D&D 5E 5th Edition: How to Make My DM Cry

[Ratskinner]

A creative DM who presents more of a challenge is more exciting than an uncreative one who doesn't, of course.

Not really true, IMO. Keeping everything at he bleeding edge of challenge/difficulty really isn't hard or creative for the DM. Its just tedious. That is, as a DM, its occasionally fun to run with rules-exploitative PCs, but it honestly grows tiresome quickly. Its much more interesting to have PCs with a variety of creative directions that push me in different directions.

IMO

 

[ExploderWizard]

According to some panicked ranting I have seen online, simply get gauntlets of ogre power. That should do the trick.

 

[Starfox]

But that's where you're wrong! The DM is bound by the same rules that his players are bound by. True optimizers take the rules very seriously!

If the DM were to "escalate" by breaking the rules, he'd be cheating.

The true optimizer follows every rule -- and insists on the same from his DM! Cheating really does break the game. Optimizing to the point where the DM's encounters are all trivial is how one wins the game.

A creative DM who presents more of a challenge is more exciting than an uncreative one who doesn't, of course.

This pretty much sums up the GNS "Gamist" agenda, so these views got company. If they are in good company I'll leave unsaid. But of course you can make a creative "killer dungeon" that is all about challenging the players. It's just another way to play. All good play is creative, regardless of what play styles it plays to. And "good" in this sense is a game the participants enjoy. It really is that simple.

I do agree that powergaming and optimization belong more on the forums than in my game. However, as long as all the players are approximately equally optimized, it is not really a problem. It is when some playes sag and others push the limits that you have a problem, and even then only of tactical "gamist" play is a major element in your game. If you only roll dice once or twice each session, optimization is not likely to do much.

I remember back when Pathfinder came out there was an air of relief due to the game being "so much better balanced", in part because some of the more commonly known optimization tricks were addressed in the core rules and some of the earlier supplements.

And then came the APG.

IMO, the advanced player guide is by far the worst Pathfinder book. They've improved a lot since. I have a small warning flag for my players that anything from the APG might get house-ruled out.

 

[Klaus]

I suspect that 5e will revert from "optimization" being "creating game-breaking character" to its earlier meaning of min/maxing: "minimizing your weakness while maximinizing your strength".

For instance: now that all ability scores can double as saving throws, is it best to have three 18s and three 8s, or to have all 14s? Is it best to place your top scores in the abilities you have saving throw proficiency (thus maximizing those defenses), or to use those to shore up the saves you're not proficient in?

In this case, a mountain dwarf wizard is a prime example of min/maxing: you sacrifice some arcane power in exchange for a very good AC. A wood elf cleric criminal is another example: you get a Wisdom bonus and a good ranged weapon (plus a bonus to a saving throw you're not proficient in), and if you sacrifice some AC by wearing light armor, you can be a decent (and self-healing) scout.

 

[Aeldrei]

But the rules!

I mean, this game is supposed to be all about the players having fun, right? A creative DM would be able to come up with appropriate challenges for any character concept!

You're not an uncreative DM, are you?

New player/forum reader here.
I think, werebat, you have a different goal in mind than the DM whose reply this quote was issued to. He is coming from the position that the goal is to create a story, and bring players into that story. Yours is that it is fun to break the story and the game.
Extremely different playstyle from yours.

Crude example: if you were to decorate your house & invite guests over, you would have a hard time dealing with a guest whose idea of 'having fun' was to destroy the furniture and steal any items left out. Destructive v. Creative. The enjoyment was supposed to be for a group of people to share - not for one individual to manipulate for their own ends.

The DM, I believe, was speaking from a creative viewpoint; but you are dealing from a destructive viewpoint. If the DM was supposed to be some sort of all-encompassing Customer Service satisfaction rep; then I suppose that your goal would have value, but otherwise, it just kills the game for everyone else involved.

Best bet - find a group of players who ALSO like rooting out odd rules, and would champion your cause, and for whom a storyline is unimportant. Then, you and they would have a blast, and possibly help out future editions by spotting inconsistencies in the settings.

 

[Eirikrautha]

For werebat - right now the biggest "limburger" is the "mountain dwarf wizard" concept, which is a wizard strong enough to use a big-ass weapon in combat, and wear medium armor for good defense, but also be able to fall back to spells when needed and cast unhampered by armor.

Truthfully, as long as Wizards of the Coast is able to stick to their goals of "bounded accuracy", i honestly don't think that there's too much optimization that can go on in the 3.x and 4.x sense of the term.

Not just bounded accuracy, though. One of the hallmarks of a readily-optimizable system is when player mechanical choices are made. In 3.5 and its heirs, much of your "choice" during combat is actually made during character creation. Someone with the "wrong" choices will never grapple, say, because the system's structure punishes character builds that do not choose mechanical aids to grappling. Likewise, "optimizers" take advantage of the system rules designed to validate certain character builds by combining them in unexpected ways... usually during character creation.

I think 5e is going to have many fewer of those opportunities, mainly because character build is so much less of a mechanical focus. Many of the options during build relate to flavor, and feats give progressive improvements rather than being stacked in chains (which opens more doors to problems). So 5e seems to be less prone to unintended rule combinations.

As a side note: I played AD&D 1e & 2e, but fell out of gaming right when 3e came out. When I returned, my first exposure to 3+e was Pathfinder. The culture shock was enormous. In the earlier editions, a character's choices were usually bound only by class restrictions shared with every other person playing your class, and by the circumstances in the encounter. When the bad guy was about to break the Holy Macguffin, you yelled out, "I grab him!" Then the DM figured out how to roll it, and you adventured on.

Upon returning to gaming, I found that rules and feats had so constrained what was possible for a character to do that I needed to start building my character from level one with "enemy-tackling" in mind, or, when the time came, I wouldn't be able to do so. 5e seems to me to be a healthy rebalancing of this game, away from character building and towards character playing. I'm eagerly awaiting the PHB to confirm my hopes...

 

[Starfox]

Upon returning to gaming, I found that rules and feats had so constrained what was possible for a character to do that I needed to start building my character from level one with "enemy-tackling" in mind, or, when the time came, I wouldn't be able to do so. 5e seems to me to be a healthy rebalancing of this game, away from character building and towards character playing. I'm eagerly awaiting the PHB to confirm my hopes...

This is something to carefully consider in game design. Each time you create an option for characters to learn something, you also remove something from the "public domain" of actions that everyone can do. I remember we wrestles a lot with this in the Netbook of Feats project I was a part of, writing a "Normal" section for feats to outline what beveryone could do in this area, without having the feat in question.

The worst offenders here are splatbooks like "rigger's black book" for shadowrun. Compared to the basic rules, where it was relatively easy to be a competent rigger (driver) with a moderate skill investment, the splatbook made it so time, cost, and skill-intensive that it became an untenable role.

 

[NewJeffCT]

As a side note: I played AD&D 1e & 2e, but fell out of gaming right when 3e came out. When I returned, my first exposure to 3+e was Pathfinder. The culture shock was enormous. In the earlier editions, a character's choices were usually bound only by class restrictions shared with every other person playing your class, and by the circumstances in the encounter. When the bad guy was about to break the Holy Macguffin, you yelled out, "I grab him!" Then the DM figured out how to roll it, and you adventured on.

Upon returning to gaming, I found that rules and feats had so constrained what was possible for a character to do that I needed to start building my character from level one with "enemy-tackling" in mind, or, when the time came, I wouldn't be able to do so. 5e seems to me to be a healthy rebalancing of this game, away from character building and towards character playing. I'm eagerly awaiting the PHB to confirm my hopes...

In looking back at 1e and 2e days - and I've been playing since the late 70s - the phrase "the DM figures out how to roll it" was often accompanied by a lot of back & forth between the players and the DM, and discussions about similar incidents in adventures or campaigns past that may be a precedent for the current situation. While it may be nice to imagine the DM as the judge and the players as lawyers, but it was more often arguing and insulting. Then, if you played in another gaming group, that group could handle the same situation completely differently, and when you went off to college, it could be played still a third way, and a fourth or fifth...

With feats and things like grappling, tripping, disarming, jumping, standing up, etc rules added into the game in 3E, it was an attempt to give everybody the same framework under which to play. That way, you didn't have six different rules for grappling across six different groups - you had one "official" rule for grappling in an attempt to give consistency. Unfortunately, beyond the core rules, it also made the game just way too complex with all the buffing and debuffing and what stacks and what does not.

I never felt the need to build a certain type of character in 3E, and most of the gamers I gamed with tended to do things for role playing reasons (i.e., nobody dipped into three or four extra classes just to get one ability in each...) Not sure why you felt you needed to start from level 1 building your PC a certain way unless you were trying to optimize - any PC could grapple, trip, jump, etc. just like in previous editions. Only, now you had an official rule that applied.

 

[NewJeffCT]

New player/forum reader here.
I think, werebat, you have a different goal in mind than the DM whose reply this quote was issued to. He is coming from the position that the goal is to create a story, and bring players into that story. Yours is that it is fun to break the story and the game.
Extremely different playstyle from yours.

Crude example: if you were to decorate your house & invite guests over, you would have a hard time dealing with a guest whose idea of 'having fun' was to destroy the furniture and steal any items left out. Destructive v. Creative. The enjoyment was supposed to be for a group of people to share - not for one individual to manipulate for their own ends.

The DM, I believe, was speaking from a creative viewpoint; but you are dealing from a destructive viewpoint. If the DM was supposed to be some sort of all-encompassing Customer Service satisfaction rep; then I suppose that your goal would have value, but otherwise, it just kills the game for everyone else involved.

Best bet - find a group of players who ALSO like rooting out odd rules, and would champion your cause, and for whom a storyline is unimportant. Then, you and they would have a blast, and possibly help out future editions by spotting inconsistencies in the settings.

Why is it breaking the story if werebat's character is more effective than somebody else's character? Are Merry & Pippin as effective as Gandalf and Aragorn?

I DM'd a father and son in a 2 year long campaign. It was almost humorous to see that the son would consistently roll 15 or higher to hit in combat - heck, twice he was blinded and managed natural 20s - while his dad would struggle to hit at all ("OK, two attacks and I only need a 5 or better to hit... groan, a 3 and a 2... two misses") . It would inevitably lead to the son making a comment, followed by his dad saying, "it's a long walk home..."

Did the son break the story? Or, did his father by rolling poorly?

 

[Shiroiken]

It was a joke - a reference to an episode of the show Community where they played a game of d&d.

Curse my lack of knowledge about popular culture!