D&D 5E People don't read the 5E DMG for a reason

[Faolyn]

I think the DMG suffers from the Jack of All Trades issue - it's supposed be a DM's primer, a toolbox for adventure creation and optional game components and a host of reference charts & information (such as magic items). It's either going to have to drop something or be a (much) bigger book. I kind of hope it gets chunked up to 1E AD&D size myself. Though I wish they could move magic items to the PHB, for example, but its already cluttered by a hunk of spells. Or rearrange the books into PHB, MM, DMG and a "Treasures & Spells" book. God knows the latter has enough stuff for a book of its own, but buying 3 books as is already is a bit of an annoyance - and going the PF2 way is madness with trying to stuff 3/4 of the game into one book.

<Edit> On that last thought, maybe just a PHB and combine the DMG & MM into one book?

They thought about doing that with Level Up (combining the PHB and DMG, not the MM), but they still needed to split it into three books. As it is, the Adventurer's Guide is over 600 pages. Fortunately, the second book, Trials & Treasures, consists only of magic items and exploration-type stuff, with the actual DM stuff being stuck in the Adventurer's Guide. If spells and magic items were put into a single volume, they might be able to combine everything else.

Unless the monsters were pared down significantly, there's no way they could put them and everything else into one book. It could be done, but not in a way I think would make people happy. You could do things like, have a single dragon statblock (well, one statblock per age category), with templates and descriptions for each of the species. Do the same for the humanoid bad guy statblocks (commoner, warrior, lieutenant, warlord, casters, assassin, trapmaster, beastmaster, etc.), likewise with templates and descriptions for each species, since let's face it, stat-wise, there's very few mechanical differences between orcs and hobgoblins and kobolds and whatever. Ravening Beast could be a set of statblocks (one for each tier of play), and templates or just lists of traits you can pick and choose from to make worgs, griffons, owlbears, chimeras, manticores, or whatever you want. Giants could be divided up much like the humanoids, with differing levels of size, hp, AC, and attack bonuses to make them Large, Huge, or Gargantuan. Do something similar for fey, undead, and beasts, and you have something like 80% of your monsters tackled in a section probably half the size of the original MM. Or you could simplify it even more and just have very basic statblocks and a list of traits you can mix and match for all of them, so if you wanted to, you could end up with dragons or goblins that could turn people into stone.

It just wouldn't be something that could be run right out of the book, which would annoy people a lot. OTOH, using online tools would probably make it a lot easier to make the monsters.

 

[SteveC]

Are they actually addressing the rest issue? Or the assumed combats per day issue? Because those things are IMO WotC 5e's biggest mechanical problems.

I could not agree with this more. The strange "6-8 encounters in an adventuring day" notion is one of the reasons I bounced off of 5E for a long time. The DMG should have a solid explanation of what an adventuring day should look like, and how this can vary at different tiers.

I definitely get the impression that the original ideas for what characters could expect to do on a typical day wasn't well thought out or perhaps reflected some earlier version of the playtest rules.

When I came back, I read a lot about what people were experiencing running the game, and I started the group at level 3 so they would have some additional resources. I honestly have no idea what sort of game session 6-8 encounters before a long rest would even look like. I'm sure someone effectively uses it somewhere.

 

[Faolyn]

I could not agree with this more. The strange "6-8 encounters in an adventuring day" notion is one of the reasons I bounced off of 5E for a long time. The DMG should have a solid explanation of what an adventuring day should look like, and how this can vary at different tiers.

I definitely get the impression that the original ideas for what characters could expect to do on a typical day wasn't well thought out or perhaps reflected some earlier version of the playtest rules.

I think it assumes a either very specific type of play (lots and lots of combat) or it assumes social and exploration encounters count, but doesn't have rules for them. Level Up has lots of rules for exploration, even to the point of giving challenges Challenge Ratings and XP values, and IIRC the MCDM game is going to have fairly strong rules for social challenges, so both of those things are extremely doable. 6-8 encounters per day is fine if D&D supported social and exploration with as much detail as it supported combat.

And if D&D specifically stated that it's okay to not force your players to use all of their resources each and every day. I've run into DMs (online only, fortunately) who insist that you're running the game wrong if your PCs go to bed with spell slots left.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

I could not agree with this more. The strange "6-8 encounters in an adventuring day" notion is one of the reasons I bounced off of 5E for a long time. The DMG should have a solid explanation of what an adventuring day should look like, and how this can vary at different tiers.

I definitely get the impression that the original ideas for what characters could expect to do on a typical day wasn't well thought out or perhaps reflected some earlier version of the playtest rules.

When I came back, I read a lot about what people were experiencing running the game, and I started the group at level 3 so they would have some additional resources. I honestly have no idea what sort of game session 6-8 encounters before a long rest would even look like. I'm sure someone effectively uses it somewhere.

The DMG does have a solid explanation of what an adventuring day looks like - using the entire XP budget of your party before the get a long rest. This can be done as a combination of encounters of various difficulties.

 

[SteveC]

I think it assumes a either very specific type of play (lots and lots of combat) or it assumes social and exploration encounters count, but doesn't have rules for them. Level Up has lots of rules for exploration, even to the point of giving challenges Challenge Ratings and XP values, and IIRC the MCDM game is going to have fairly strong rules for social challenges, so both of those things are extremely doable. 6-8 encounters per day is fine if D&D supported social and exploration with as much detail as it supported combat.

Yes, this is a very good point. I think you could do 6-8 encounters if you mix up combat, exploration/skill, and social, and you have rules for each of them. This shouldn't be surprising since those are the three pillars of D&D play. But when I've seen the 6-8 encounters, that meant 6-8 combats, which I don't think you'd ever want to do, but at low tier, it's a recipe for a game that's just not enjoyable. (Obviously that's enjoyable for me).

I think a DMG with meaty rules for exploration encounters (what we would call "skill challenges in 4E) and social ones could make this make much more sense.

 

[Faolyn]

The DMG does have a solid explanation of what an adventuring day looks like - using the entire XP budget of your party before the get a long rest. This can be done as a combination of encounters of various difficulties.

Except that (a) the only thing they have that really grant XP is combat and a lot of tables find nothing but combat to be tedious (there may be notes saying you can award XP for other things, but I can't recall any hard and fast rules for it), and (b) you can blow that budget on a single encounter.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes, this is a very good point. I think you could do 6-8 encounters if you mix up combat, exploration/skill, and social, and you have rules for each of them. This shouldn't be surprising since those are the three pillars of D&D play. But when I've seen the 6-8 encounters, that meant 6-8 combats, which I don't think you'd ever want to do, but at low tier, it's a recipe for a game that's just not enjoyable. (Obviously that's enjoyable for me).

I think a DMG with meaty rules for exploration encounters (what we would call "skill challenges in 4E) and social ones could make this make much more sense.

No. The section of the dmg that covers the six to eight medium to hard encounters does it while talking about elements that don't really apply to those.

/Onmyphonenotnearbooks

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Except that (a) the only thing they have that really grant XP is combat and a lot of tables find nothing but combat to be tedious (there may be notes saying you can award XP for other things, but I can't recall any hard and fast rules for it), and (b) you can blow that budget on a single encounter.

Yes, the combat attrition system only counts combat, that's the point.

A Deadly encounter uses approximately 1/3 of the daily XP budget. A single encounter cannot use the entire daily value unless it is massively overloaded.

 

[Faolyn]

A Deadly encounter uses approximately 1/3 of the daily XP budget. A single encounter cannot use the entire daily value unless it is massively overloaded.

OK, fair enough--it's been a while since I've looked at the encounters. But you can still get away with using the entire budget in far less than 6-8 encounters.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's honestly really interesting to me how the discourse on this has changed over the past 4-5 years.

I was straight-up told, on this very forum, IIRC in the same year as this thread originally started, that:
(1) the DMG was perfectly fine, and perhaps even among the best DMGs ever written;
(2) the DMG has absolutely no need whatsoever to be a guide, which could instead be handled by Reddit/YouTube/social media in general;
(3) to alter the existing 5e DMG so that it would in fact guide new DMs would seriously damage the book.

I find the near-180 turnaround of the general response really quite fascinating.

Over time, all communities move toward the opinions of the gnomes.