D&D 5E In Depth Critique of Part 3 of Basic Rules

[Remathilis]

KD: What about a scenario where the Hold Person spell is cast, target fails save, then caster sends in horde of mooks to finish off?

Then the creature dies. Excrement Happens. Sometimes the dice gives you a critical hit when you need it, sometimes they leave you on fire for 5 rounds because you can't roll above a 10 on a d20. Sometimes you TPK your party, sometimes the monster dies in one round. That's D&D.

The problem I have with your analysis is that it doesn't give magic anything to do. You literally took offense to nearly EVERY spell in the PDF! Most of them for doing EXACTLY what the spell was intended to do. It almost seemed like some of them were "This spell is broken because it does exactly what you think it does".

You know, if spells like fireball and spiritual weapon are problematic, I have a not-so-humble suggestion: find a different game. Seriously, most of these concerns were fixed in 4e, try that. You might have to ban a few rituals (like raise dead) but it should really fix the problem of magic being too good vs mundane.

 

[pemerton]

My contention, however, is not from the straight one-shot damage, but that the character has been damaged first, then hit with one of these spells, from a caster that the character may not even be aware of, or, if aware, that he is a caster, or even if he knows he’s a caster, that he possesses one of these spells (or be able to do much about it, even if he knows).

I'm not sure how this is different from being peppered with arrows by an archer or two of whom the character was unaware.

I personally prefer a game in which typical damage is a bit more modest relative to typical hit points - that's why I play 4e. 5e, being designed to have shorter combats, is a little more swingy. But I don't think it's very helpful to compare that to SoD. You're not bypassing the hit point mechanic.

 

[Tony Vargas]

For instance, I really think there needs to be a discussion about the disconnect between immersion/character background/player investment vs. lethality, especially where new players and DMs are concerned. It seems to me the designers should have broken the game up from the get-go into high-risk/combat intensive games and low-medium risk/immersive intense games. Then people could make a knowing choice ahead of time and also know what type of experience they were agreeing to/getting into. Friends have already told me that the mortality rate for newbies in the starter 5E is fairly high, and even threads on this forum have chronicled such.

This was something I noticed and voiced concerns about during the playtest. The impression I get is that the 5e approach to new-player-accessibility is to provide an experience similar to that new players would have had c1979 ('89, for that matter, since the game changed little). That's a very understandable approach, since an awful lot of us, including some on the design team, I'm sure, had exactly those experiences, and we still love the game today, right!?

There are two problems with the idea. The really obvious one is that it's not 1979. Maybe slightly less obvious is that we grognards who still play D&D after having had those experiences don't represent a very sizable minority of the millions of people who tried D&D at the height of the 80s fad. Most people who had those first experiences don't play the game anymore, and haven't for something like 30 years.

So, maybe the high mortality rate isn't the best thing to hook new players.

Then again, maybe it serves the purpose of making the game /seem/ deadly at a first impression, so as the PCs get mountains of hps and spells and other resources and cease to ever be in as much danger, the aura of danger from those early levels remains?

 

[Pallidore]

Remathilis: I’m not sure I would say I took offense. I merely pointed out pitfalls and potential pitfalls (not all major; some were only minor or moderate). Of 53 spells out of 130 or so (about 40%). And pointing out that the king is a bit less finely clothed than might appear does not mean I wish to, or should, leave the kingdom. Each game system has its attractive features and drawbacks. I’m interested in the improvement of this one, and not just for legacy or popularity reasons.

Magic is cool; I do not want to leave magic using characters with “nothing” to do. While I do think that part of the reason that class abilities have inflated is because of excessive magic that has created continuous pressure upward as each class feeds the inflationary arms-race spiral, there are ways to moderate while avoiding that disproportionate nerfing that takes the fun out. A difficulty of 4E is that, in running away from a bloated and broken 3.5 system, it swung effectively to the other extreme. While I want to wait until after the full 5E rollout to consider specifics, I will point out here that there were (and are) ways that the 40% that are “problem” spells could have been distributed that would have allowed fun, but with a meaningful decision by the caster for those spells, rather than an ever-renewing techno-equivalent resource that requires little to no consideration of complications.

I would, however, be interested in your thoughts on why you feel that some specific spells I feel are problems are not really a problem. I’m always looking to up my DM-fu and gain a broader and more robust perspective!

Pemerton: An archer or archers would actually have to hit (and no matter how good they are, 5% of the time they miss regardless). And any number of things/variables could be operative to either reduce hit chances or even delay or disrupt them entirely. And usually, an archer would need to hit a good deal more than once.

No to hit roll is required for most spells. The character’s health, and even continuance, assuming there IS a save, can come down to one make-or-break roll of the dice.

I agree with you there is no direct bypassing of the hit point mechanic for these save-or-else spells, but in some cases, the effect is nearly the same.

T. Vargas: Good thoughts. I will additionally say there are ways to put in danger, convey danger, feel danger, without making the jump directly to “your character’s dead; roll up a new one.” Just one example would be inflictions and infirming events (even for an extensive period) that can teach new players how close their lovingly crafted characters came to permanent exit.

Your points bring to mind something important: The number of female players remains, despite some modest improvement, dramatically under-representative of the general population, thus limiting the market potential and possible long-term viability of D&D. I believe it has direct correlation to this lethality problem. The 5E game is asking players to go to a great deal of immersive investment in background, goals, ideals, bonds, flaws, etc., an investment that will require the corresponding time and life energy on the part of the player to do so. And it is more common for a female player to go into greater depth and richness in this type of creating. For 5E to so casually put this at great risk, especially for new players, is a major foul. That it creates giant contradictions of stated intentions and inconsistencies in execution by doing so is a further foul. For most anyone, anytime, having a significant amount of time and life-energy in something you’ve created is, to put it far too mildly, not going to be well received if that creation is effectively destroyed. Yet that’s what happens by the high lethality problem. In today’s time starved environment, one rich with alternative entertainment options, almost no one is going to put up with that. Certainly almost no female. I learned this lesson early, when the dice killed a female player’s lovingly crafted character early in a game I DM'd. I have since watched it play out its regrettable foregone conclusion in too many other DMs' games.

Can players make intelligent/wise decisions for their invested-in character to have a very high chance of avoiding character demise? If the answer is, well, sometimes no, there is a massive problem with game design when that game has strongly stated it wants player-character immersion into the setting! And the problem gets magnified by degrees when the players are in a game with an average or newbie DM.

 

[pemerton]

An archer or archers would actually have to hit (and no matter how good they are, 5% of the time they miss regardless). And any number of things/variables could be operative to either reduce hit chances or even delay or disrupt them entirely. And usually, an archer would need to hit a good deal more than once.

Disintegrate has to "hit" too; it's just that the "hit" chance is mediated via the saving throw mechanic (so the defender rolls the d20) rather than the attack mechanic (which has the attacker roll the d20).

With Finger of Death there is "DoaM", otherwise known as half damage on a save, but that is going to be in the neighbourhood of 30 hp, which will not render unconscious the average wizard of that level until s/he has already take a reasonable amount of damage.

The fact that 13th level archers deliver their damage in smaller packets but at large numbers slightly increases the likelihood of average damage coming up, but rolling the large numbers of dice these attack spells call for is going to have a strong averaging tendency also. So I don't really see any fundamental difference.

For a concrete example: a 13th level fighter has +12 to hit (20 DEX, prof, archery style) and can make 4 attacks (three plus action surge), each doing 1d8+5, for overall expected damage (ignoring to hit chance and criticals for the moment) of 38.

Let's suppose the wizard's AC is 15 (from Mage Armour and +2 DEX). Then the fighter hits on a 3 or better, or 9/10 of the time, for expected damage of 32.6. There is also .4 chance of a crit (.1 per attack, x 4 attacks), for +1.6 additional damage. So the expected damage, overall, is 34.2. That's not as much as the spell attack, but the spell attack damage is not repeatable, whereas the archery is (at 3/4 the output - only one action surge).

NPC wizards will be dangerous in situations in which the GM treats them as having all their highest level slots available and good to go, but that has been an issue in all versions of D&D except 4e.

 

[Tony Vargas]

T. Vargas: Good thoughts. I will additionally say there are ways to put in danger, convey danger, feel danger, without making the jump directly to “your character’s dead; roll up a new one.” Just one example would be inflictions and infirming events (even for an extensive period) that can teach new players how close their lovingly crafted characters came to permanent exit.

Conveying danger mechanically can be a bit of a challenge. If you're not invested in a character, you're not too fearful for it. If you are, you may be /too/ fearful for it to have it behave heroically. If you blow through a few characters, you may be blaze about character death, which also saps the sense of danger. It's a delicate thing, and I'm not /sure/ lethality in the system helps that much, but I can see how it /might/. Say you roll up your first D&D character and it dies, you think 'wow this game is deadly.' Then you roll up your second character, play it a little more cautiously, get a little luck, and it survives to 2nd or 3rd or 5th or whever it becomes pretty safe in the ed in question. By 9th or so, even if it dies, it can be resurrected. So, you're now in basically no danger of lasting death, but you have that first impression of 'this game is deadly.' Of course, your first impression could also be 'this game sucks' and you never play it again. :shrug:

Your points bring to mind something important: The number of female players remains, despite some modest improvement, dramatically under-representative of the general population, thus limiting the market potential and possible long-term viability of D&D.

Well, I'm sorry for that.

I believe it has direct correlation to this lethality problem. The 5E game is asking players to go to a great deal of immersive investment in background, goals, ideals, bonds, flaws, etc., an investment that will require the corresponding time and life energy on the part of the player to do so. And it is more common for a female player to go into greater depth and richness in this type of creating. For 5E to so casually put this at great risk, especially for new players, is a major foul. That it creates giant contradictions of stated intentions and inconsistencies in execution by doing so is a further foul. For most anyone, anytime, having a significant amount of time and life-energy in something you’ve created is, to put it far too mildly, not going to be well received if that creation is effectively destroyed. Yet that’s what happens by the high lethality problem. In today’s time starved environment, one rich with alternative entertainment options, almost no one is going to put up with that. Certainly almost no female. I learned this lesson early, when the dice killed a female player’s lovingly crafted character early in a game I DM'd. I have since watched it play out its regrettable foregone conclusion in too many other DMs' games.

I'll offer an anecdotal counter-example. The first 5e playtest I ran, a player spent hours building and creating backstory for her character. It died on, it's turn, on the second initiative count of the first round of the first combat of the first session of that first Encounters playtest season. Critical hit, reduced to negative hps, 1 away from death, failed a death save to avoid taking that 1 hps, died. If she'd just rolled /lower/ initiative, someone could've stabilized her.

She took it in good humor, reprised a similar character at the next session, and played through the season. (Admittedly, she didn't participate in the playtest again, but she was big enough to finish the season.)

5e Encounters, BTW, lets your character be automatically raised by the next session, if you belong to a faction and are under 5th level. (Maybe each faction has a mass-raising party every Thursday and gets a bulk-rate discount.) So it looks like bringing up this issue during the playtest wasn't a complete waste of time.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm not sure how this is different from being peppered with arrows by an archer or two of whom the character was unaware.

I personally prefer a game in which typical damage is a bit more modest relative to typical hit points - that's why I play 4e. 5e, being designed to have shorter combats, is a little more swingy. But I don't think it's very helpful to compare that to SoD. You're not bypassing the hit point mechanic.

This.

I had a player running the Cleric in the Starter Set and she walked up to the goblin ambush by herself since she had the highest AC. She missed Perception, so 3 or 4 Advantage / Surprise attacks later, she was unconscious on the ground. Stuff happens.

 

[Remathilis]

Remathilis: I’m not sure I would say I took offense. I merely pointed out pitfalls and potential pitfalls (not all major; some were only minor or moderate). Of 53 spells out of 130 or so (about 40%). And pointing out that the king is a bit less finely clothed than might appear does not mean I wish to, or should, leave the kingdom. Each game system has its attractive features and drawbacks. I’m interested in the improvement of this one, and not just for legacy or popularity reasons.

Sure, 53 spells got called out "on the carpet" but there are plenty of similar spells that "didn't" that bloody well fall into the same veins. I mean, if you have a problem with fireball, what makes lightning bolt better designed? (Nevermind, its not. I missed it on first read through).

Second, lots of spells fail because they do what's on the tin: Detect Magic detects magic. You then note that PCs use said spell to detect for magic! Well no duh! You complain a PC can fly over a pit, or understand any language with comp languages, or Invisibility makes you hard to see. Which to me is the essence of problem-solving magic: DM provides a challenge (get over the pit) and the PCs use their resources to do so "I'll fly across with a rope and anchor it there". Of course, you dismiss the notion that since the PCs had to spend a resource (a 3rd level or higher spell slot, which don't come easy these days) to do this, each of these spells exist in a vacuum where I don't have to weigh where flying over the chasm is worth one less fireball.

Which lead me to my ultimate dismissal of your point: you don't want magic to DO anything USEFUL. Attack magic is too powerful since it can kill a PC instantly. Save or suck magic cripples a combatant. Can't use magic to overcome an obstacle. Can't use magic to learn anything. Can't use magic to go anywhere. Can't use magic to create anything. Healing is too easy. Buffs are too easy. Defensive magic makes the game unfun. I can't even use magic for light since THAT makes freaking 1 cp torches irrelevant. There is practically no spell that doesn't break/unfun the game for you! This is far-beyond "buff-scry-teleport" or "invisible flying death" level problems; this is "wall of stone was used to stop my monsters from ganging up on the PCs. That's not fair!" level whining.

Which is why I think you will be happier in a game like 4e. Every complaint you cite is fixed there. Fireball a killer? Not at 5d6 vs. 40 hp monsters. Save or die/suck is mostly gone. Buffs last til end of turn. Magic missile had a "to hit" roll. Healing costs a healing surge to use. Rituals cost real GP to use. Fly and other movement spells are well into paragon levels. A wizard's fireball, a clerics, searing light, a rogue's dastardly strike, and a fighter's punishing blow are all on par with one another in terms of relative power. It literally fixes every problem you have on the list! (Except light; that's still an at-will cantrip). Really, go play that, you'll be a lot happier I think then trying to fix 5e's neo-Vancian magic.

 

[KarinsDad]

Your points bring to mind something important: The number of female players remains, despite some modest improvement, dramatically under-representative of the general population, thus limiting the market potential and possible long-term viability of D&D.

Maybe at your table. I have 3 female and 3 male players at my table. The way to get more female players into D&D is for male players of D&D to go out and get more female friends.

I believe it has direct correlation to this lethality problem. The 5E game is asking players to go to a great deal of immersive investment in background, goals, ideals, bonds, flaws, etc., an investment that will require the corresponding time and life energy on the part of the player to do so. And it is more common for a female player to go into greater depth and richness in this type of creating. For 5E to so casually put this at great risk, especially for new players, is a major foul.

4E has virtually no lethality problem. For your theory to be correct, 4E should have flooded D&D with a lot of female players.

I suspect that there is a fallacy in your logic here.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Second, lots of spells fail because they do what's on the tin: Detect Magic detects magic. You then note that PCs use said spell to detect for magic! Well no duh!

One issue that's sometimes hard for us long-time D&Ders to see /is/ that D&D magic does tend to do far more than magic tends to do in the actual genre. That's why it sometimes comes off more as a 'sufficiently advanced technology,' because it's so ubiquitous and dependable and used to solve every possible problem.

Which is why I think you will be happier in a game like 4e. Every complaint you cite is fixed there. Fireball a killer? Not at 5d6 vs. 40 hp monsters. Save or die/suck is mostly gone. Buffs last til end of turn. Magic missile had a "to hit" roll. Healing costs a healing surge to use. Rituals cost real GP to use. Fly and other movement spells are well into paragon levels. A wizard's fireball, a clerics, searing light, a rogue's dastardly strike, and a fighter's punishing blow are all on par with one another in terms of relative power. It literally fixes every problem you have on the list! Really, go play that, you'll be a lot happier I think then trying to fix 5e's neo-Vancian magic.

4e /is/ a very good game, well-balanced, clear, playable, fun, etc. So, that is good advice, and I'll go ahead and second it - though I'll also note it's no longer being supported, so may not be a viable solution in the longer term. There are also a /lot/ of other games out there that one could look into. The ready alternative doesn't alleviate the concerns expressed, however.

But, while 5e is still repeating some rather old D&D mistakes, it has also made some progress. Scaling spells by slot level instead of character level, is a step forward (even if scaling save DCs by proficiency instead of slot level and combining Vancian known-spells/prep with Spontaneous casting slots are two steps back). Giving the fighter the kind of multiple attacks that made it so broken in 2e (and giving the rogue similar DPR potential) could be seen as trying to balance that, in an extreme, balance-of-imbalances way.

So you can't consider 5e magic in a vacuum, nor can you deny that there have been improvements made relative to 2e & 3e.

Which lead me to my ultimate dismissal of your point: you don't want magic to DO anything USEFUL. Attack magic is too powerful since it can kill a PC instantly. Save or suck magic cripples a combatant. Can't use magic to overcome an obstacle. Can't use magic to learn anything. Can't use magic to go anywhere. Can't use magic to create anything. Healing is too easy. Buffs are too easy. Defensive magic makes the game unfun.

Again, I think it's more a perceived danger of magic doing /everything/ useful, better than non-magical alternatives, too much of the time (if not functionally all the time).