D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[pemerton]

I'm curious if anyone, AbdulAlhazred, pemerton, Manbearcat[/MENTION], or anyone else can point me to where in 4e it talks about the fiction relationship to scaling DC's... Or is this something, like the switching out of different monster variations, that has become a forum rule but is not explicitely called out in the books?

the whole scaling schema (particularly in regard to skill challenges) is based on this. Page 42 lays it all out for you. The difficulty in convincing the king to do whatever it is you're trying to convince him of isn't a fixed number until you know the party level and has nothing to do with the king's actual statblock, assuming he even has one.

I don't think it's explicit about the fiction at all. It's telling you that the first priority is to set an "appropriate DC"... it then goes on to give an unclear example of what exactly is appropriate at that level/DC.

<snip>

The terrain text illustrates exactly what some of the people in here are talking about. If you look under Cave Slime, it states...

"This thin blue slime is harmless but extremely slick. A creature that enters a square filled with cave slime must succeed at an Acrobatics check or fall prone. Use the difficulty Class by Level table (page 42) to set a DC that's appropriate to the character's level."

The rules are specifically stating that this slime scales with the PC's levels

I think Imaro, in quoting the Cave Slime passage and then drawing the conclusion that he does, is ignoring the part of the rule book that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] quoted upthread of Imaro's post. From DMG p 67 (on the same page and column as the Cave Slime entry, two short paragraphs above):

Terrain scales in order to keep it relevant as PCs and monsters gain higher attack bonuses and hit points. It is an element of game balance and a reflection of the greater magical power present in paragon or epic locations.​

In other words, the scaling cave slime is not the same stuff in the fiction. Locations of greater magical power, which are the sorts of places where paragon and epic PCs hang out and have their adventures, have more slimy slime.

Now I'm the first to agree that cave slime is not the most powerful fantasy fiction of all time, and I don't recall ever having used it in my game. But in the DMG we see the same principle applied in relation to stuff that gets closer to core fantasy tropes: the Environmental Dangers chart on DMG p 159, which tells us that the DC for enduring cold is 22, frigid cold 26, and pervasive necromantic energy 31. (On the p 42 chart, those are Moderate DCs for low paragon, upper pargon and upper epic respectively. The RC p 126 chart is in pretty close agreement: mid-paragon, low epic and upper epic respectively.)

But I think it is the king example that really gets to the heart of things.

Both the PHB and the DMG set out descriptions of the three tiers of play. I am going to quote from the DMG, pp 146-47, but the PHB contains nearly identical text (but addressed to the reader in second person rather than third person):

The fate of a village might hang on the success or failure of heroic tier adventurers, to say nothing of the characters' own lives. Heroic characters navigate dangerous terrain and explore haunted crypts, where they can expect to fight savage orcs, ferocious wolves, giant spiders, evil cultists, bloodthirsty ghouls, and shadarkai assassins. If they face a dragon, it’s a young one that might still be searching for a lair and has not yet found its place in the world - in other words, much like themselves. . . .

The fate of a nation or even the world might depend on momentous quests that [paragon] characters undertake. Paragon-level adventurers explore uncharted regions and delve long-forgotten dungeons, where they confront savage giants, ferocious hydras, fearless golems, evil yuan-ti, bloodthirsty vampires, crafty mind flayers, and drow assassins. They might face a powerful adult dragon that has established a lair and a role in the world. . . .

Epic adventures have far-reaching consequences, possibly determining the fate of millions - in the natural world and even places beyond. Epic characters traverse otherworldly realms and explore never-before-seen caverns of wonder, where they fight savage balor demons, abominations such as the ferocious tarrasque, mind flayer masterminds, terrible archdevils, bloodthirsty lich archmages, and even the gods themselves. The dragons they encounter are ancient wyrms of truly earth-shaking power, whose sleep troubles kingdoms and whose waking threatens existence.​

This fictional framing of the tiers of play is reinforced by the Monster Manuals, and also by PC build elements. Just to pick a couple of examples: a paragon warlord can become a Knight Commander - or, in otherwords, the leader of a military order. What is the DC for this character to get the headman of a friendly village to obey a reasonable command? There isn't one! Paragon PCs are fictionally located such that ordinary people asked by them to do ordinary things just do them.

An epic PC can be a Demi-God, or (in MP2) a Legendary Sovereign. What is the DC for a Demi-God or a Legendary Sovereign to get an audience with the Duke? Again, there isn't one - when Hercules comes knocking at the door, or King Arthur, the Duke answers!

Conversely, a GM who frames 1st level PCs into a situation of political conflict with the king is already choosing to ignore the default fictional framing of the game. It's up to that GM - together with the rest of the table - to then work out what changes, in the fiction, as the PCs progress levels, and hence to work out what sorts of challenges are appropriate for paragon or epic characters in that campaign. (Eg perhaps the PCs start out on an earthly court, then at paragon graduate to a Fey court, then at Epic end up intriguing in the outer-planar courts of Hestavar.)

But a GM who makes the very same king, in the very same context, just as hard to persuade for paragon PCs as 1st level ones, is not running the game as the books present it. S/he is dictating that nothing in the fiction has changed. Whereas the whole orientation of the books, as demonstrated in the passages quoted and the elements of PC build pointed to, is that as PCs gain levels the fictional context of their adventures changes, mostly by dramatically expanding.

a giant chandelier and a small chandelier, or a giant dragon and a baby dragon, are fictionally ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THINGS. So in 4e, JUST LIKE IN 5E, the differences in stats are derived entirely from a difference in the fiction. There is no case where 4e ever advocated anything like changing the DC of a fictionally identical chandelier from level 5 damage to level 14 damage just because level 14 PCs were present. This notion is nowhere even hinted at in the rules.

As for the King thing. I see no evidence that this is an exception to that case. SCs are designed to be level appropriate fiction. You generate a bunch of fiction that seems like it would be appropriately challenging for the PCs at hand, and then the DCs naturally, by virtue of that selection of fiction, are going to be level appropriate DCs. If you don't like this coupling of DC to fiction you have nobody to blame but yourself, you should have changed the fiction! At level 5 you're convincing the relatively friendly King of your own country to do something that can be pretty easily shown to be in his self-interest. At level 14 you're trying to convince drow nobles that they should give you their prize magic item so you can defeat a mutual enemy.

Yep. I think what I've written above agrees with this and expands on it.

Would anyone really give Level 25 Epic level PCs a Level 25 DC to pick a lock on a farmer's house?
Would anyone really give p.42 Level 25 damage for causing a chandelier to fall on a demigod?

<snip>

4e assumes you are giving level appropriate challenges to the PCs and the DC table is there to give you a reference point for level appropriate challenges.

Also yep - where by "level appropriate challenges" I am taking you to mean "challenges that make sense in the fiction for PCs of that level/tier - so eg when things fall on upper-epic demigods they're not chandeliers, but rather (say) the ceilings of great caverns or the sides of mountains or similar demi-god level stuff.

the only legitimate grounds of comparison here are what sort of fiction evolves from each system. The 4e system encourages you to set up the fiction to be appropriate (in your own view) to the fiction of the PCs features, powers, etc such that they narratively make sense, and then the DCs will take care of themselves. You don't even really have to think about DCs, as long as your fiction logically progresses in a way that meets your expectations.

In 5E, the game is driving you to generate the fiction that you like, and then tells you what the appropriate DCs are for that fiction. The process goes in the opposite direction.

I think that AbdulAlhazred is correct here, and Saelorn mistaken (not in his claim about 5e, but in his claim that it is the opposite of 4e).

In 4e the GM sets up the fiction that makes sense, given - as AbdulAlhazred says - the fiction that surrounds the PCs, which includes their personal abilities, their themes/paragon paths/epic destinies, the campaign background (which in default 4e will include the tier descriptions above, but will be different in (say) Neverwinter or Dark Sun), etc.

S/he then reads DCs for that fiction off the appropriate chart. Or, when the fiction involves monsters, NPCs or traps, s/he looks for appropriate write-ups in one of the Monster Manuals or other sourcebooks, or if necessary writes his/her own using the guidelines in the DMG and taking existing statblocks as models.

To give a concrete instance: when the PCs in my game travelled, at mid-Epic tier, to the Feywild to fight the frost giants who were gathering there, under Lolth's direction, to start a War of the Seasons and wrest control of winter from the Raven Queen, I knew what the fiction was - namely, these are Frost Giants who are powered up by Lolth, and by the magic of the Feywild, and can't be bested except by some of the most powerful heroes in the world (in my particular case, a Marshall of Letherna and a Demigod enforcing the Raven Queen's will, accompanied by a Sage of Ages opposed the the spread of elemental power, an Emergent Primordial serving Corellon and the good archomentals, and a dwarven Eternal Defender wielding a giant-slaying hammer).

Most published frost giants are statted at upper paragon level, and many also have pre-MM3 damage. So I wrote up my own page of frost giants stats (about 8 columns with 1 giant type in each column), converting the published exampes to MM3 damage at around levels 23 to 26.

In other words, to borrow [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s language, the game drove me to generate the fiction that I liked, and then told me what the appropriate DCs (damage spread, etc) were for that fiction. It's just that part of what was involved in identifying the fiction that I liked was identifying at as a challenge fitting for epic heroes.

I'm not even sold that subjective and objective DCs give you widely different play experiences (or have to).

<snip>

In 5e, if you assign a Hard (20) DC what does that mean? I don't know 5e that well, but seems to mean that a 5th level Rogue PC could have at least a 50% chance of success. Another PC with tools prof and a +2 Dex would have a 25% of picking this diary as well. Is that what the DM had in mind in the fiction?

I think the second of these quoted passage provides something of a response to the first. And connects to what [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] posted.

I'm agnostic on whether subjective and objective DCs have to give different play experiences, but I think they can tend to do so.

When you look at the 4e process that AbdulAlhazred and I have described, part of what is involved in framing the fiction is thinking of it in relation to the context of the PCs. And the DCs the system then delivers are mechanically calibrated to the mechanical features of the PCs (eg default 60% chance of success for a Moderate DC). This supports a certain sort of pacing, and at least when we're talking about 4e feeds into other aspects of 4e that are all about supporting a certain sort of pacing (eg the way combat works, with monsters being frontloaded relative to PCs but PCs having unlockable reserves that monsters lack).

Whereas in 5e, as both Saelorn and you point out, there is no support for thinking of the fiction in terms of its mechanically-determined pacing/dramatic relationship to the PCs. Eg there is no indication of what DC will generate a default 60% chance for what level of PC.

In Burning Wheel, this sort of objective DC approach produces a game with more failures than 4e (in a system with a very strong "fail forward" orientation) and also puts more pressure on the players to choose carefully how they engage the gameworld and marshal their fate point resources that give them the chance to overcome mechanically hard DCs. For lack of a better word, it's a grittier experience than 4e.

5e doesn't have either of these features that Burning Wheel has (no strong emphasis on fail forward, no all-purpose player side resources for making challenging DCs achievable, although the Inspiration mechanic might be an approximation to this). So it probably gives a different experience again.

But just to be clear, level appropriate doesn't mean exact level either. Whether its skill DCs, monsters, traps etc., you can throw challenges at PCs that are Level +/-5 pretty easily (not sure the exact range) for gradations of level appropriate challenge. This is done in published modules.

I think this is an interesting point of technique in 4e GMing.

My own practice is to use a range of levels for monsters/NPCs - where the multiple rolls of combat, plus the multiple vectors of attacks, damage, defences etc, mean that a mix of levels can have an interesting effect.

But when it comes to skill challenges, I tend to stick to on-level DCs and use complexity to moderate degree and duration of challenge. I personally haven't felt that varying the level of a skill challenge (as opposed to complexity) adds much to the play experience.

 

[BryonD]

If you don't like this coupling of DC to fiction you have nobody to blame but yourself, you should have changed the fiction!

Or played a game that doesn't require this coupling, change of the fiction, or create a need to blame anyone.

 

[BryonD]

In other words, the scaling cave slime is not the same stuff in the fiction. Locations of greater magical power, which are the sorts of places where paragon and epic PCs hang out and have their adventures, have more slimy slime.

We had a lot of conversations in the past about the system dictating the world to me.

I follow what you are saying.
I think other people in this thread follow what you are saying.

Every example you provide adds narrative presumptions that are not wanted or otherwise mandatory.
Once you start to perceive that difference, the issues are glaring.

(And, by the same token, once a non-fan of 4E starts to recognize that ignoring this issue is perfectly valid, the way 4E can be awesome for other people becomes obvious. That doesn't mean the non-fan will change their own view, just "get it".)

 

[pemerton]

As I said, NPCs used PC rules to determine their abilities, except in situations where the in-game reality diverged.

<snip>

Until 4E came around, it wasn't something worth talking about, because it was just one of those obvious things that didn't need to be said. It wasn't a particular principle of D&D, because it was such a fundamental assumption of all RPGs that there was never any reason to question it.

As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] says, this is just not true.

In Tunnels & Trolls, monsters and NPCs aren't statted the same way as PCs at all - they just have "monster dice", no ability scores, spells or weapons that are mechanically broken out. (There is an optional rule that allows statting up monsters like PCs. But it is optional. It also warns that this will tend to make monsters more dangerous, because monster statted up using "monster dice" have a fairly steep death spiral - losing dice to damage also reduces combat potency because it reduces the number of dice rolled - whereas T&T PCs do not have a death spiral.)

In AD&D, a man-at-arms has 4 to 7 hit points (1d4+3), whereas a bandit has 1d6 hit points. Man-at-arms attack sa 0-level fighters. It's not entirely clear whether bandits attack as 0-level fighters or on the appropriate column on the monster chart. Then there are the hit point ranges for 0-level NPCs set out in the DMG. Then there are 1st level sergeants who have 1d10 hp but are unable to gain levels, and have on average fewer hit points than a man-at-arms while also having a better attack table. Then there is the rule for NPC half-orcs attacking using the monster chart rather than the classes chart.

None of this was based on a principle that there is one and only one way of statting up a particular individual!

Rolemaster is similar to AD&D, in that many NPCs have a simplified stat range that is not broken out or built out of components in the same way that a PC's is. Later RM Companions had rules for giving monsters stats like PCs. HARP, a Rolemaster derived system that is contemperaneous with 3E, differs from RM precisely in following 3E-style build principles for monsters (eg monster skill bonuses are constructed out of skill ranks + stats, etc).

There is no universal principle of RPGs that monsters and NPCs are to be built as PCs.

Fine, they're all RPGs. Pathfinder and 4E and 5E and Shadowrun and GURPS and World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIII-2 are all RPGs.

Pathfinder and Shadowrun and GURPS, and possibly 5E depending on how you play it, are also Traditional RPGs. They belong to one particular subset of the RPG category, and are distinguished by their use of exactly one mechanical representation for each fictional construct.

The bizarre thing is that Tunnels & Trolls, one of the oldest RPGs around and predating the 1980s, is by your standards not a traditional RPG.

What you are calling a traditional RPG is really something that became the norm in the mid-to-late 80s, under the influence of systems like HERO and Runequest and Rolemaster (which then affected D&D design in 3E). In the 1970s and early 80s D&D wasn't a "traditional RPG" by your standards, and despite attempts to regularise it through supplements like DSG and WSG, and then via a certain strand of 2nd ed, it wasn't until 3E that it became fully "traditional"!

 

[pemerton]

Every example you provide adds narrative presumptions that are not wanted or otherwise mandatory.
Once you start to perceive that difference, the issues are glaring.

I don't think I understand this. What is a "narrative presumption"?

Do you mean the assumption that the area the demigods are exploring is more inherently magical than the area the 1st level PCs are exploring?

If that is the "presumption" that you mean, and if it is not wanted, then as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has said you don't have to do it. Though as he has also said, you probably wouldn't bother wasting table time making players roll checks that can't fail to see if their demigods can keep their footing in cave slime of the sort found at the mouth of a typical kobold lair.

 

[tyrlaan]

Fine, they're all RPGs. Pathfinder and 4E and 5E and Shadowrun and GURPS and World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIII-2 are all RPGs.

Pathfinder and Shadowrun and GURPS, and possibly 5E depending on how you play it, are also Traditional RPGs. They belong to one particular subset of the RPG category, and are distinguished by their use of exactly one mechanical representation for each fictional construct.

In other words, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, GURPS, and maybe 5e (presumably because you haven't been able to fully assess it yet?) are all games that fit your criteria for a good roleplaying game.

Which of course is perfectly fine, but it doesn't mean they can be objectively placed in a bucket and given a standard term.

It would be really awesome if you could stop claiming standard terms for your personal perspective.

 

[Hussar]

I hated the minion mechanic. Felt too much like looking behind The Wizard's curtain.

Really? Wow, that was one 4e innovation that I lurved. The ability to drop a mob of baddies on the ground and have them actually be effective was such a nice change from 3e. And the fact that they were so simple made them even better. No, I have to admit, I loved that mechanic and wished it did make the transition to 5e.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have nothing against 4E. I just don't consider it to be an RPG, in the traditional sense. It had a lot of good ideas, but in getting there, they had to violate some important rules of RPG design. Maybe they didn't even know that they were doing it, at the time.

Maybe they knew what they were doing, and consciously chose to slaughter this sacred cow, only to find out that it was more important than they thought it was. Maybe they didn't realize how important those rules were until so many people left for another game. The important thing is that they later realized their mistake, and addressed it with 5E.

And maybe there is just a lot more variation and different concepts in RPG design than you ever conceived was possible. Its a very large field and I suspect there's still a whole lot of things you've not encountered or at least not wrapped your head around. I don't mean to be derogatory, but you seem very 'provincial' really in terms of where you're coming from in terms of experience with RPGs. You've been living in the Shire, but that doesn't mean Minas Morgul isn't out there just because you never heard of it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Really? Wow, that was one 4e innovation that I lurved. The ability to drop a mob of baddies on the ground and have them actually be effective was such a nice change from 3e. And the fact that they were so simple made them even better. No, I have to admit, I loved that mechanic and wished it did make the transition to 5e.

I'm cool with 5e's way of handling the same situation - lower level critters naturally become one-turn-kills due to the way damage scales. I'm thinking of a particular room full of lizardfolk Bar-B-Que in our DL game...or Stirges in my HotDQ low-level game.

It hides the meta-effect well, but has the same effect. A little more dice rolling and math perhaps, but I think this even adds to the feeling of accomplishment - a recognition that it is as much about the high score of a big damage roll as it is about the in-game and in-fiction effect of a dead monster.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sorry about that. When I refer to an RPG, I mean a traditional RPG. So Shadowrun and GURPS and Pathfinder are traditional RPGs, but 4E and Marvel Heroic and Fate are... something else. I guess you could call them "non-traditional RPGs". They aren't RPGs in the traditional sense of the term, at least.
It seems probable that my opinion on this matter is characteristic of a significant portion of the player-base. The chance that such ideas would be unique to only one person seems improbable.

I doubt it. You know that 'traditional' is at best a very inaccurate word for what you're trying to say. Many of the oldest RPGs are nothing like what you call 'traditional'. En Garde! for instance. Or how about Tunnels & Trolls. For a real reach back how about the grand daddy of all RPGs, Kriegspiel, which is NOTHING like D&D at all. All of these games stomp all over any and all of your parochial "An RPG must have X, Y, and Z!" silliness.