Most frustrating quirk of 5E?

Guest 6801328 · Dec 13, 2018

1) Characters all pretty much end up with very similar stats (arranged differently depending on class, of course) and everybody who wants to gets a 20 by level 8.

2) Forced to choose between boring but effective ASIs and much more interesting but mostly sub-optimal Feats

3) Rapier as best-in-slot for any melee dex build

4) Archery way too effective

robus · Dec 13, 2018

Here’s another pet peeve for me: no indication of expected challenge for an encounter in the published adventures. Not even the CR! Making us all have to reverse engineer each one to figure out if it needs adjustment for our table. All that stuff about calculating encounter challenge and needing X encounters per day and not a peep about it in any of the adventures.

(my theory, after halfway through LMoP they decided it was too much work and just starting making it all up...

)

GothicEmperor · Dec 13, 2018

Shiroiken said:
Probably the biggest pet peeve of 5E for me is the armor and weapons. I admit they are technically workable, but they drive me nuts. Just like in 3E, once you have enough money, there are really only 2 armor choices. Well, technically a few characters wear medium armor, so I suppose that there are 3, but still. There are weapons that are pretty much just superior to their peers, an while Versatile is neat in theory, it's such an edge case use that it may as well not exist.

A DM can deal with this by dangling magical items that have certain bonuses in front of them. It's easy to choose plate when the alternative is splint or half plate, but if you can also get a +1 mithral chainmail and you know you're going to sneak around a lot, that's a more interesting choice.

Having that sort of granularity built-in would've been better, I agree. Medium armor at least gives you the option to choose between stealthy and non-stealthy armour. Let's hope come 6e they just merge the Heavy and Medium armor categories together like 4e did, there's already enough conceptual overlap as it is. (give players more choice by removing options, if that makes sense)

Inchoroi · Dec 13, 2018

Ranger. Or just a functional pet class. Or a functional summoner.

lluewhyn · Dec 13, 2018

There's an immediate and obvious answer for me that one other person pointed out: The index. This is the most god-awful index I've ever seen in a book, and it goes out of its way to be as obnoxious as possible. It's been a joke for the past ~4 years that any time someone opens the index to find something, it's going to say "See X instead", because that's more helpful and less wording than saying "p. 292".

I really don't like the very odd quirk where skills are listed as Attribute (Skill Name). That breaks with previous editions and doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It should be Roll an Athletics check. If you need a stat that's not the norm, such as a Constitution-based Athletics, a Wisdom-based Nature, Charisma-Based Investigation (we use that to replace the defunct Streetwise), then say "Roll an Athletics (Constitution) check".

You can add in moving the Open Locks/Disarm Traps off the skill list and into the nebulous Tools, which 90+% of the time are Thieves Tools. At the least, there should have been a few Fill-in-the-blank "X Tool" listings on the skill section. This causes so much confusion explaining to newer players, who are often attracted to the Rogue class.

robus said:
Here’s another pet peeve for me: no indication of expected challenge for an encounter in the published adventures. Not even the CR! Making us all have to reverse engineer each one to figure out if it needs adjustment for our table. )

I've said it before, but I wish they would at least list the CR of all of the creatures in the books. If I see that there's three NPCs in a fight, and they're all CR 2 against my 5th level party, I can look closer but assume that it's probably a fair challenge for my PCs. If they're all CR 1/2, I might think that's probably not enough and look closer at the number of additional fighting encounters to see if this one needs buffed up a bit.

From a personal example, one of the biggest places this bit me in the butt was in Curse of Strahd when they were investigating the winery. The recommended level was 5, but my PCs got there at level 4. Ok, so it may be a bit rough. The very first (likely) encounter is if they are seen approaching the winery, and 30 Needle Blights attack them, with waves of Druids coming out in subsequent rounds. I figured the Needle Blights were something on the order of goblins, whereas they were actually more like 1st level Rangers with decent hit points and ranged attacks. If I had seen their 1/2 CR, I might have given it a second look.

5ekyu · Dec 13, 2018

Umbran said:
The font size.

Really. Getting old enough to *not quite* need bifocals makes the book really annoying in that tiny font. Especially because you aren't always playing int he best lit rooms...

I had to wait until DDB to play 5e due to being unable to read the books and lack of PDF.

Stalker0 · Dec 13, 2018

The way spells are organized in the book....and of course the index.

The fact that bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage is all spelled out but very rarely used. Considering how many things were dropped for a more rules lite approach, I am shocked this wasn't one of them.

rgoodbb · Dec 13, 2018

vincegetorix said:
- The general impression than the base druid class' features revolve around the Moon druid and its superior Wildshape while not doing much for the other circle. Its such an important feature of the class but only one circle (maybe two with the Spore druid) really do something with it.

Warp wood. Where the heck is Warp wood? Man I loved that spell. D&D Druid is not a Druid without that spell. And yeah, more love/alternate features for those Land Druids.

5ekyu · Dec 13, 2018

1
"Characters face darkness outdoors at night (even most moonlit nights)" and that equalling Blinded.

2
Font/Readability/Contrast - tho it is common for style and artsy to trump pragmatic/functional these days in RPGs.

3
The Warlock. Its concept is great and deserves a better more robust class and not a grab-bag of three disparate mechanics that only sync up to effective a pair of ways that are rather boring to play after a more complex build than most.

Went with actual "things they did" as opposed to lacks and gaps for my peeves.

All of course EotB.

The Crimson Binome · Dec 13, 2018

lluewhyn said:
I really don't like the very odd quirk where skills are listed as Attribute (Skill Name). That breaks with previous editions and doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It should be Roll an Athletics check. If you need a stat that's not the norm, such as a Constitution-based Athletics, a Wisdom-based Nature, Charisma-Based Investigation (we use that to replace the defunct Streetwise), then say "Roll an Athletics (Constitution) check".

While we're on the topic of language formatting, I'll suggest the quirk where every single ability that refreshes on a short rest, has "or long rest" appended to the end of it. The could have saved so much space, by including one sentence in the description of long rests to remind everyone that they also include the benefits of a short rest.

lluewhyn said:
You can add in moving the Open Locks/Disarm Traps off the skill list and into the nebulous Tools, which 90+% of the time are Thieves Tools. At the least, there should have been a few Fill-in-the-blank "X Tool" listings on the skill section. This causes so much confusion explaining to newer players, who are often attracted to the Rogue class.

Definitely, the half-baked Tool proficiencies are just inelegant along every possible metric. Why can't Thief Tools just be folded back into a Thievery skill?