D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

Manbearcat · Jun 24, 2015

Imaro said:
What is my purpose in trying to do this stunt?

Needing some fiction for context? Well, this clearly isn't a parley situation (unless it is a "now that you have third degree burns and are begging for your life, let's discuss this problem I have with you and yours..." sort of deal). Hmmm...how about:

1) Tavern owner is a fence who has bulwarked his living off of the stolen wealth and misfortune of innocent people (as in "The Crow"). Members of the thieves guild which sells to the tavern owner/fence are playing cards in the smokey, drunken establishment. 12 members are interspersed in the common room at 3 separate tables (all on the area rug which is basically wall to wall). Meanwhile, the place is overcrowded with exhausted laborers bent on drowning their miseries.

2) You want to clear out the tavern because you don't want the ensuing combat to cause collateral damage to those innocent laborers and you're pretty well happy with burning down the fence's moneymaker. Maybe you're going to snag him afterward and force him to tell you where the unit-moving meetings take place (or something).

Alright, on to the Fighter stunting. The fiction for this one will be:

1) You're battling a Young Blue Dragon in an ancient ruined citadel with a few watchtowers, battlements, and an outer bailey.

2) You don't want the dragon to fly take wing and use its ranged effects/breath weapon!

3) Dragon is near a wall that you wish to trap its tail (wings, rear leg, whatever) under.

4e

Same deal for the Fighter (+ 4 Str + 3 Lvl + 5 trained + 2 (either race/theme/background) = 14.

So this is definitely the kind of stuff you want to encourage for stunting with a Fighter archetype. But pushing over a ruined wall onto a dragon is probably a hard DC (23).

Standard Action Athletics + 14 vs DC 23. Succeeds at a 55 % clip.

The player wants immobilized UtEoYNT and a miss effect. This is a limited-use effect (can only push this wall over once). Let's bump the limited-use damage expression down 2 for immobilized + miss to the medium at-will (from 20 to 14). Young Blue Dragon's Reflex is 17. + 6 vs Ref so succeeds at 45 % clip for:

Hit: 2d10 + 3 and the target is immobilized UtEoYNT.
Miss: Half damage and the target is slowed UtEoYNT.
Effect: Blast 2 becomes Difficult Terrain until the end of the encounter.

Using higher damage dice for swingier results (larger, swingier effects are meant to have higher damage dice associated with them). Done.

5e

Same deal for the Wizard, but the 5e Fighter will have his 20 at level 6 I would think so + 3 prof + 5 str = + 8.

Action Athletics + 8 vs (Hard) DC 20. Succeeds at a 40 % clip.

Again, here I don't know how we handle the step down of the damage expressions for AoE or various effects. I'm thinking 4d10 (equivalent of falling debris or a collapsing tunnel) for the damage expression. I'm also going to give the player the DC 14 out of the 12-15 for Dangerous because the Athletics DC was hard. I'm thinking that if I bump the damage expression down too much for miss or immobilized, the player won't even consider trying it due to the 60 % chance of completely wasting the action on the Hard Athletics check. Anyway...

Young Blue Dragon has + 4 Dex save. DC 14 puts the success for the Fighter at 50 %.

Hit: 4d10 and the target's movement speed drops to 0 UtEoYNT.
Miss: Half damage and the target's movement speed is reduced by 15 UtEoYNT.
Effect: Difficult Terrain in the area of the wall's collapse.

Bacon Bits · Jun 24, 2015

This is a bit late to the party -- my time for forums is somewhat limited these days -- but I guess I'm confused by all this 4e p42 hype.

First of all, 5e has rules for this kind of thing:

D&D Basic p58 said:
Ability Checks

An ability check tests a character’s or monster’s innate talent and training in an effort to overcome a challenge. The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results.

For every ability check, the DM decides which of the six abilities is relevant to the task at hand and the difficulty of the task, represented by a Difficulty Class. The more difficult a task, the higher its DC. The Typical Difficulty Classes table shows the most common DCs.

Typical Difficulty Classes

Task Difficulty DC
Very easy 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
Very hard 25
Nearly impossible 30

To make an ability check, roll a d20 and add the relevant ability modifier. As with other d20 rolls, apply bonuses and penalties, and compare the total to the DC. If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check is a success—the creature overcomes the challenge at hand. Otherwise, it’s a failure, which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the objective or makes progress combined with a setback determined by the DM.

It's just that 5e's "rules for things the rules don't cover" is just "the rules." The ability check rules already cover everything. There's only one set of DCs because DCs don't scale with level outside of 4e. There's no damage listed because 5e doesn't strictly limit or scale damage the same way 4e needed to. And these rules are robust enough to tell you how to resolve anything in the game for skills or ability checks or saves. If you take the same table and change "DC" to "AC", you can see how attacks work, too. Instead of taking up a whole page, it takes up half a column. Yes, there are some things not in it, but basically everything is there.

3e had a problem with bonuses going off the end of the d20. You'd have a target DC of 25 as "hard" and a bonus of +30 by level 10.

4e solved it by trying to force everybody to always use the middle of the die. The major problems with this are a) since the game was built with min/maxing in mind, if you invested everything you could and took all the "feat tax" feats, your bonuses still fall behind the target DCs by ~1 per tier of play, and b) it quickly left secondary stats in the dust as there weren't enough bonuses or resources to keep up everything, so if you wanted to do something that wasn't your schtick, you were not going to succeed (possibly falling off the other end of the die, depending on when you were playing). NPC DC and bonuses scale at +1 per level. PCs were supposed to get 50% of their potential bonus from level, 25% of their potential bonus from ability score, and 25% of their potential bonus from magic, but in practice they got 45% from level, 20% from ability, 20% from magic, and 15% from feats. And that still only got you 9/10ths of the way towards breaking even.

The thing I dislike about DMG p42 is that it's wrong. They errata'd the table. Twice. Once in the DMG errata (and in the table they published in DMG2), and again when they published the Rules Compendium, which gave yet another set of DCs to use for skill checks because the "add 5" rule for skills didn't work. So now there's three versions of the rule in three different books and none of them are complete or right. So, yes, DMG p42 technically aggregates the whole game onto a single, simple, extremely elegant page. Except the math is wrong. And DMG p42 has to exist because the math is so complicated that you have to show it to the DM in order for him to do see what the system is even doing wel enough to improvise anything with any sort of accuracy. You roll so many dice to resolve everything (due to number of hp of enemies, skill challenges, the save system, etc.) that the dice stop being a varying factor. Call it the law of large numbers, call it central limit theory, call it regression towards the mean; I don't know what it's actually called. Fair dice being fair, the more dice you roll the more your results look like the probability distribution. In that kind of a game you end up having to be extremely careful about even a +1 or -1 modifier because it has a real, tangible effect to give a +1 or a -1 to a die you roll 50 times. So you essentially can't rely on the DM to be capable of ad hoc rulings because the system has too many moving pieces to allow for it.

I'm not saying that 5e solves all these problems. It doesn't. I'm just saying 4e's DMG p42 isn't something that was abandoned, nor is it something which worked particularly seamlessly.

Tony Vargas · Jun 24, 2015

Bacon Bits said:
This is a bit late to the party -- my time for forums is somewhat limited these days -- but I guess I'm confused by all this 4e p42 hype.

First of all, 5e has rules for this kind of thing:

Different 'thing,' really, but that's OK: it's not like 4e is relevant to the discussion.

It's just that 5e's "rules for things the rules don't cover" is just "the rules."

What you just said, there, is that "5e rules don't cover anything." You're technically wrong, there are a few rules for certain sorts of checks later on, but that's a quibble.

The ability check rules already cover everything. There's only one set of DCs because DCs don't scale with level

DCs certainly do scale with level: a higher level PC with Expertise is going to take on tasks that a 1st level untrained PC couldn't hope to do and would never seek out. There's just no particular guideline for what's 'appropriate' at a given level. You don't get that much better over the usual range of play, so there's little need for one.

There's no damage listed because 5e doesn't strictly limit or scale damage

Actually, 5e definitely scales damage. Look at how much damage spells do with higher slots, how much DPR fighters churn out as they gain more attacks from leveling, how much damage higher CR monsters do (and how many more hps they have). Most of the combat scaling muted or removed by Bounded Accuracy got shifted into damage/hps. Really, it's the main way 5e scales combat, and quite critical to the sense that PCs advance, at all.

And these rules are robust enough to tell you how to resolve anything in the game for skills or ability checks or saves.

Robust enough to handle any arbitrary pass/fail check is not saying a lot. Really, though, picking a DC between 5 and 30 is only a fraction of the actual system: the bulk of it is the DM just arbitrarily decides what happens and describes it.
That's actually great for a DM with a clear idea what he's trying to do.

But, 'robust' is not the word.

If you take the same table and change "DC" to "AC", you can see how attacks work, too. Instead of taking up a whole page, it takes up half a column.

Sure, it's not the 1e attack matrices, but THAC0 was fairly compact in presentation, too.

3e had a problem with bonuses going off the end of the d20. You'd have a target DC of 25 as "hard" and a bonus of +30 by level 10.

Or a feature, depending on how you looked at it, since it meant characters could vastly improve over their careers. Most 3e DCs weren't fixed in the rules, the few that were opened the door to abuses like the diplomancer. Rather 3e DCs ranged widely with the challenge. It was just inconceivably harder to deceive Asmodeus than to trick a Kobold, for instance.

Of course, the DM can say "Tricking a Kobold is Easy, DC 10, tricking Asmodeus is virtually Impossible, DC 30." But guess what you just did, there: you scaled DC with level.

You roll so many dice to resolve everything (due to number of hp of enemies, skill challenges, the save system, etc.) that the dice stop being a varying factor. Call it the law of large numbers, call it central limit theory, call it regression towards the mean; I don't know what it's actually called. Fair dice being fair, the more dice you roll the more your results look like the probability distribution.

True. That's why combats tend to be so much more interesting, yet so much less swingy than single-point-of-failure skill checks. A DM can, with some confidence, put a few combats between the PCs and some major objective. But, if he puts /one/ critical check in the way, he runs a real chance of derailing his whole plot. Thus 'fail forward' philosophies, group checks, skill challenges, and the like, to get the other two pillars into the same, more desirable, mathematical league as combat.

In that kind of a game you end up having to be extremely careful about even a +1 or -1 modifier because it has a real, tangible effect to give a +1 or a -1 to a die you roll 50 times.

Bounded Accuracy creates the same issue. Each +1 is pure gold, so you have to keep a lid on them.

Ashkelon · Jun 24, 2015

Bacon Bits said:
This is a bit late to the party -- my time for forums is somewhat limited these days -- but I guess I'm confused by all this 4e p42 hype.

First of all, 5e has rules for this kind of thing:

It's just that 5e's "rules for things the rules don't cover" is just "the rules." The ability check rules already cover everything. There's only one set of DCs because DCs don't scale with level outside of 4e. There's no damage listed because 5e doesn't strictly limit or scale damage the same way 4e needed to. And these rules are robust enough to tell you how to resolve anything in the game for skills or ability checks or saves. If you take the same table and change "DC" to "AC", you can see how attacks work, too. Instead of taking up a whole page, it takes up half a column. Yes, there are some things not in it, but basically everything is there.

3e had a problem with bonuses going off the end of the d20. You'd have a target DC of 25 as "hard" and a bonus of +30 by level 10.

4e solved it by trying to force everybody to always use the middle of the die. The major problems with this are a) since the game was built with min/maxing in mind, if you invested everything you could and took all the "feat tax" feats, your bonuses still fall behind the target DCs by ~1 per tier of play, and b) it quickly left secondary stats in the dust as there weren't enough bonuses or resources to keep up everything, so if you wanted to do something that wasn't your schtick, you were not going to succeed (possibly falling off the other end of the die, depending on when you were playing). NPC DC and bonuses scale at +1 per level. PCs were supposed to get 50% of their potential bonus from level, 25% of their potential bonus from ability score, and 25% of their potential bonus from magic, but in practice they got 45% from level, 20% from ability, 20% from magic, and 15% from feats. And that still only got you 9/10ths of the way towards breaking even.

The thing I dislike about DMG p42 is that it's wrong. They errata'd the table. Twice. Once in the DMG errata (and in the table they published in DMG2), and again when they published the Rules Compendium, which gave yet another set of DCs to use for skill checks because the "add 5" rule for skills didn't work. So now there's three versions of the rule in three different books and none of them are complete or right. So, yes, DMG p42 technically aggregates the whole game onto a single, simple, extremely elegant page. Except the math is wrong. And DMG p42 has to exist because the math is so complicated that you have to show it to the DM in order for him to do see what the system is even doing wel enough to improvise anything with any sort of accuracy. You roll so many dice to resolve everything (due to number of hp of enemies, skill challenges, the save system, etc.) that the dice stop being a varying factor. Call it the law of large numbers, call it central limit theory, call it regression towards the mean; I don't know what it's actually called. Fair dice being fair, the more dice you roll the more your results look like the probability distribution. In that kind of a game you end up having to be extremely careful about even a +1 or -1 modifier because it has a real, tangible effect to give a +1 or a -1 to a die you roll 50 times. So you essentially can't rely on the DM to be capable of ad hoc rulings because the system has too many moving pieces to allow for it.

I'm not saying that 5e solves all these problems. It doesn't. I'm just saying 4e's DMG p42 isn't something that was abandoned, nor is it something which worked particularly seamlessly.

Except that what you posted really doesn't give a DM all that much useful information.

When a player wants to hit a giant in the knee to cause it to stumble and fall prone what do you do? When a player wants to improvise a sweeping attack to hit multiple enemies, what kind of check is used?
When a player wants to use frostbolt to freeze a patch of ground causing charging goblins to slip and fall, what kind of check or attack is needed?
When a player wants to throw is drink in an enemies eyes to momentarily distract them, what kind of effect should the player be capable of producing?

Do not mistake a lack of guidance or framework as the ability to do whatever you want. In my experience, most games without a truly robust set of guidelines for improvised actions tend to lead to GMs making penalties for improvised actions overly severe, which actually makes players less likely to improvise.

Kaychsea · Jun 25, 2015

OK, I'll bite.

Ashkelon said:
When a player wants to hit a giant in the knee to cause it to stumble and fall prone what do you do? When a player wants to improvise a sweeping attack to hit multiple enemies, what kind of check is used?

I'd go for a STR vs STR contest in the first instance, not sure I would allow the latter without a custom feat. At a push I'd apply disadvantage to hit anything beyond the first target if there was sufficient damage left to carry over a la 3e Cleave, and might depend on weapon.

When a player wants to use frostbolt to freeze a patch of ground causing charging goblins to slip and fall, what kind of check or attack is needed?

Not familiar with the spell, a cold version of the evocation cantrip Firebolt? Either allow it to freeze a single 5x5 square with Dex save or prone, rising by 1 additional 5x5 at each damage step, it shouldn't be a cheap Grease.

When a player wants to throw is drink in an enemies eyes to momentarily distract them, what kind of effect should the player be capable of producing?

DEX save not to be blinded for 1 round, disadvantage after that until successful Dex save

All doable with little pain IMO, at my table, etc

bert1000 · Jun 25, 2015

AbdulAlhazred said:
No, and in all fairness it would pretty well blow the whole power system to smithereens IMHO. If you can do basically any sort of 'encounter stunt' by spending an 'encounter slot' then where would your selected powers come into it?

Its worth revisiting WHY 4e doesn't have this structure, a point system effectively. Its because it leads to heavy spamming. Its the same reason you can't just take the same power more than once, the designers wanted each PC to have a wide repertoire of tricks. In a 4e combat each non-at-will power use is unique, you haven't done it before, and won't do it again in that situation. You CAN 'stack', but you have to stack similar effects, not the same one repeated over and over.

In an rpg with discrete, set abilities (which I consider all D&D versions to be), then there is always this tension between the set abilities and improvising. If the improvisation results are too good and too easy to access, then why have the set abilities? If they aren't good, then why improvise?

It's pretty easy in 4e to set some limits though.

I always give each player 2 extra powers:

1) Do Something Cool encounter power
2) Do Something Awesome daily power

They are used for for stunting and generally rely on situational setups but also just stuff that would be cool. The extra powers remind people that they can do improv moves, and I generally rule effects on the high end of regular encounter and daily powers to encourage use. It adds some spice and variety to combats and also helps with grind as everyone has an extra encounter and daily.

Another version of this if you don't like as much stunting is to give the entire party one use of Do Something Cool per encounter and one Do Something Awesome to share daily.

Ashkelon · Jun 25, 2015

Kaychsea said:
OK, I'll bite.

I'd go for a STR vs STR contest in the first instance,

Is the STR contest require an action? Is the player still allowed to attack. Is the STR contest in addition to the Warriors normal attacks? Can the contest work against huge sized giants which you cannot normally shine? Why STR and not DEX? In a straight STR contest vs a giant, the player is at quite a disadvantage, do you want the chance of success to Be very small?

not sure I would allow the latter without a custom feat. At a push I'd apply disadvantage to hit anything beyond the first target if there was sufficient damage left to carry over a la 3e Cleave, and might depend on weapon.

So basically a nope, you can't do that.

Not familiar with the spell, a cold version of the evocation cantrip Firebolt? Either allow it to freeze a single 5x5 square with Dex save or prone, rising by 1 additional 5x5 at each damage step, it shouldn't be a cheap Grease.

Notice how magic gets more leeway for improvisation than martial attacks do. Interesting.

DEX save not to be blinded for 1 round, disadvantage after that until successful Dex save

Does this take the players action? Is it in place of an attack? Also, blinded is hugely powerful. A blinded enemy has disadvantage on attacks and grants disadvantage to your allies. Why wouldn't a thief use cunning action to attempt to blind an enemy every round. At will blind is simply too powerful of an effect.

All doable with little pain IMO, at my table, etc

It looks to me like you ran into the classic flaws of improvisation, hitting every single one actually.

1. Requiring too many hoops to go through to achieve an effect as demonstrated in the sweeping attack example. This one also includes the DM flat out saying NO.
2. Having the improvised action not be worthwhile to use or have too low of a chance of success. This is seen with the attemp to knock a giant prone example.
3. Having magic be flat out better at improvisation than martial abilities. This is seen with the frost bolt example (compare your ruling for frostbolt to your ruling for knocking the giant prone).
4. Accidentally creating an improvised action that is so powerful that there is little reason to not use it. The at-will blinding example here.

Adjudicating improvised actions in a fair and balanced way is by no means an easy task. Ask 10 DMs how they would rule, and you will probably get 10 different answers. At least with a robust system of guidelines you are able to more accurately judge what is or is not appropriate for an improvised action. 5e leaves everything up to the DM which often leads to wonky results.

Mallus · Jun 25, 2015

Ashkelon said:
Adjudicating improvised actions in a fair and balanced way is by no means an easy task.

It's not too hard when your players work with you (and not against you).

Kaychsea · Jun 25, 2015

Ashkelon said:
Is the STR contest require an action? Is the player still allowed to attack. Is the STR contest in addition to the Warriors normal attacks? Can the contest work against huge sized giants which you cannot normally shine? Why STR and not DEX? In a straight STR contest vs a giant, the player is at quite a disadvantage, do you want the chance of success to Be very small?

Hey, you made it a giant. How easy do you think that would be? In this instance it's his action, it requires a lot more effort than pulling a lever and is more akin to grappling than an attack.

So basically a nope, you can't do that.

Notice how magic gets more leeway for improvisation than martial attacks do. Interesting.

In both cases your words not mine, and it's a lot more likely than RAW, where you can't do it at all.

Does this take the players action? Is it in place of an attack? Also, blinded is hugely powerful. A blinded enemy has disadvantage on attacks and grants disadvantage to your allies. Why wouldn't a thief use cunning action to attempt to blind an enemy every round. At will blind is simply too powerful of an effect.

It wouldn't be automatic, I'd want a to hit with improvised ranged weapon with really short range. long range over 1, max 2 sounds right.

It looks to me like you ran into the classic flaws of improvisation, hitting every single one actually.

1. Requiring too many hoops to go through to achieve an effect as demonstrated in the sweeping attack example. This one also includes the DM flat out saying NO.
2. Having the improvised action not be worthwhile to use or have too low of a chance of success. This is seen with the attemp to knock a giant prone example.
3. Having magic be flat out better at improvisation than martial abilities. This is seen with the frost bolt example (compare your ruling for frostbolt to your ruling for knocking the giant prone).
4. Accidentally creating an improvised action that is so powerful that there is little reason to not use it. The at-will blinding example here.

Adjudicating improvised actions in a fair and balanced way is by no means an easy task. Ask 10 DMs how they would rule, and you will probably get 10 different answers. At least with a robust system of guidelines you are able to more accurately judge what is or is not appropriate for an improvised action. 5e leaves everything up to the DM which often leads to wonky results.

But contrarily how long would a ruleset that covered these eventualities be? I used to play and run Chivalry and Sorcery when it came out. Land of the Rising Sun streamlined it somewhat, but it is clunky because it is thorough. And it still didn't cover your Giant example because it also didn't allow called strikes, largely because it had a similar philosophy with regard to hit points, but did split HP and FP.

I'm not really sure you are comparing apples with apples though, a cold spell freezing water is a reach compared to knocking a giant down by hitting it's knee? Is this WWE all of a sudden? Isn't the point of the wizard his flexibility?

And as that is my table, why are you bothered?

Imaro · Jun 25, 2015

Kaychsea said:
Hey, you made it a giant. How easy do you think that would be? In this instance it's his action, it requires a lot more effort than pulling a lever and is more akin to grappling than an attack.

In 4e nearly anything can be knocked over by anything else... a halfling can knock a storm titan prone... for some that's heroic adventure at it's best... to me it gets kind of silly at a certain point.

This is one of my bigger issues with 4e standardization of stunting or improvisation... everything shouldn't always balance out or be equally possible... it should be personalized for the feel and tone of each GM's campaign... but then one of the greatest features/flaws of 4e is that it seeks to standardize everyone's games across the board. IMO it's akin to painting a picture by numbers vs. painting a picture however you want with a few guidelines. The first is going to produce great results for those who like the assigned colors and probably bad to mediocre results (as well as feeling stifling) for anyone that doesn't like the assigned palette of colors. The other is going to produce greater variation both great and bad and feel too loose for those that need step by step instructions. Personally I, and quite a few players of D&D, think that variation between games is a good thing but apparently some want us all running a particular type of campaign with a specific playstyle for D&D across all tables... go figure.

D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

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