D&D 5E 5E's "Missed Opportunities?"

To me, this flanking and "numbers game" house rules are trying to simulate reality in game. In my experience D&D breaks as a system with to much simulation.

André Soares said:

To me, this flanking and "numbers game" house rules are trying to simulate reality in game. In my experience D&D breaks as a system with to much simulation.

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Same here, but I must admit that I'm not always aiming for low levels of simulation.

Even if we make abstraction of magic - which by its very definition means that it doesn't follow the natural laws of physics - there is a fine line between realistic enough to feel engaged in a fantasy world we can relate to, and abstract enough that we don't need to apply ALL of the natural laws of physics in order to keep the game "light" enough to be enjoyable.

This fine line however isn't in the same place for everyone, and can even fluctuate for a single role player depending on genre, themes, mood, game systems, group of friends etc. The game works best within the parameters of willing suspension of disbelief, and I can understand how flanking rules fits perfectly within those parameters for some players.

[edit] All this to say that all RPGs are simulations of reality; we could not relate to the game otherwise if it was completely disconnected from our experience of life. But not everybody can tolerate/require the same level of realism for this simulation.

I don't understand the flanking "makes positioning in combat matter" thing.

Positioning is already very important.

Characters usually have different AC/defenses.
Ranged attacks have disadvantage when an enemy is close.
Many abilities affect areas.

If my character is low AC and makes ranged attacks then positioning is very important for them. And it is important for the rest of my party too because they want me to be safe and effective. It's also important for the monsters as they want to kill the party.

For those of you who don't play D&D for combat, I wonder what draws you to the game? The vast majority of the rules are designed to adjudicate combat. There are many, many other systems that have a richer set of guidelines for role-playing, more fascinating settings and character creation.
And those playing D&D 5E for combat - why not a more robust combat engine?
It just doesn't seem to do either particularly well.

Retreater said:

For those of you who don't play D&D for combat, I wonder what draws you to the game? The vast majority of the rules are designed to adjudicate combat. There are many, many other systems that have a richer set of guidelines for role-playing, more fascinating settings and character creation.
And those playing D&D 5E for combat - why not a more robust combat engine?
It just doesn't seem to do either particularly well.

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That may very well be why I prefer D&D. With the rules lacking, it leaves more space for the Cops and Robbers play of my childhood.

Retreater said:

For those of you who don't play D&D for combat, I wonder what draws you to the game? The vast majority of the rules are designed to adjudicate combat. There are many, many other systems that have a richer set of guidelines for role-playing, more fascinating settings and character creation.
And those playing D&D 5E for combat - why not a more robust combat engine?
It just doesn't seem to do either particularly well.

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It's super easy.

I've played a lot of different games: shadowrun, various FATE games, Warhammer(rpg), and probably, at least, a dozen more. Not to mention every iteration of D&D. I played Gygax's Dangerous Journeys (which is an awesome system) but it's super crunchy. A fighter type character sheet was 5 pages long...

I can make a 5e character in less than 5-10 minutes. And I've played lots of other rpgs that were super-crunchy none-rp-centric but it never prevented my groups from role-playing. So, you don't specifically need an RP mechanic to actually RP. You just need a good group who wants to play out a story - regardless of the mechanics.

Plus, it's easier to find D&D groups because so many people play.

Retreater said:

For those of you who don't play D&D for combat, I wonder what draws you to the game? The vast majority of the rules are designed to adjudicate combat. There are many, many other systems that have a richer set of guidelines for role-playing, more fascinating settings and character creation.
And those playing D&D 5E for combat - why not a more robust combat engine?
It just doesn't seem to do either particularly well.

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There are enough rules to adjudicate social situations when things are uncertain, but not enough to get in the way. I don't want a rules for gaining prestige or influence. As a DM I enjoy the freedom to tell a story with my players without having to track mechanical bits. For me the NPCs become real (fictional) people with varied motivations and concerns. Just like the real world, NPCs can have a complexity that isn't boiled down to a few numbers.

As far as combat, 5E has struck a decent balance of simple to understand, quick to run and complex enough to be interesting. No game is perfect of course, but I'd rather have more time to spend on who my character is and how they view the world than what my character is from a numbers and options perspective.

Retreater said:

I've been running 5E on a consistent basis for several groups since it was officially released. Now that I'm basically leaving 5E, I'm looking at a few things that never quite worked for my groups and me.

1) Backgrounds. They just don't contribute enough to the character's abilities and feel tacked on.
2) Inspiration. Half-baked idea that is literally never remembered. Unless you have people always fishing for bonuses in annoying ways.
3) Treasure Hordes. This is in the DMG, and there is actually a recommended schedule for awarding magic items and treasure. Too bad no official products ever used these guidelines.
4) Advantage/Disadvantage. +5/-5 is too big of a modifier for most conditions. Flanking is lethal against the PCs (so we didn't use it).
5) Bonded Accuracy. A good idea in practice, except that it turns monsters into bags of hit points.

What did I miss?

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I am onboard with the general idea of D&D 5E not being perfect... but honestly, I have a hard time seeing any of these five particular points to be major decision points either way.

1. To me, backgrounds are perfectly fine and a nice addition to D&D. That they mostly remain relevant through character creation and the very first few adventures where the group bonds together, but then begin to fade as you level out of the apprentice levels is absolutely not a problem to me.
2. While I absolutely agree (you should read the recent threads on Inspiration) I don't consider it to be a deal-breaker. We simply ditched Inspiration entirely, and haven't looked back since.
3. Several products use the treasure tables in the DMG, but for the actual hoards... well, this touches upon a real major issue with 5E... in fact it's so central, I'm deferring the discussion to after I've covered the rest of your points (see below)!

4. If you equate advantage with +5 you need to brush up on your statistical skills, I'm afraid. In short: Advantage works great and is a huge simplifier, and you're wrong. Sorry

5. Feel free to increase monster AC and decrease monster hp if you absolutely must.

Myself, I'm running my games with "all options on", and characters become scarily powerful and dish out huge amounts of damage, much more than the designers seem to have anticipated.

So maybe you should try allowing feats, magic items, and multiclassing? While I can see that for inexperienced groups with un-optimized characters and no optional subsystems that monster hp can appear huge, the solution is easy.

If anything your issue should soon be the reverse, like it is for me - that monsters routinely fail to provide any challenge to the player characters unless you upgrade them (or the encounters, more monsters, replacing monsters with harder foes and so on).

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*) The secret is that in 5E gold is essentially worthless to adventuring heroes, unless you focus more on downtime than on adventure time. The obvious outlet for hundreds of thousands of gold coins is to be able to buy (or craft) magic items that then help you in your further adventures. Lots of gamers don't care for downtime activities - once they're done with one adventure or dungeon, it's time to jump into the next!

Official adventures often (always?) feature a world-ending threat, and offer few to no places for extended downtime. When you're on a clock, taking a week or year off to build a church or whatever feels outrageously out of place.

(Not that downtime hasn't got a place in the game. Only that that place is in sandboxy campaigns where the heroes are much more in control over their own destiny than official material allows, when it's always Tiamat or Demogorgon or Acecerak that comes knocking and the clock starts to tick...)

So I totally understand the reluctance of adventure authors to actually use the hoard rules of the DMG... and that is because they realize that WotC reneged on a key promise to offer backwards support for lots of campaign styles including the one their own official material offers.

In short: D&D absolutely needs an utility-based pricing and creation framework for magic items.

In the vein of the 3.x and PF DMGs, that is. Not the crap nonsense of "rarity". And certainly not the utter insanity that the new AL-adopted treasure point system where the glaring gold issue is swept entirely under the rug!



Good luck with your game

In my opinion the biggest missed opportunity is the presentation of published adventures. Echoing [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]'s thoughts above, almost every one is oriented toward some cataclysmic event which forces the adventure on a treadmill until the threat is ended. That combined with really quite sloppy implementations (I've been suffering through the "hot mess", as [MENTION=54629]pukunui[/MENTION] calls it, of Dragon Heist) means that almost every time it's a disappointment of missed opportunities (I still hold out hope for Curse of Strahd, if/when I run it )

Instead I wish that they would change their approach to adventure structure and break them into discrete parts for each heroic tier. (SKT sort of did this but the epic threat loomed throughout.) This would allow for some downtime between adventures and provide more tier appropriate challenges.

As far as the mechanics are concerned - those are running quite fine for me. The players are still having fun (even at level 17), now that I'm adjusting the encounters to their style (and bringing in reinforcements if they cake walk something I thought would be tougher )

robus said:

In my opinion the biggest missed opportunity is the presentation of published adventures. Echoing [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]'s thoughts above, almost every one is oriented toward some cataclysmic event which forces the adventure on a treadmill until the threat is ended. That combined with really quite sloppy implementations (I've been suffering through the "hot mess", as [MENTION=54629]pukunui[/MENTION] calls it, of Dragon Heist) means that almost every time it's a disappointment of missed opportunities (I still hold out hope for Curse of Strahd, if/when I run it )

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I could be wrong, but you appear to change the subject here.

I am not saying "cataclysmic adventures are bad". (Not saying the opinion is invalid, just that it's a discussion for another thread)

I am saying the DMG and official adventures suggest (more than suggest, they implement) an adventuring style where downtime is of little concern and gold awards are large.

So where is the support for actually spending all that gold while you keep adventuring?

That is my subject here: that 5E propagates the playing style of previous editions without actually offering solid (=utility-based, not rarity-based) support for it.