D&D 5E My nearly comprehensive critique of the August Packet

[TwoSix]

Races: continue to be phenomenally badly designed. The human +1 to all creates the bizarre situation of all human PCs having the same bonus to dexterity as elf PCs, and thus effectively as dextrous as elves, as tough as dwarves etc... The human +1 to all then requires orcs to get +2 strength, which is very powerful. The human +1 seems? To be overpowered? I'd get rid of gnomes altogether, where's the audience for a second small race with little popular culture cache?

On a thread on another board, someone working on a 4e clone said that they were dropping racial adjustments, for the very good reason that once play starts, nobody notices the difference between the dextrous elf and the dextrous human anymore. The racial stat adjustments only serve as differentiators while you're reading the book. At the table, they're invisible. They don't make you feel any more "elfy" or "dwarfy", as opposed to traits like stonecunning or secret door detecting (or minor action second wind or feystepping for us 4e-ers).

My personal thinking is that if you want to reinforce stat biases, reinstate racial maxs and mins. Let the elf get a 22 Dex, but he can only have a 16 Con. The dwarf can get a 22 Con, but she's limited to a 16 Dex.

 

[TwoSix]

And that's a double post.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm not saying that no one can run a successful game using the guidelines, but I definitely don't agree that that approach, as a whole, worked.

IME, deviating from those guidelines works well at all levels, including up to and beyond 20th.

Heh... if deviating works, not deviating probably also works Anyway, by "it works" I just meant that mechanically I've never noticed any problem with using 3e guidelines for wealth by levels, but the problem for me was that it forces a specific fantasy genre, with relation to magic items commonality. Once I became tired of that genre, and wanted to run adventures in a more magic-item-scarce setting, deviating downward wasn't that easy for me, I couldn't just use lower level monsters and be confident on the resulting balance because there were things that scaled with level and things that scaled with equipment (but were in-built with monsters of that level). So for us it actually worked well, as long as I did follow those guidelines, but this restricted the fantasy genre somewhat. The best idea I could come up with, was to start "merging" the abilities of multiple magic items together (even tho technically by that system the value of such item would be more that the sum of its part) in order to at least reduce the overall number of items, without changing to total sets of benefits.

 

[Li Shenron]

On a thread on another board, someone working on a 4e clone said that they were dropping racial adjustments, for the very good reason that once play starts, nobody notices the difference between the dextrous elf and the dextrous human anymore. The racial stat adjustments only serve as differentiators while you're reading the book. At the table, they're invisible. They don't make you feel any more "elfy" or "dwarfy", as opposed to traits like stonecunning or secret door detecting (or minor action second wind or feystepping for us 4e-ers).

My personal thinking is that if you want to reinforce stat biases, reinstate racial maxs and mins. Let the elf get a 22 Dex, but he can only have a 16 Con. The dwarf can get a 22 Con, but she's limited to a 16 Dex.

That's an interesting take...

Even without racial ability adjustments, you can still say that "elves are more dexterous than humans". Because PC elves are going to be most of the times given high Dex by their players (by tradition) when they arrange the stats, and even if that's not the case there is no stopping the DM to give that to all NPC elves.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Heh... if deviating works, not deviating probably also works

So if we accept that following the guidelines or wildly deviating from them both work, the guidelines themselves are not particularly helpful. They only have worth if it's clear that following them is better than ignoring them.

Anyway, by "it works" I just meant that mechanically I've never noticed any problem with using 3e guidelines for wealth by levels, but the problem for me was that it forces a specific fantasy genre, with relation to magic items commonality.

That's fair enough, but I think there are an abundance of clear mechanical problems. For one thing, it's hard to justify a growth rate as slow as it is. For example, let's say my 5th level character has 9000 gp worth of stuff. By default assumptions, he's in a party of four, and levels up when that party defeats the equivalent of 13 standard level 5 characters. If all of those enemies have treasure equivalent to the PCs, the PCs' wealth just quadrupled. Even if you assume that some enemies do not have treasure, or some is destroyed or useless, or even if you follow the ludicrous guideline that says NPCs have less wealth than PCs for some reason, their wealth should still probably double or so every level. Which it doesn't. And that's assuming that killing enemies is the only way PCs acquire wealth. The guidelines themselves are really very difficult to support.

Conversely, you have an economy set up for goods and services, and magic items completely break that economy, as has been covered elsewhere, by being ludicrously expensive but implicitly not all that rare.

Once I became tired of that genre, and wanted to run adventures in a more magic-item-scarce setting, deviating downward wasn't that easy for me, I couldn't just use lower level monsters and be confident on the resulting balance because there were things that scaled with level and things that scaled with equipment (but were in-built with monsters of that level). So for us it actually worked well, as long as I did follow those guidelines, but this restricted the fantasy genre somewhat. The best idea I could come up with, was to start "merging" the abilities of multiple magic items together (even tho technically by that system the value of such item would be more that the sum of its part) in order to at least reduce the overall number of items, without changing to total sets of benefits.

And that's an issue as well. In D&D, a large portion of a medium to high level character's combat prowess is determined by magic items, especially defense. Using the wealth by level guidelines, combat characters are gimped. High-level characters get to the point where they can't miss even good defenses for their level. If you want a low magic campaign, this problem becomes worse. Spellcasters ironically have virtually no use for magic items, and can create their own for cheap if they like, while martial characters become incompetent fools without their special gear.

Conversely, if you do what I do, the opposite, and indiscriminately give characters huge piles of treasure, the martial characters become more effective, defense rules, and everyone is decked out like a Christmas tree. This "works", but certainly not for everyone.

 

[Zaukrie]

Why is poison not for good characters? How is it different than magic, or sneak attack, or whatever?

 

[B.T.]

Wait, wait, wait...

Bestiary: Needs serious work, but I hope you knew that. Mostly, do you really want monsters with such low bonuses to attack confronting PCs with 18 AC at level 1?

They still haven't fixed the math?

Does anyone else feel like 5e is getting worse the more the game progresses?

 

[TwoSix]

Wait, wait, wait...

[/COLOR]
They still haven't fixed the math?

Does anyone else feel like 5e is getting worse the more the game progresses?

Ehh. It's better than it was 5 or 6 months ago. (I thought the March packet was abysmal.) Still nowhere near the high I was feeling from the sorcerer and warlock packet of last year.

 

[B.T.]

On a thread on another board, someone working on a 4e clone said that they were dropping racial adjustments, for the very good reason that once play starts, nobody notices the difference between the dextrous elf and the dextrous human anymore. The racial stat adjustments only serve as differentiators while you're reading the book.

Even then, it's probably better to have racial abilities be things the character does rather than things the character passively benefits from.

 

[howandwhy99]

Random treasure tables then, become only an example, but they could explicitly suggest the DM to just ignore table rolls which result in magic items if the group already has too many, in relation to the wanted magic availability in the fantasy world.

That's a good point. I would suggest Treasure Tables are campaign setting specific, but not entirely so. Equipment/Magic Items affect the difficulty of forays at a creature carrying some. Effectively rating the whole (monster, equipment, terrain, etc.) vs. the specific PC group means knowing how they match up with all items included. Forget the pocket Death Star and the challenge swings wildly away from what it should have been.

Personally, I think Treasure Tables are not the best way to assign treasure to monsters. That includes the random distribution ones in the DMG and last page of the MM. Just as Wandering Monster checks are now being based off of population density in an area (making that area more dangerous to explore) Treasure might best be based off of creature history.