D&D 5E When Did 5E Peak Quality Wise?

[Zardnaar]

What do you mean "Golden Age"?

When did 5E peak for you quality wise.

 

[Zardnaar]

I recognize this is all personal opinion, but I think like everybody else, this is all based on how much folks are getting out of the game. For me, once I got the 5E starter set (with Phandelver), my interest and desire to engage began climbing dramatically. Curse of Strahd’s release was for me the absolute high point - I was in heaven to have a 5E version of my favorite adventure, with a vast expansion into a full-on campaign. For a while I was hooked on buying just about everything that came out (I was extremely picky with adventures, only grabbing the ones I planned to actually run - but most of the others struck me as good quality). Xanather’s has become my most-used add-on.

However, Tasha’s was the first book I ran across that wrinkled my nose - mainly with the change to ”races” and what I saw as power creep. Overall, I found nothing in it really worth adding to my game or that interested me (Artificer had already been in Eberron, and is about the only other thing I’ve considered is the revised Ranger). After that point, I started to become disinterested in the books and skipping them. None of the 2023 books interest me, with the exception of Planescape - but with how poorly Spelljammer was handled I’m not expecting it to be very good. As for 2024, since the release of 5E I’ve made up my mind I’m not going to a new version, and reprints of existing books I have are right out. If what comes following the Core OneD&D is not compatible - or requires significant modification - to 2014 D&D, I’ll not be picking it up and thus WotC D&D will be past glory days/dead for me.

So, for me, WotC D&D is on a steep decline. 3rd party D&D is still climbing - I‘ve found that while I buy little WotC D&D products lately I’ve been accumulating quite the 3rd party collection.

I remember your posts on Tashas. For me it was "I just paid for errata and power creep".

 

[Ancalagon]

For me, right now. There is so much available content right now, and so much third party support. Playtests are getting me excited about D&D again, and can't wait to see how the 2024 refresh of 5e cleans up the creaky bits of the system.

this is a good point - are we including 3rd party creators or not? Because some content being released is A+ material (Dungeons of Drakkenheim, I'm looking at you!).

Unfortunately, the "state" of 3rd party productions is hard to gauge because while many of us are fairly familiar with the majority of WotC's 5e production, none of us can claim the same for all 3rd party material. Maybe I lucked out when I got D of D and most 3rd party products are terrible? (or vice versa!). I have no way of knowing.

 

[Zardnaar]

this is a good point - are we including 3rd party creators or not? Because some content being released is A+ material (Dungeons of Drakkenheim, I'm looking at you!).

Unfortunately, the "state" of 3rd party productions is hard to gauge because while many of us are fairly familiar with the majority of WotC's 5e production, none of us can claim the same for all 3rd party material. Maybe I lucked out when I got D of D and most 3rd party products are terrible? (or vice versa!). I have no way of knowing.

I excluded 3pp in my OP for that reason. There's so much of it that even kobold press stuff probably won't be that familiar with it.

I know about Drakkenheim (Dungeon Dudes) but beyond knowing it exists I have no idea about it.

I eown Kobold Press Midgard similar problem.

 

[guachi]

The books I have:
Player's Handbook
Dungeon Master's Guide
Monster Manual
Guide to Monsters
Guide to Everything
Tome of Foes
Yawning Portal
Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Candlekeep Mysteries

I didn't like Yawning Portal or Mad Mage and I'll admit I haven't read one word of Candlekeep despite owning it for about a year.

I found Tome of Foes actually interesting but not as useful as Guide to Monsters. Guide to Everything was quite good. So that's where I'll put the peak of quality - around 2017-2018. I've found, since then, that 3pp products are so much more interesting, especially Level Up.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Radiant Citadel is far superior to Candlekeep.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

The playtests

This tbh

So much of the original 5e playtest was far better than what we got.

 

[Stoutstien]

The system has the potential to have longevity once the core consumer becomes more comfortable with 3rd party content. It's peak will probably happen about One starts to falter when it's converted to VTTRPG as it's primary and the fall out of the OGL fitters over time.

 

[ECMO3]

For me, the cutoff point of "All the books here play nice together" is right at the end of Mythic Odysseys of Theros. Theros was a crunchy book with new, interesting mechanics that worked with the underlying design philosophy of 5E (the Piety system and Mythic monsters). Up to this point, there were some key rules the designers respected (non-Warlock spellcasters don't get spell save DC increasing items, not all ability scores are created equal - a Dex bonus is more valuable than an Int bonus -, abilities are keyed either off of 1/short rest or key score/long rest etc.) that kept the game balanced.

Tasha's Cauldron Everything brought a silent change in game design philosophy that, IMO, has led to powercreep. Don't get me wrong, I think Tasha's had some great inclusions. The Ranger fix was great, the Sorcerer subclasses introduced a buff that should have been retrofitted to all past Sorcerer subclasses in the form of spell lists, and the flavour in almost all of the subclasses were great. That said, most of the new content was clearly overtuned, and the pattern has continued since then (maybe with the exception of the 1D&D Druid). The Peace and Twilight clerics were busted (and I've personally seen how the Twilight cleric trivialises dungeon exploration in actual play), the X/Proficiency Bonus paradigm silently buffed multiclass characters (as if the busted multiclass combos needed more juice), Rogues got the ability to gain advantage every turn with Take Aim... To me, it felt like the game's underlying assumptions changed, and the new game design paradigm was more "whiteroom" and did not account for some very real variables old design considered (Tasha's DC increasing items are the big culprit here, just see Matt Mercer rue the day he gave Scanlan the Handcone of Clarity to see why that's a bad idea).

That said, Tasha's also removed racial ability scores, and while I still think Tasha's bandaid solution wasn't ideal, it was something that needed to be done. I'm happy that that debate is settled in the 5E community, and I'm happy with the Culture/Heritage combo Level Up came up with in the end (with the ability bonuses being relegated to backgrounds).

Since Tasha's, I just can't trust that anything Wizards releases will be properly balanced for my game. The Great Wyrm dragons in Fizban's are undertuned for their massive CR and mythic status. Spells like Silvery Barbs are overpowered for their spell level. OneD&D needlessly standardises things like tool costs and each background giving exactly one tool and one language proficiency. The game just hasn't gone in a direction where the books are actually that useful to me beyond serving as inspiration (and then requiring tons of homebrewing). Currently, Level Up seems to scratch my itch far better. I'm still interested in what OneD&D will bring as well as the Planescape book, but to me, the high point of 5E ended with the release of the Theros book.

I agree with a lot of this.

The only one I disagree with is Twilight Cleric in play. We have seen a lot of them since Tasha's, mostly on optimizers and the results have honestly been underwhelming TBH. The 300 foot darkvision is the only part that is really been OP in play on my table and that is both not as OP as manny other things in the game and easy for the DM to mitigate once he realizes it is there. The rest of the Twilight Cleric's kit is not that bad except that it is all in there (initiative bonus AND Martial Weapons AND Heavy Armor AND a good Channel Divinity ....). Overall though, IME Tempest, Death, Order, Life or Trickery are just about as powerful in play, and most of those are more powerful on a multiclass.

I have not seen a lot of peace clerics, so I can't really comment on them.

 

[Starfox]

I have great hopes for One DnD Dnd 5.5 5E Revised.