D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[FormerlyHemlock]

And if that's how 4E was presented, and actually played, then I would have significantly fewer problems with it. Really, I only ever had three or four issues (and only one or two dealbreakers) when it came to 4E, but the guarantee that there must be exactly one mechanical representation of any fictional element was right at the top of the list.

If you got rid of monsters that changed stats depending on your level, and the different math for PCs and NPCs - I don't mind if NPCs are simpler, as long as they have the same HP and bonuses - then I would consider the game almost playable.

Likewise. The single biggest thing that turned me off was that I had a DM who halved all the monster HP and doubled their damage to "speed up combat." That's partly a DM issue but it was apparently common advice for 4E DMs, encouraged partly by 4E already having divergent rules for PCs and monsters.

Consistent, coherent game physics are a must for me.

 

[Imaro]

Yes, this is exactly what I was trying to convey upthread (post 841). Progression in 4e is not about bigger bonuses, but about a combination of mechanical minutiae (the balrog's aura, etc) and the fiction that accompanies and is generated by that.


I think the game's mechanics make a huge difference.

I mentioned upthread that every Rolemaster table has a tale of how a double-open-ended roll saved the party's bacon. One that I remember is when the PCs were all down but for one, the martial artist, who was at huge penalties (-70-ish?) inside a fire storm confronting the largely uninjured bad guy. The martial artist's initiative comes up, the player rolls, double-open-ended and so overcomes his penalties and hits the bad guy for an 'E' crit, and then rolls 80+ on the crit: the bad guy is dead, and the PCs saved!

This is a fiction that can't be achieved in any version of D&D, because they don't have the death spiral penalties, nor the crit-rather-than-hit-point mechanics, to make it possible. Part of the appeal of Rolemaster (and similar games - Burning Wheel has some commonalities here, and HARP is a deliberate RM derivative) is that this sort of thing is possible.

The fiction of 4e combat, and especially paragon an epic combat, is something that I think is intimately tied to its mechanics, and hard to emulate in other systems. Especially the sense of digging deep, deep and drawing on everything you've got. The way player resources are allocated and their use rationed is a huge part of this, for instance.

Playing AD&D, for instance, when the fighter player rolls a 19 and hits and kills the Type VI demon the GM can narrate that the fighter drew deep on his/her reserves and won: but the player won't have actually lived that experience. Whereas a 4e player who is invested in the resource management elements of the game will have.

So I can see where AbdulAlhazred is coming from. This also, to me at least, seems to fit with what [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] has posted upthread about the affinity between 5e and classic adventures like Hommlet, Barrier Peaks, etc, which I feel don't push the fiction in the sort of way that paragon and epic 4e does.

I didn't claim the mechanics have no relation to the fiction... I claimed "awesome" fiction could be attached to the mechanics of almost any game... Now if we're speaking to a particular definition or opinion of awesome then cool, but that needs to be defined and stated upfront, and is then in the realm of pure subjectivity... as I said earlier in the thread, some of the "awesome" of 4e struck me and my players as gonzo silly or so over the top it became cartoony...

 

[Imaro]

I don't think there's anything horribly wrong with the way 5e does things, it just focuses much more on numbers. Everything seems to be about whether or not you can get the hard DC. I don't think the story in our game is bad, but mostly I just miss the way in the 4e game we could pull crazy stuff that I wouldn't dare to even try now.

Perhaps you should discuss the tone of your campaign with your DM... since he sets the DC's for any particular action... isn't it him determining whether the crazy stuff that you want to pull off is viabe or not? Maybe he doesn't want to run a gonzo campaign... maybe he doesn't know you all want a gonzo campaign, either way I'm missing why it's a function of the 5e rules that you aren't trying to pull off the things you want to...

 

[Tony Vargas]

And if that's how 4E was presented, and actually played, then I would have significantly fewer problems with it.

It's a little late for you to be realizing it now, but, yes to both. The encounter guidelines in 4e did include creatures of higher or lower level. Conservatively, no more than level +4 or less than level -2, but when you're talking a party at 4th, and the same party at 9th, yeah, no problem. A monster on the high end of what the party could handle at 4th is at the low end of what's appropriate to challenge them at 9th. I've had it happen many times that players encounter the same sort of monster - even the same enemy, if it escaped past encounters - again at higher level.

Really, I only ever had three or four issues (and only one or two dealbreakers) when it came to 4E, but the guarantee that there must be exactly one mechanical representation of any fictional element was right at the top of the list.

Yeah, 4e was never going to give you that one. It's just too limiting. Really, few games are that badly designed.

If you got rid of monsters that changed stats depending on your level, and the different math for PCs and NPCs - I don't mind if NPCs are simpler, as long as they have the same HP and bonuses - then I would consider the game almost playable.

Yeah, /getting rid/ of options other people use because they offend your narrow sensibilities, not a great idea. Not for 4e, which was trying to broaden and grow the market, not even for 5e which is trying to be inclusive. You can take a game like 4e or 5e, that presents options you don't want, and not use those options. You really can. You won't go to hell. Well, for that.

 

[EthanSental]

Like many have already said, nothing to me sucks outright. A few things I've house ruled for personal and group flavor is all.

 

[Elvish Lore]

Can I just go on record and state that I really, really hate the title of this thread. Frames the conversation for 5e bashing and if I wanted that I'd go to rpg.net.

 

[Nifft]

I mentioned upthread that every Rolemaster table has a tale of how a double-open-ended roll saved the party's bacon. One that I remember is when the PCs were all down but for one, the martial artist, who was at huge penalties (-70-ish?) inside a fire storm confronting the largely uninjured bad guy. The martial artist's initiative comes up, the player rolls, double-open-ended and so overcomes his penalties and hits the bad guy for an 'E' crit, and then rolls 80+ on the crit: the bad guy is dead, and the PCs saved!

(...)

Playing AD&D, for instance, when the fighter player rolls a 19 and hits and kills the Type VI demon the GM can narrate that the fighter drew deep on his/her reserves and won: but the player won't have actually lived that experience.

Just noting the incongruity here: from a mechanical perspective, in your Rolemaster example, a player rolled dice twice and one-hit-killed a boss monster. You think that's good and that the player "lived that experience".

Your second example is a player rolling dice once, and one-hit-killing a (boss?) monster. You think that's bad and this player did not "live that experience".

The mechanics in the first (good) example were: get two unusually lucky rolls.
The mechanics in the second (bad) example were: get one unusually lucky roll.

I suspect that the differences which cause you to think the "good" experience was good are not only the mechanics.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I have some trouble following this.

I mean, if you strip all the fiction off the mechanics, yes, they are nothing more than minutiae. But that seems equally true of 5e.

Speaking in terms of default modes...

A DC 20 obstacle has an inherent meaning in the fiction of 5e, across levels and adventures, that stays the same - it is always a Hard obstacle, in terms of the world. That means that if you have a 95% chance to beat that DC, then you are a MASTER at that task because you have reduced Hard actions to mere trivialities. Meanwhile, if you have a 5% chance to do it, then you have a long way to go before you can call yourself skilled at that task, son.

In 4e, a DC 20 obstacle doesn't have an inherent meaning in the world, it is assigned meaning by the DM based on the circumstances it's encountered in. It might be hard for level 1 characters (DM: "Oh, it's an insidious dwarven design made from adamantium!"). It might be easy for a level 10 character (DM: "Oh, it's some rusty tin thing.") It might also have the same meaning (In both cases, the DM describes it as adamantium and dwarven), but that's only by fiat, according to what the DM wants, not inherent to the mechanics. It might also have wildly inappropriate meanings that are nonetheless relevant to the challenge (4e had examples of high-level "guards" and low-level "threats to the entire world" in its run).

The latter design is greatly flexible, because its fiction is largely irrelevant - what matters to the game is the maths. The former design is not quite as flexible, but it grants that achievement-juice much more directly and with less reliance on individual DMs to patch it up. And it can be turned into the latter system with very little effort.

I mean, how is "Roll with your +3 bonus; you need a total of 12 to succeed" turning into "Roll with your +9 bonus; you need a total of 12 to succeed" some dramatic experience, if no fiction is attached?

I'm not sure how seriously to take this. Even in a fictionless system, that movement - from +3 to +9 against the same target number - shows at the very least that the player has done some action to move that bonus and has thus given their chance for success a meaningful boost. If a player cares about success (it's a game, roll more than 12), then that's going to be a reward for whatever action they've done, a feeling of accomplishment.

It's a bit Skinner Box at that level (especially with the undefined action), but it is absolutely tied to ideas of flow and achievement and reward and success and all of that can be pretty dramatic. I mean, if they had to, I dunno, eat increasingly gross things to get that six-point movement, it would be an approval of their gastronomical bravery and their intestinal fortitude.

It seems kind of baldly obvious to me that fiction isn't directly relevant for that emotional goal of achievement.

4e is not very lottery-focused, but that doesn't mean that unexpectedness is not an important part of the game!

IMXP, its systems as presented in the rulebooks rarely tolerate much of the unexpected. Indeed, I find more than a bit of a "tournament" mentality in a lot of 4e: make everything level and equal and remove many of the variables, keep everything smooth, all of those oddities are distractions.

Its not a 'wash', its a genuine change in the narrative fiction.

A change in narrative fiction can feel hollow and meaningless absent a mechanical relevance. And the change in narrative fiction between a balor and an orc has little mechanical relevance (more complex, but the same balance).

If this is 'a wash' then it was just as much a wash when you did it in 1e or in 5e because in every edition all that happens is you get some bigger numbers and slightly different powers. That's how the game works! 4e just wasn't shy about it.

That's not how the game works anymore.

In 5e, you could take that balor on at level 10 and come away with your lives if you're clever about it. In 4e (and most earlier e's), you lack the prerequisites for that encounter, so it will simply crush you.

That's one of the significant changes bounded accuracy brings in - it's not just bigger numbers and different powers, it's a true change relative to the campaign world according to the RAW.

I think you know what I mean. The mechanics ARE there supporting you, they're just not dictating how the game has to develop. There are many different fictions which the same basic mechanics support

I don't think I do know what you mean. If the mechanics fall away, then they don't do much support, they just disappear and are subsumed into the fiction and thus become pretty meaningless. Mechanics that are generic to the point of supporting "many different fictions" are not good at evoking one specific fiction (and vice-versa).

I class this sort of thing in the same category as the old "all 4e characters are the same, they're all wizards" nonsense. It betrays an inability or unwillingness to engage with the qualitative differences in the fiction between, in this case, high and low levels. There really are quite different elements that come into play.

Fiction differences without significant mechanical relevance are at risk of being irrelevant to the players. If all the balor's aura is doing is making sure I'm of a requisite level to have a regen effect that counteracts it, it's a "different element" that doesn't actually do anything. +15 * 2 will counteract -30 and is different than +2 and -4+2, but if it's always going to come out to be zero regardless, that's just pointless fiddling.

Not everyone experiences this (especially more narrative-focused tables), but you'd be wrong to assert that this kind of criticism is "nonsense" just because you're personally ignorant of it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Yeah, 4e was never going to give you that one. It's just too limiting. Really, few games are that badly designed.

Shadowrun, GURPS, Rifts, the entire d20 line...

It's taking a pretty radical stance for a game to consciously decide to include multiple methods for representing the same reality. Honestly, I agree that few games are that badly designed.

Yeah, /getting rid/ of options other people use because they offend your narrow sensibilities, not a great idea.

Presentation matters. The PC rules were so far off from the NPC rules in 4E that trying to reconcile them was impractical. To contrast, 5E presents the changes as a mere simplifications of the same underlying reality. One way is easy to ignore, and the other caused a major schism in the player base.

That's off-topic, though. This thread is about things that are bad in 5E, and easily-reconciled rules are not a bad thing.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Likewise. The single biggest thing that turned me off was that I had a DM who halved all the monster HP and doubled their damage to "speed up combat." That's partly a DM issue but it was apparently common advice for 4E DMs, encouraged partly by 4E already having divergent rules for PCs and monsters.

I recently started listening to Happy Jacks RPG Podcast, and they endorsed that house rule for the duration of their 4E campaign. It's fun because you can follow the common arc of 4E players: Starting out with optimism, then growing frustrated with the slow combats, to implementing house rules, and eventually moving on to another game around the time they would hit Paragon level.

As far as house rules go, though, I understand that this was a common one.