D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[Mannahnin]

However you do it, in real life buildings are rarely "interesting". Nor are mines for that matter (single main shaft with lots of short dead-end branches).

And it rarely matters. "Turn left or turn right" is not a real choice unless you have some basis to distinguish between them.

Not true that it rarely matters if you're using Jaquays-style design. If you have a looping setup, challenges and rooms can be encountered in varying orders and from varying directions, and this can change the nature of them, adding to variety and decreasing predictability. Sure, whether left or right is a real choice is doubtful if there's no basis to distinguish between them. So give some basis. Environmental clues and/or info PCs can discover by scouting or information gathering before they commit to a path.

It's still more choice than just "go forward, go back, or stay put", which is all a linear dungeon gives you.

Actually, it's not. "left or right" might just as well be "roll on the random encounter table".

Nope. Only if the DM and players choose not to put in any effort to make them distinguishable and to inform decisions.

 

[Hussar]

Hit Dice are diametrically opposite Healing Surges. They are a nice cushion of bonus healing on top of the critical necessity for magical spellcasting-based healing

You realize that your experience with 5e is not universal right? I've played more than a few campaigns with little to no magical spellcasting based healing and it works fine. Granted, we don't have 4e style in combat healing, but, that's more an artifact of the fact that 5e combat lasts about 1/3 as many rounds as 4e combat. When your combat is usually finished in 2-4 rounds, you don't really need in combat healing.

In any case, there's no point in beating this horse. I've made my peace with the adjustments from 4e to 5e (largely) the same as I made my peace with every other edition change. Stuff changes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If you have a looping setup, challenges and rooms can be encountered in varying orders and from varying directions, and this can change the nature of them, adding to variety and decreasing predictability.

It very rarely makes a meaningful difference if you encounter encounters in the order A, B, C, D, or C, B, D, A.

So give some basis.

How often do junctions have signposts saying "this way to the loot, that way to certain death"? Sure, you could add information to make it a meaningful decision, but in practice the approximate number of dungeons that have this is zero.

Meaningful choices are things like "why are we in this dungeon?" "what do we hope to achieve?" "who are our potential allies?". It's very rare for "what path shall we take?" to matter in the slightest.

 

[Retros_x]

If the design team wants people to know why they designed the way they did, they should say so, at least in the core book, or the product where the shift occurred.

You wanted this and now you try to claim the designers wanted to communicate this shift?

 

[Micah Sweet]

You wanted this and now you try to claim the designers wanted to communicate this shift?

Which post of mine are you responding to here? I'm not sure which rant of mine you object to.

 

[edosan]

I've run it three times, but it is a deeply flawed adventure.

It has one of the best openings to an adventure I've seen in Wizards' catalogue. (Seriously, Chapter 1 is exactly what I want to introduce characters to a city-based adventure).

And then everything falls apart after that. But it doesn't fall apart in a completely unplayable way - just in that Chapter 2 feels like a lot of half-baked ideas, and the "chase" sequence in Chapter 4 is one big half-baked idea - something that sounds good in theory, but it an utter pain to use at the table (and has real railroading advice in case the party might do the unthinkable and get the McGuffin before every encounter has played out).

But it has a lot of good underlying ideas, which DMs can focus on.

Cheers,
Merric

WDH got sensational reviews when it came but it's a half-baked adventure and barely a sourcebook smashed together and the huge selling point of "it's four adventures in one!" is sort of a joke (...and don't get me started on the whole "Ooh, who is this Xanathar guy, it's such a mystery if you haven't looked at the fourth published 5e book" thing)

 

[SteveC]

Taking inspiration from something requires that you actually respect what purpose that thing was for. 5e mechanics do not do that with 4e. In almost all cases--feats being a rare exception--if a 5e mechanic resembles a 4e one, it actively negates whatever purpose 4e put it toward. Often, IMO, to the game's detriment; consider how many think-pieces we've had about how difficult it is to actually threaten PCs, how easy it is to get healing, the nigh-endless threads for the first several years about fixing saving throws because people weren't getting enough proficiencies, etc., etc.

I just wanted to actually respond to this post rather than just giving it a like, because I think you're spot on. I played a TON of 4E. And now I've played a lot of 5E too. The mechanics people say are lifted from 4E really aren't and usually serve different purposes. Healing surges in 4E were a limiting factor on the adventuring day and were used for all healing including in combat, for instance.

As you wrote in your post, the proficiency system is the worst offender here: even if you didn't have a skill trained in 4E you could potentially participate in activities that used it, you just wouldn't be as good. In 5E, if you're not proficient in something you never get any better at it, and you just become worse and worse as the campaign progresses.

I'm not trying to edition war here: I have a 5E game coming up this evening that I expect to have a lot of fun with, but every now and then I hear how 5E took things from 4E and I just think of the meme with Thor shrugging: but did it, though? Don't worry, I pinky promise not to derail this thread with further discussions of this issue!

 

[billd91]

As you wrote in your post, the proficiency system is the worst offender here: even if you didn't have a skill trained in 4E you could potentially participate in activities that used it, you just wouldn't be as good. In 5E, if you're not proficient in something you never get any better at it, and you just become worse and worse as the campaign progresses.

Not agreeing here. With 4e, the difference between someone with proficiency and someone without is 5 (plus whatever difference in stats, assuming the same level). With 5e, the difference between someone with proficiency and someone without (omitting roguish expertise) ranges from 2 to 6 (plus whatever difference in stats, assuming the same level). So for most of a PC's career, the difference between skilled and unskilled is less than in 4e, and it's only greater than for a handful of levels many campaigns never get to.
Moreover, since most monsters don't have a lot in the way of proficient skills, they aren't leaving most PC skill bonuses in the dust even if non-proficient. And this is true no matter what the level vs level comparison of the monsters

 

[Swarmkeeper]

As you wrote in your post, the proficiency system is the worst offender here: even if you didn't have a skill trained in 4E you could potentially participate in activities that used it, you just wouldn't be as good. In 5E, if you're not proficient in something you never get any better at it, and you just become worse and worse as the campaign progresses.

Do all tasks get harder in your campaigns as the PCs level up?

 

[Ancalagon]

It very rarely makes a meaningful difference if you encounter encounters in the order A, B, C, D, or C, B, D, A.

How often do junctions have signposts saying "this way to the loot, that way to certain death"? Sure, you could add information to make it a meaningful decision, but in practice the approximate number of dungeons that have this is zero.

Meaningful choices are things like "why are we in this dungeon?" "what do we hope to achieve?" "who are our potential allies?". It's very rare for "what path shall we take?" to matter in the slightest.

hmmm... I sort of agree with you and sort of don't.

On one hand, you're right that "do we go left, right, or down that creepy stair?" is often a mostly random choice because the PCs have no idea what the consequence of the choice will be.

On the other hand, the order of the encounters can make a huge difference, because one of these encounters could be a potential ally with useful information or other type of help, another might contain a treasure that will be very useful in the dungeon etc. The "order of events" matters a lot! (unless they are all samey fights, in which case it's bad dungeon design).

On the other, other hand, the PCs choice of what path to take may not be fully random. There may be clues (that creepy stair smells of goblins!) and the PCs may gather further information (divination spells, sending a familiar ahead...). Once again, if a dungeon has no clues, and no way for the PCs to obtain info... bad dungeon design.