D&D 5E 3rd party publishers and 5E

[CapnZapp]

It's funny; I think there are too many options, many of which aren't really options (hello, wizard slight-variations-on-a-dull-theme!), and I dislike many of them.

That too.

The bitter truth is that just rehashing the existing class features into new (but dull) subclasses is easy to balance. Therefore WotC will keep doing it until us consumers wise up and start demanding new ideas.


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[CapnZapp]

Good point. Bloatware is a huge problem with Pathfinder and I am glad WOTC is limiting and carefully play testing player option material before it releases it.

That wasn't his point.

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[delericho]

One of the most common complaints that I see about 5E is the lack of options.

While I don't think there's a lack of options, there are some specific options I'd like to see added (mostly setting-specific stuff, and psionics). There are also a few areas where I think the game could stand to have a few more choices (notably Cleric domains)... and also a few where it could do with a trim (the 8 Wizard subclasses in the PHB).

So I wanted to start a thread that had two main purposes, one if you feel that 5E doesn't have enough options for you, do you buy and allow 3 party materials?

No, but yes-ish. I don't buy or use 3rd party materials myself, but if a player does get something and wants to use it, I'll take a look and probably allow it. Although I don't use AL, I do intend to apply their PHB+1 rule, though. (That is, player-side materials. I do make use of 3pp monsters, and would have no issue using a 3pp adventure, though I mostly write those myself.)

If not, why not?

As noted above, what I'm looking for is some specific items (rather than just "more"). Some of these we know are coming, so I'm reasonably happy to wait. The setting-specific stuff is for settings that aren't open on DM's Guild (yet), so either they're not available, or people have worked around WotC's wish to keep them closed (and so I'm not interested).

 

[Ugly Weirdo]

There is no such thing as lack of options in 5th Ed. There is over 60 subclasses available! I use to look the old classes, and the sane thing 5th Ed did was to condense the hell out of them. And balanced a lot of them so they don't become trap options, increasing a lot of the viability of certain concepts (fighter and monk, I'm looking at you!).

Saying that there is no options is just plain ignorance. I, with only the PHB, could build a character at level one impossible to work in 3.5: a master crossbowman. And it was just a fighter!

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Well Luke, I think you've found the crux of the argument. While killing off all the force users and not passing knowledge to new force users DOES technically create balance of a sort RAW. I think we can all acknowledge it completely misses the spirit of the thing RAI.

And yes balance and power creep and "trap options" and needless complexity. Let's debunk those hollow arguments, yes?

1: Hex Warrior. Of the 12 available classes 3 become full 9th level casters and the second best martial option. The 4th charisma caster is turned into the best martial option in the system. Of the 93 available (UA is awesome AL is not) 70 are mechanically irrelevant. Xanathar killed game balance.

2: power creep. I think this means adding, removing, or changing aspects of the system after its initial release. Also called game development.
Moving on.

3: "Trap options" never before in nearly 3 decades of ttrpg have I seen the kind of lazy and stupid roll playing I encounter in 5e. If your entire personality and life history is 4 lines of pregenerated text you are not a hero. If everything you do and say and think is centered entirely around combat and treasure you are a spree killer.
Sub optimal options are not traps, they are character development.

4: Needless complexity. Absolutely correct. 3.5 was a quagmire of redundant and irrelivent rules and lore. It was ing awesome. 5e has scripted adventures with predetermined rewards and outcomes available to a small number of very similar character builds.

Choosing between applying a pushing or a pulling effect to your Eldritch Spam isnt creative roleplay,. It's a copout and its lazy and its unfair.

I guess the point of my meander is that making every character option mediocre doesnt create balance, it doesnt improve poorly performing character options (let's just call it operator incompitance), and it doesnt offer the gratification I've come to expect from this awesome hobby.

I play 5e and I enjoy my time at the table. I enjoy debating Pathfinder vs. 5e when it can be done RESPECTFULLY. Some people appreciate the simplicity while others like lots of crunch. Both are valid opinions.

I also get a kick out insulting the intelligence of console gamers who get confused by story development if they dont have an officially licensed walkthrough at hand

You want dialogue prompts and map icons displaying plotline locations go back to Elder Scrolls. We are busy doing math and playing make believe.

"Khajeet not lowest common denominator. Khajeet innocent of milquetoast moneygrab."


God damn shame Wizards got all the good lore and setting.


And how is your crossbow example relevant or valid? Or even true? The appropriate 5e rules are crippling. Spending an extremely rare and valuable resource to just be hobbled is silly. Unless there is a story about why. Then you are roleplaying and that's half of the fun.

It's okay to like something.

It's okay to dislike something.

It's not okay to be an .

 

[CydKnight]

I've not experienced any lack of character options nor have I heard from any player's at my tables expressing such a lack.

I do often incorporate 3rd party encounters or mini adventures from the DMG or Drive-Thru RPG into my campaigns.

 

[Sacrosanct]

A few observations:

Most people will think there are plenty of options out there, but there will always be people who don't have their options available, so there will always be people who say no.

Most of the people who don't think there are enough options want the options to be official WoTC published, and not 3PP

Many people who don't like 3PP have made assumptions that 3PP is automatically poor quality. I don't agree with this. Yes, much 3PP is poor quality, but that doesn't mean every official product is high quality while 3PP is substandard. I find this especially ironic because most of the people who make that argument ("I don't use 3PP because it's bad, only official material") are also the same people who constantly complain about how the official 5e rules are broken or garbage. It's a new level of cognitive dissonance. Also, I think people forget that Eberron was 3PP.

As a 3PP creator, naturally I use other 3PP material in my games, as long as it fits and doesn't seem to be egregious in any way. I'm the DM, I can add, approve, delete, modify anything that comes into my games, regardless if it's 3PP or official.

 

[MNblockhead]

I depends on the campaign. I could play the rest of my life using only D&D 5e, only buying/creating adventure content. My interest in TPP isn't because I feel that there are gaping holes in the game. But good TPP content can inspire me. I use a lot of TPP content, but not in every campaign.

I'm running Rapan Athuk (Frog God Game's beast of a megadungeon, including custom spells, magic items, monsters, and some minor mechanics) now with some EN World options (I'll be incorporating the recent Marks of Renown and Intriguing Organizations: Estoteres) and Matt Coleville's Strongholds & Followers, along with a tiny bit of homebrew.

My campaign before this was Curse of Strahd, which I ran pretty much as written and only WotC published character options. The only TPP used were a couple things I found on DM's guild. One was to make a magical tarokka deck similar to a deck of many things but far less game breaking, I also used an XP system someone created for the module, and last an version of Strahd that was beefed up a bit.

My first 5e campaign was in an entirely homebrew world. I stuck to the RAW in the PHB and DMG for mechanics but I used a LOT of TPP adventure materials and beasteries, in particular a number of EN World EN5ider articles and Kobold Press's Tome of Beasts (and the associated Lairs book). Probably the most TTP material were maps and battlemats. While I like to create my own, I also have over 700 curated battlemaps and maps in Evernote. Some of these are PDFs containing a number of maps, so the actual number is well over 1,000, but difficult to count. 0one's BluePrint series is one I dipped into a lot. I've also got a lot from Drivethrurpg and items shared for free (by their creators) on various blogs.

 

[Retreater]

My main issue about what to include with third party 5th edition is that I have no idea what is a quality product. During the d20 era, I felt informed. Necromancer Games had awesome, difficult adventures. Goodman Games had beer and pretzels games. Malhavoc Press had some good adventures and experimental rules. Dreamscarred had great psionics resources.
What is out there now? Most companies are creating their own niche games. Individual writers publish whatever they want on DMs Guild with little to no oversight - with 10 different psionics rulesets and 20 different takes on the warlord.
The few companies we have heard of are churning out reprints of 3.x (or older) material. (Rappan Athuk? City of Brass? Tome of Horrors?) What are they designing (for the ground up) for 5th edition? And what is good? Where are reviews? Where are the play reports?
The lack of vetted content for 5E is one of the reasons I'm shifting my future campaigns to 4E.

 

[MNblockhead]

My main issue about what to include with third party 5th edition is that I have no idea what is a quality product. During the d20 era, I felt informed. Necromancer Games had awesome, difficult adventures. Goodman Games had beer and pretzels games. Malhavoc Press had some good adventures and experimental rules. Dreamscarred had great psionics resources.
What is out there now? Most companies are creating their own niche games. Individual writers publish whatever they want on DMs Guild with little to no oversight - with 10 different psionics rulesets and 20 different takes on the warlord.
The few companies we have heard of are churning out reprints of 3.x (or older) material. (Rappan Athuk? City of Brass? Tome of Horrors?) What are they designing (for the ground up) for 5th edition? And what is good? Where are reviews? Where are the play reports?
The lack of vetted content for 5E is one of the reasons I'm shifting my future campaigns to 4E.

I had a long time go by when I wasn't involved in the hobby and skipped from 1e to 5e, so I appreciate all the updating of content to 5e from older editions.

That said, all of the publishers you mentioned are also releasing new content as well.

For someone putting out great content that is new for 5e I would keep an eye on Matt Coleville DM (MCDM). The Strongholds & Followers book is great quality. As good as anything Kobold Press, Goodman Games, or Frog God Games is putting out. Even more impressive, given how small MCDM is, he has very active discussion forums for his content (on Reddit) and lots of videos. There are many ways to learn about the content before you buy and to engage with his community after you buy.

Kobold Presses two bestiaries, Tome of Foes and Creature Codex are both excellent as are the lair books that go with them. Many of the monsters are brand new, some created by kickstarter backers. The Lair books provide excellent mini adventures built around the lairs of some of the monsters in the books. They also offer 2D cardboard miniatures for nearly all of the monsters in the books. I've highly enjoyed reading the books and have used many of the monsters as a DM, sometimes just switching out a well-known monster in an adventure with a similar one from the Kobold Press books, to keep the players on their toes, and sometimes I build entire adventures around them--helped with the lair books.

Frog God Games are, yes, printing old material updated to 5e but boy are they offering a LOT of updates. VTT map images, 3D printing tiles, huge cloth maps. Rappan Athuk is impressive, but you really need to look at the awesomeness that is Tegel Manor to see the incredible lengths they are going to bring influential classics to a modern audience.

 

[TwoSix]

Also, I think people forget that Eberron was 3PP.

I agree with most of what you said above, but this is definitely off. Eberron came from the WotC sponsored setting search. Keith Baker wasn't a WotC employee when he did the bulk of the work creating Eberron, but it absolutely went through WotC to have revisions, editing, and art added, and was published by WotC.