Most frustrating quirk of 5E?

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Magister Ludorum]

I know. I was just throwing in my experience as well. We played levels 1-2 from about 1978 - 1980.

Even back then, I would adjust the challenge up for many of those classic modules that were written for levels 1 and 2.

Mostly I wrote my own stories starting in High School (1980).

In short, I hate bildungsroman style play.

 

[Magister Ludorum]

The thing that was a game breaker for me until I finally broke down and read the 5e DMG was the full healing after a long rest mechanic.

I just have characters spend hit dice when they fall asleep and then regain hit dice as normal when they finish the long rest.

I've been toying with the idea of limiting the number of hit dice regained to no more than the character's proficiency bonus.

I like the idea of hit dice as long term damage and hit points as short term damage.

This makes essentially no difference in play because magical healing is easy to come by, especially before settling in for a long rest. From a story perspective, the rapid healing interferes with verisimilitude for me.

Another thing I don't really like is the way characters get inspiration. It sounds too much like trying to force players to play the way I want them to. I quit playing in a game where the players awarded the inspiration. I was awarded it quite often, but I felt like that was more about me making everyone laugh than about me playing my character.

I give characters inspiration after a long rest and then allow them to regain it if one of their character hooks comes into play. I ask players for a list of goals, dependents, psychological limitations, rivals, etc.... When one of them show up in play, the character regains inspiration.

For example, one of the characters in a WoG chronicle I'm running lost his family to Iuz during the Greyhawk wars. When he encounters enemies who are clearly followers of Iuz, he gets inspiration.

I've been asking for HERO games style complications for characters since the 1980s. Since I write stories around the characters, those characters with more hooks have a better chance for their background to come into play, and they gain inspiration more often than those who are defined only by their abilities.

 

[Blue]

Yeah, I generally really dislike chosen numbers vs ones that link to character in some way. Make it Tier. Make it Con Mod. Make it Tier + ConMod and reduce it by one every death.

With "races" like say death saves, it's kinda ok since you are setting a pace, but for most things... link it to character.

That's how 13th Age does it:

To make a permanent item you need to infuse it with anima, so every item has a quirk. As long as your number of items* is lower than your level**, you can RP the quirk or not - you're still in charge. If you are above your level in items, then it's overwhelming you and the quirks take over.

So it's a soft limit you can exceed, but for you to exceed you need to accept that you'll be "partially" mind controlled.

* Items from higher tiers then your PC count as more items.
** 13th Age is a 1-10 level game, not 1-20. It has "Incremental Advances" that give more granularity.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Lucas Blackstone]

Why does healing over a long rest bother so many people? Hit points are a measure of how tough a character/creature is. It's not merely raw physical damage sustained. It is supposed to represent much more then that. It's an abstract system meant to encompass more raw damage but still kept simple. Getting your wind back, recovering from shock, minor sprains, so on and so forth.

 

[Wiseblood]

The language used. Attack action, move action, bonus action, action. They don’t mean anything outside of the game. They’re specifically shaped holes that were put in to streamline something or balance something(haha that will be the day). Instead, they really are an extra layer of rules that amount to game jargon.


Six second rounds just don’t make sense.

The design parameters that state “everything that is pass/fail must be d20”. Takes a lot of interesting and better ideas out of circulation.

 

[Zardnaar]

How is every class getting to chose a subclass at the same level (all either at 1st, 2nd or 3rd for the first level) imply getting rid spellcaster tables.

Because the claim was all classes should have the same pattern for leveling up.

 

[Zardnaar]

Let's see! Frustrating quirks for me-

1. Paladins.

2. Weapons. I can live with a system where everything is, say, d6 and you just re-skin for flavor. I can live with a needlessly complex system of actual difference between tons of weapon. But to give the illusion of choice, and then have everyone run around with a rapier or one of a handful of decent choices? Bite me.

3. Paladins, and rapiers. Um, canoliers. Whatever.

4. Healing. Regular rules are stupid and video-gamey. Alternate rules require a lot of fiddling.

5. Paladins, rapiers, and gnomes.

6. Death. Yeah, death is terrible. But anyone that said death and taxes were inevitable never played 5e (see also, 8).

7. Paladins, again.

8. Money. I have a lot of uses for money in my campaign, because I have decades of experience in making up prices and my players like to buy stuff. But I wish that the powers that be would provide some guidance to the other people about how they spend their loot so I don't see more threads about the "problem" of gold (ps- if money is a problem, give it to me).

9. Magic. Too much. In general.

10. Did I mention Paladins?

11. Not enough tables. I like to roll things based on tables. And the tables need to be longer - more PERCENTILE tables. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I'll help you out.

1. Gnomes.
2. Paldins
3. Gnomes
4. Paladins
5. Gnomes
6. Paladins
7. Gnomes.
8. Paladins
9. Gnomes
10. Paladins.

We the forum should kickstart a Gnomes And Paladins:The RPG and dedicate it to Lowkey. The dreaded Gnome Illusionist/Paladin could be very good.

 

[Zardnaar]

Why does healing over a long rest bother so many people? Hit points are a measure of how tough a character/creature is. It's not merely raw physical damage sustained. It is supposed to represent much more then that. It's an abstract system meant to encompass more raw damage but still kept simple. Getting your wind back, recovering from shock, minor sprains, so on and so forth.

It makes some game types very difficult to run like hex crawls where the player hp would need to be worn down over a series of days. They kind of compensated with uber damage on 5E monsters so in a way 5E has to much healing and to much damage YMMV or you might like that.