D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[The Crimson Binome]

Saelorn tried to edit away a moderation message. He'll be taking a week off.

What I had noted was that The Rules on this are very clear:

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~Umbran, EN World Moderator

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, and deity. And, he's an old man with a long white beard who does magic and makes magical items...

He's not a deity, any more than any of the other "related to the gods" heroes are. He's magical, but he also fights with a sword at various times. Truthfully though, the dividing line between 'god' and 'hero' is pretty nebulous, Ahti for instance is both a warrior hero AND a sea god at the same time. This is really the problem with old myths, they just don't have the sorts of categories that RPGs do, particularly D&D. Its best to pick one specific version of each character and try to depict that, or perhaps a few consistent versions.

Legends, the tales of Arthur for instance, have less inconsistency (though certainly some). You can discern a moderately consistent Arthur, etc that could be given stats, and they tend to stick more to a single role.

 

[Tony Vargas]

He's not a deity, any more than any of the other "related to the gods" heroes are. He's magical, but he also fights with a sword at various times.

An old man, of divine origin, with a long white beard who uses magic and occasionally fights with a sword.

(We're talking about Väinämöinen, not Gandalf, in case anyone couldn't tell)

He's also the God (hero/distorted-historical-personage/shamanistic-figure/whatever) of songs, music & poetry.

Wizard, or perhaps, bard archetype. Hardly an example of an EK.

Truthfully though, the dividing line between 'god' and 'hero' is pretty nebulous

Especially for mythologies influenced by Christianity, as the Kalevala was. Gods getting 'demoted' as paganism is replaced.

This is really the problem with old myths, they just don't have the sorts of categories that RPGs do, particularly D&D.

Or it's a problem with RPGs, particularly D&D. But, I do take the point: there are different versions, written down or translated at different times by people with different agendas. So the characters and their abilities are hard to pin down.

 

[jgsugden]

For those that despise 5E, I might suggest there are better places to spend your time. The core of the edition is going to stay the same for the next few years. If you do not enjoy it, there are boards devoted to other editions/games that will provide a more positive experience for you.

 

[Ashkelon]

So here is an interesting idea:

Non Weapon Proficiencies

These would be proficiencies a player could learn just like tool, vehicle, and language proficiencies, but they would grant players interesting new capabilities.

For example:

Leap of the Clouds
Requirement: level 5+, proficiency with Athletics
Benefit: When you take the Das action, double the distance of any jump you make this turn.

Demolisher
Requirement: Level 5+, STR 15+
Benefit: You deal double damage to objects and structures.

Endurance
Requirement: level 5+, Con 15+
Benefit: You gain proficiency with Con checks

Powerful Swimmer
Requirement: Level 5+, proficiency with Athletics, STR 15+
Benefit: You gain a swim speed equal to half your speed

Expert climber
Requirement: Level 5+, proficiency with Athletics, STR 15+
Benefit: You gain a climb speed equal to half your speed

Legendary Strength
Requirement: level 11+, STR 17+, proficiency with Athletics
Benefit: double your carrying capacity

Rock Hurling
Requirement: level 11+, STR 17+, proficiency with Athletics
Benefit: you gain proficiency with improvised thrown weapons. You can use your STR instead of your Dexterity for the attack and damage of such weapons. Such weapons use a d6 for damage instead of a d4.

You could have such non weapon proficiencies for other attributes as well. Read lips could be a wisdom (Perception) based trick. A Dex (Acrobatics) trick could be walking so softly you don't leave a trail. Etc.

 

[Greg K]

Eh, going to disagree. As a kid me and my friends loved them because they were pretty precise (we used them to settle those deeply intellectual playground arguments that kids have). Spiderman can lift a maximum of...blah blah blah.... Wolverine is definitely not as strong as the Hulk. It was the comics where things got wonky with different writers or story needs that ignored the canon in the handbooks. That's why I feel that MHRpg is a great comic book roleplaying game... instead of sticking to the canon of the handbooks where the characters are objectively defined... it goes for the handwavium of the comics and succeeds greatly at replicating those stories.

Well, you and your friends would be wrong Find the very first set of handbooks before those later reprinted in trade paperback format. A few issues into the series numerous erratum begin that toned down the strength levels of characters. The changes were fiat from the editor in chief to make things more "believable" rather than comic book accuracy.
Shooter fiat was fairly common at the time and, much of what is listed about powers was not from the comics, but from Shooter and Gruenwald. Spiderman's web-crawling being listed as being electo-static is a perfect example. According to John Byrne, Jim Shooter (editor and chief at the time) ordered Gruenwald to use electro-static in the handbooks to explain Spider-man's climbing, because Shooter mistakingly believed that spiders climbed by sticky pads on their feet like most insects and considered it to be "icky". Apparently, the "correct" thinking at the time was that spiders had small hairs that could hook into surface imperfections (according to Byrne).
(Note: Twenty or so years later, scientists would find out that most spiders had even smaller hairs on those hairs which allowed them to climb using van der Waals force (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-04/iop-smb041504.php). A year or two after that scientists discovered that tarantulas actually do produce silk pads from their feet to support their climbing on sheer surfaces when those hairs are not enough (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060927201410.htm) )

 

[pemerton]

Maybe I'm thinking of a different Marvel RPG, but if it's the one I'm thinking of, then it doesn't even try to model the fictional characters.

I don't know what RPG you have in mind.

I'm taking about Marvel Heroic RP, published my Margaret Weis games. It uses a variant of their Cortex engine. Each hero is expressed by a Datafile.

When I GMed a session of it (write up here) the characters generally played as I would expect them too. Wolverine cut things up; War Machine fought Titanium Man in a fairly dramatic aerial battle; Dr Doom infiltrated Congress with a Doombot; etc.

I have the Marvel Heroic rpg and what it models is comic books, as in their narrative structure, pacing, idiosyncrasies, inconsistencies, etc. and it does a good job at this... that said IMO it doesn't really model the actual characters very well...

In what sense? For instance, what can the characters do in the comics that can't be done in the game?

I know Marvel comics pretty well, and none of the datafiles I've looked at - which is plenty of them - looks to me as if it gets the character wrong.

 

[pemerton]

If you're giving him a totally different set of classes and abilties in the heroic tier vs. the paragon tier...doesn't that kind of speak to the problem, build wise, of modelling him in 4e?

Not really. Building a character in a RPG isn't itself a simulation of the character's imagined developmental process within the fiction.

In particular, the build of a RPG character expresses the abilities/resources the character has to call on now. The fact that, at an earlier time in his/her imagined life, the character had different abilities, doesn't matter to the modelling of the character's present abilities.

4e captures this via retraining rules. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] suggested a way of using retraining to model Conan as a battle-rager fighter for the whole game, but I would start with ranger for skill purposes.

I mean you're basically saying I can model him if I break the rules between tiers.

All you have to do is rebuild him. That's not a big deal. Two of the PCs in my game were rebuilt at various points - the ranger into hybrid ranger-cleric at 6th; the wizard/invoker into an invoker/wizard at 15th. The builds themselves are all rules-legal (which is the contrast with the AD&D versions of Conan, the Knights of the Round Table, etc, which were not legal builds, involving impermissible race-and-class combinations).

My point is that, whatever version of Conan you want to play, there is a legal 4e PC build that expresses him pretty well.

Ironically, in old-school attempts at Conan, he'd be given Fighter and Thief levels and arbitrary special abilities, resulting in something you could never do as PC. Even when Gygax ranted against the Schwarzenegger Conan movie, then created a Barbarian class just to do Conan, it didn't capture him that well.

I agree on both these points - in AD&D it is very hard to actually build a legal character who will model Conan at any point in his fictional career; and the AD&D barbarian class doesn't really model Conan at all.

As a kid me and my friends loved them because they were pretty precise (we used them to settle those deeply intellectual playground arguments that kids have). Spiderman can lift a maximum of...blah blah blah.... Wolverine is definitely not as strong as the Hulk. It was the comics where things got wonky with different writers or story needs that ignored the canon in the handbooks.

When I talk about a RPG modelling a superhero, or a fictional character like Conan, I am not talking about modelling some arbitrary piece of fan-oriented product that is not itself an element of the fictional works.

In the context of Marvel heroes, the Official Handbook is not what I think of when I wonder what a character can do; I think of the comics they figure in, and particularly the most important and influential story arcs. For Conan, I don't think about someone's notional calculations as to how much he can lift, how far he can run, etc; I think of the REH stories in which he is the protagonist.

it goes for the handwavium of the comics and succeeds greatly at replicating those stories.

A RPG in which Wolverine, or War Machine, or Jean Gray, or whomever does the things that s/he does in the comics is a RPG that has successfully modelled those characters. What other success criteria would there be?

He's not a deity, any more than any of the other "related to the gods" heroes are. He's magical, but he also fights with a sword at various times. Truthfully though, the dividing line between 'god' and 'hero' is pretty nebulous, Ahti for instance is both a warrior hero AND a sea god at the same time. This is really the problem with old myths, they just don't have the sorts of categories that RPGs do, particularly D&D.

This is an area where I think D&D can be quite flexible. Eg in 4e we have gods, primordials, slaad lords, demi-god PCs, etc - the line between god, hero and other mythic figures is pretty relaxed, and is mostly a matter of fiction rather than mechanics.

warriors who have some mystic power is a pretty common theme in legends and myths

I suspect that I am not the only person who finds D&D's spell mechanics are very particular way of handling magical abilities, that doesn't do a particularly good job of modelling mystical abilities in general. Even 5e recognises this, using a non-spell framework for druidical shapechange, monk's martial arts, etc.

 

[Greg K]

With the discussion on the Marvel Handbooks, I thought that I would share the following. Prior to the handbooks, there was an attempt by Gruenwald to rate character strength levels in general rankings without listing strengths (King-Sized Spiderman Annual 15). For those interested:

Super-Heavyweights (e.g., Hercules, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man (for one to two seconds with a potent enough energy source to charge armor), Wonderman)

Heavyweights (e.g., Namor, Thing, Sasquatch, Doc Samson, Blackbolt, Vision)

Super-Middleweights (e.g., Ghost Rider (Johnny Blaze), Luke Cage (Powerman), Spider-man, She-Hulk, Silver Surfer, Colossus)

Mediumweights (e.g., Tigra, Beast, Captain Britain (star-sceptre and tabard version), Spider-Woman, Werewolf by Night)

Trained to be as strong as humanly possible (i.e., Peak Human) (e.g., Ka-zar, Black Panther, Captain America, Falcon, Iron Fist, Moon-Knight)

People were noting that, with regards to the above:
Silver Surfer should be higher- especially, if Iron Man can be a Super Heavyweight for 1-2 seconds while his armor is charged by the right source of energy.
Iron-Man should be lower.
Colossus and She-Hulk are too low (possibly, Sasquatch and Thing as well)
Ghost Rider, Werewolf (and possibly, Luke Cage) are too high

 

[tyrlaan]

I suspect that I am not the only person who finds D&D's spell mechanics are very particular way of handling magical abilities, that doesn't do a particularly good job of modelling mystical abilities in general. Even 5e recognises this, using a non-spell framework for druidical shapechange, monk's martial arts, etc.

Very much agree. I think many of us are just comfortable with Vancian or near-Vancian magic systems because we've grown up on D&D. But over the years many other systems have razzle-dazzled me with their alternative systems (plenty I liked and plenty I didn't).

Just so I feel like I'm on topic, I'd say that I've come to accept Vancian magic as part of what makes D&D what it is, for better or worse.