Removing it in 4e was a step backwards. I do not mind simplifying the system but a giants greatsword should do more damage than a humans, it is just that simple. I am not seeing that happen in any kind of consistent way across the rules.

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4E had weapon sizes. So does DDN. Just not for small PCs.

Personally I actually wish they didn't. Bugbears using oversized weapons gets dumb quick. I'd tear out weapon sizes. Then again, I think I'd also simplify weapon stuff a lot to be more about styles of fighting rather than people fidgeting to get this tiny little bonus to accuracy or damage depending on which sourcebook releases the perfect axe-mace-polearm-shield for their character.

I agree about racial damage bonuses. I understand wanting mechanics to highlight the flavor, but why would you ever not use your race's favored weapon?

Sadrik said:

Racial damage bonuses. It is unnecessary. For me it is enough to say dwarves like hafted weapons. It does not need to be hard coded into the system and force a players acceptance of those weapons for that race. And why do only PC races get it? It just needs to go.

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I agree, if they make sub-races or variant racial options, that's cool, but I don't think damage bonuses should be a core racial thing, especially for EVERY race. It's just boring.

1d6 damage reduction for being drunk, please just remove this. Add temporary HP if you think people have to be able to take more damage while drunk.

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Rules for being drunk period need to go. There shouldn't be rules for being drunk because if anyone is seriously taking being drunk seriously, they need to get a grip. This really sounds like someone watched that youtube video about "what really happens in D&D" and thought we needed rules for it.

Contested rolls, they are too random. Opposed rolls should be against the save of the opponent. both roll. if one succeeds and another fails there is a victor. If both fail it continues, if both succeed it continues. This is really key in the arena of stealth.

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I didn't like the idea of eliminating modifiers/saves/skill ranks for contested rolls and just relying on pure D20. Too random.

The HD dice pool. I am not sold that the added complication generates that much added benefit. Just say you can heal up to your HP total per day. Have 20 HP you can heal 20 HP per day. You need to initiate a heal with a short rest and binding wounds as usual.

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I never liked capped healing values one way or the other. I do like that healing now works more in a manner of "I give you the ability to heal if you want." Because I hated in 4e being FORCED to burn healing surges from burst healing.

What I do like about HD is that it introduces resource scarcity into healing.

However, my preferred method would be through reduced effectivness. Sort of a "healing sickness". But I've no idea how that would work into gameplay.

Coupe de Grace: two hits kills anything. this is extremely weak vs. low HP monsters and extremely good vs. high HP monsters. There needs to be a scale in there or at minimum a save, or something. IDK what but something.

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Rules for these sorts of things have always been questionable. Yes if you can make a high-level enemy or character "helpless" you can one-shot them with minimal energy. I think the key would be to how to make them helpless.

Missing concept - weapon size. I think weapon size was a great move forward with 3e. Removing it in 4e was a step backwards. I do not mind simplifying the system but a giants greatsword should do more damage than a humans, it is just that simple. I am not seeing that happen in any kind of consistent way across the rules.

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4e actually gained weapon sizes through Essentials I believe. But yes I do agree that there should be weapon sizes and that they do different damage. However, access to them needs to be severely restricted. It should be difficult even for an "oversized" medium race to wield a "large" weapon. It was far too easy in 3e for a player to grab a few nifty racial qualities and maybe a +1 level adjustment and end up wielding a Huge hammer. Worse the only way to stop them was for the DM to just hold his hand up and say "NO", because the rules didn't take any of the relevent physics into account for larger weapons.

Even if you have the feats and strength for it, wielding a weapon 20' long when you're 8' tall should be incredibly difficult.

So have any of these changed?

Also I feel like I should expand on my contested rolls miff. So I think there should not be contested rolls... It should be stat/skill check vs DC for success. Then it should stat/save check vs DC to resist. It should not be purely stat/skill check vs stat/skill check.

Think about it this way. The uber grappler pretzels you with his massive bonuses. He rolls against a DC for an easy success. As it stands now you have to roll directly against franz's d20+40 bonus. Under this you would just roll a dexterity or strength save based on a DC to get out not one based on franz's d20+40 roll. Basically it mitigates the outliers by doing this.

The other thing that should go away is the expertise dice as damage. Has not been in every playtest packet but has been in most. Would rather just see them as tokens/points you spend round to round to do stuff. One of those things you do could be bonus damage if you selected that maneuver. Slightly different emphasis.

Sadrik said:

Racial damage bonuses. It is unnecessary. For me it is enough to say dwarves like hafted weapons. It does not need to be hard coded into the system and force a players acceptance of those weapons for that race. And why do only PC races get it? It just needs to go.

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Agreed. IMO this is better served as feats, or some sort of improve your race system of abilities.

And while were at races - humans! Can we please have a balanced and interesting human species, and not humagods?

Sadrik said:

1d6 damage reduction for being drunk, please just remove this. Add temporary HP if you think people have to be able to take more damage while drunk.

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Yeah, doesn't make much sense to me, with one exception - falling. So I'd keep 1d6 DR but only against falling damage. And, to be fair, that DR needs to be extended to falling unconscious characters as well.

Sadrik said:

Contested rolls, they are too random. Opposed rolls should be against the save of the opponent. both roll. if one succeeds and another fails there is a victor. If both fail it continues, if both succeed it continues. This is really key in the arena of stealth.

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IMO easier way to make contests less random is to replace 1d20 with 2d10, or even 3d6 for contests only. Not really option for me, but you might consider it.

Sadrik said:

The HD dice pool. I am not sold that the added complication generates that much added benefit. Just say you can heal up to your HP total per day. Have 20 HP you can heal 20 HP per day. You need to initiate a heal with a short rest and binding wounds as usual.

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Hard to comment for me on this, because the entire health system is a mess right now (and always has been).

Sadrik said:

INT and CHA saves are ill defined. Need I say more? They need to be more cut and dry. I like WIS to notice stuff, INT to figure out stuff, and CHA to resist mental stuff. It can be mixed in a different way, it just needs some definition.

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Agreed.

Gorgoroth said:

Weapon sizes can be simplified even within the medium-sized PC category. If you add a stat, such as Minimum Strength Mod Required, you can easily assign a penalty of -1 per str mod that you are lacking, actively discouraging extremely weak characters from even attempting to use a Finessable weapon like the Katana without investing at least some strength into their character.

What I'd like to see is something similar to Max Dex +2 for medium armors, but for weapons. A dagger could benefit from up to a +1 str bonus, short sword is +2, longsword +3, bastard sword +3 but requires +1 to use one-handed without a penalty [...]

If you're strong enough to throw a horse or a tree, you're strong enough to swing it.

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Yes for minimum STR requirements for weapons, a very good idea. Maximum STR? Not sure, might be an unnecessary complication that will rarely affect the game.

Stalker0 said:

I agree about racial damage bonuses. I understand wanting mechanics to highlight the flavor, but why would you ever not use your race's favored weapon?

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At the moment, long swords are a sub-par weapon for elves, unless they're focusing on Strength. If they have better-than average Dexterity, a rapier or scimitar (being Finesse weapons) are better.

Sadrik said:

Racial damage bonuses. It is unnecessary. For me it is enough to say dwarves like hafted weapons. It does not need to be hard coded into the system and force a players acceptance of those weapons for that race. And why do only PC races get it? It just needs to go.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I don't mind giving races proficiency with certain weapons that their culture prefers, but I hate the damage bonuses. That just leads to cookie cutter characters.

Sadrik said:

1d6 damage reduction for being drunk, please just remove this. Add temporary HP if you think people have to be able to take more damage while drunk.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

Sadrik said:

Contested rolls, they are too random. Opposed rolls should be against the save of the opponent. both roll. if one succeeds and another fails there is a victor. If both fail it continues, if both succeed it continues. This is really key in the arena of stealth.

Click to expand...

No. I think contested rolls are fine the way they are.

Sadrik said:

The HD dice pool. I am not sold that the added complication generates that much added benefit. Just say you can heal up to your HP total per day. Have 20 HP you can heal 20 HP per day. You need to initiate a heal with a short rest and binding wounds as usual.

Click to expand...

I'm not at all fond of hit dice either.

Sadrik said:

INT and CHA saves are ill defined. Need I say more? They need to be more cut and dry. I like WIS to notice stuff, INT to figure out stuff, and CHA to resist mental stuff. It can be mixed in a different way, it just needs some definition.

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Agreed. They need to clearly define what ability score saves against what condition, and Intelligence needs more things to save against. Illusions and confusion effects are a good start.

Sadrik said:

Missing concept - weapon size. I think weapon size was a great move forward with 3e. Removing it in 4e was a step backwards. I do not mind simplifying the system but a giants greatsword should do more damage than a humans, it is just that simple. I am not seeing that happen in any kind of consistent way across the rules.

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They'll probably have rules for weapon size eventually. I assume they left them out for now because it's a playtest and they're assuming PCs will be normal races for now.