D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[Corpsetaker]

I think some of you are basically theorycrafting and not actually looking at the rules of the game because a lot of what I am reading is just plain false.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If you're not managing a scarce, important, resource, you're barely playing the game at all. 5e goes pretty far in recognizing that, and gives every class and almost every sub-class some such resource management. Even the Champion & Battlemaster have some short-rest-recharge resources to manage. Thing is, they're strictly combat resources.

I dunno about that. Action Surge is pretty huge, especially outside of combat. There may be times where it's the difference between life and death, for one character to take two actions in six seconds.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

* ignores literally decades of D&D where players did in fact contribute long before there was a specific power/ability that told them they could
* or assumes that the other classes always have the right power/spell/ability available all the time in every situation (which never actually happens in actual game play).
* reliant on metagaming that discourages actual role-playing (which is the worst offender of this list, IMO. Telling someone they shouldn't attempt something because another player has a higher modifier for example).

The first step in action resolution is always to decide whether the action being attempted is uncertain. Only a minority of actions IME have uncertainty attached to them. You don't need a special skill or spell to push a red button, to climb into a mysterious machine, to ask the nobleman why he looks sad, to spread ball bearings on the floor where the prime minister will slip on them, or to run away from a black pudding. You do need a special skill or aptitude to run away from an orc or a Tyrannosaurus Rex, because they're better at running than most people--but the game is most fun IME when the players are willing to try things that make sense without worrying overly much about what's written on their character sheet.

Example from my game: Necromancer has been talking to an NPC for a while about wanting to start an off-planet colony. He's gained some information about the backstory in the process, but the NPC is just not interested in signing up. (Even telling him about the dragon scared the NPC and revealed some new information--but his response was a cowardly, "Isn't it the army's job to take care of the dragon? I'm not going back into wildspace. Our ancestors left there for a reason.") The Necromancer's Persuasion is -1, but that didn't matter, since Persuasion only makes a difference when it genuinely is in someone's best interest to cooperate with you and you're just trying to help them see it. It's a social catalyst, not a mind-control device.

Meanwhile, the dragonborn cleric with a Charisma of 10 (don't know his Persuasion skill but I'd guess +0) ignored that NPC and set up a sign outside saying something like, "Volunteers needed for agricultural venture. All participants will share equally in lands and profits." Over the next day or so, displaced persons saw his sign, and those who were interested persuaded themselves to sign up. I think I rolled 3d8 or something for number of candidates who approached him at his booth for more information, and I may or may not have had him roll DC 10 Persuasion checks on each of those candidates to see how many actually signed up, but even with +0 he had more impact with his plan than the Necromancer was having or would have had even with +20 to Persuasion, trying to persuade someone who wasn't interested.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

When you resort to use the players 'RP' as a resolution mechanism, you lose all connection to the character, itself. It's not you playing a character negotiating with bandits or exploring a ruin, it's /you/ hypothetically negotiating with bandits or exploring a ruin, yourself. Which is just lame.

This seems like an important and controversial statement. Personally I think that sounds awesome, not lame. The whole point of an RPG is to become Cohen the Barbarian, haggling with Mordecai the root seller for shredded haggis. It's totally irrelevant to me whether Cohen gets a +1 or a -1 on his haggis haggling--what's more important is that Cohen loves haggis! I conjecture that those who are disappointed in 5E fighters are more likely to to agree with Tony's position on the lameness of non-mechanical RPing.

 

[Remathilis]

I dunno about that. Action Surge is pretty huge, especially outside of combat. There may be times where it's the difference between life and death, for one character to take two actions in six seconds.

This is a big thing, that fighters can (if needed) take two actions and those actions are not limited to just combat actions. Use an Object + Action Surge means opening and closing a portcullis before enemies get through. Dash x2 + Action Surrge means running 90 feet in one round! Its easy to keep AS to combat usage (because combat actions are generally scarce and noncombat actions less so) but the fact you CAN take multiple actions in a turn can be important.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This seems like an important and controversial statement. Personally I think that sounds awesome, not lame. The whole point of an RPG is to become Cohen the Barbarian, haggling with Mordecai the root seller for shredded haggis. It's totally irrelevant to me whether Cohen gets a +1 or a -1 on his haggis haggling.

No, 'becoming' someone other than yourself is a psychotic break. While Mazes & Monsters accuses RPGs of causing that, I don't suspect it's ever happened to someone who wasn't already ill.

When you RP a character the same way whether he has an 18 CHA or an 8, you're not RPing the character anymore, you're just inserting yourself. That may help you feel immersed, but it blows the idea that you're playing a character, and that who the character is matters.

I strongly disagree. Otherwise you might as well just get rid of all IC interaction and just go to "My PC attempts X. Here's my roll."

That is a legitimate way to play the game, yes. Not the only way, but a legitimate one. And, it's a good foundation for RPing your character, instead of yourself, because you need to take the character's capabilities into account.

It takes all the flavor and soul out of "role-playing" and turns it into nothing more than "roll playing".

When the whole Role vs Roll thing got rolling (npi), D&D was the whipping boy for "roll playing." 5e is harkening back to classic D&D, so it's hardly surprising it'd be accused of that. If anything, it's a fair indicator of success. Yes, having stats and proficiencies can let a player who doesn't want to polish his thespian skills at the table 'roll play' through an interaction challenge. No, that's not a bad thing - and your DM can always let you Act your way through the 'scene,' if he prefers.

I dunno about that. Action Surge is pretty huge, especially outside of combat. There may be times where it's the difference between life and death, for one character to take two actions in six seconds.

Action Surge is only meaningful when you're using initiative and rounds. Not typically the case out of combat. I can imagine the odd instance where you might want to run part of a very time-important scenario that way, though, and a DM could conceivably lean pretty hard on such scenarios if he wanted to make AS more useful. Unfortunately, seconds-count life-or-death scenarios are also when you'd want to burn the sure-thing resource instead of hope for a successful check.

 

[Imaro]

Quite the opposite. The game is all about managing resources. If you have resources to manage and make decisions about them, you're just playing the game. The more important a challenge is, the more sense it makes to expend a scarce resource to meet it, and the greater the glory for doing so successfully. The less important a challenge, the more sense it makes to try to resolve it with an unlimited resource, to conserve the resources of the characters who actually matter to the success of the party.

This is all true... if you somehow know exactly how important a challenge was, is and will be... otherwise there will be times where you miscalculate and don't have a specific resource for a particular challenge that fits your model above.

That's a generalization, but it's not 'white room,' it's based on the expectation that challenges will vary widely, from critical to trivial, and across all sorts of situations. Being able to automatically overcome one challenge (a ranger tracking, for instance), is really nice, when it comes up. Being able to overcome a wide range of important challenges, if you've managed your resources well, is much better. Only being able to resolve trivial challenges (that anyone else could handle about as well) is a lot less significant.

It's white room because you assume that players will always know how important or unimportant a particular challenge is to their goals... for that much you assume that there will be differently ranked challenges as opposed to them all being equally important to achieving the goal and you assume that the best resource will always be available for the most critical challenge... Real games rarely if ever play out exactly like that. Having the back up of unlimited resources that are competent enough to accomplish most tasks is significant since it gives greater room for error on the part of the party as a whole... unless your DM is telling you the relative importance of every challenge.

 

[Imaro]

Action Surge is only meaningful when you're using initiative and rounds. Not typically the case out of combat. I can imagine the odd instance where you might want to run part of a very time-important scenario that way, though, and a DM could conceivably lean pretty hard on such scenarios if he wanted to make AS more useful. Unfortunately, seconds-count life-or-death scenarios are also when you'd want to burn the sure-thing resource instead of hope for a successful check.

Action Action surge is meaningful any time you are keeping track of a time/movement based activity... swinmming and climbing immediately come to mind but I'm sure there are more.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Something that seems to be ignored is the chapter on skills and how there is no list of DC's so it appears to me that it's up to individual DM's to determine those DC's.

This shows me that a lot of it is player's giving their DM's a detail of what they want to do and those DM's assigning a DC to it. Sounds a good bit like improv to me.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

When you RP a character the same way whether he has an 18 CHA or an 8, you're not RPing the character anymore, you're just inserting yourself. That may help you feel immersed, but it blows the idea that you're playing a character, and that who the character is matters.

That wasn't the claim.