D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[FormerlyHemlock]

I calculate damage to be lethal, unavoidably lethal, at high level. As in there is nothing you can do to prevent yourself from being hit by lethal damage at some point in the fight save pure luck. Our encounter calculations center around DPR for and DPR against. The DPR number must be able to deliver a similar amount of damage to the PCs in challenging encounters. The NPCs must be able counter the parties tactics to prevent damage mitigation and to mitigate damage at a similar level. Tactical equality where fights come down to a bit of luck and perhaps one or two abilities the party possesses that the other team does not, which the PCs must figure out during the fight, very quickly. Only very powerful healing counters this effect. I build encounters to kill the party. The only counter is a powerful, dedicated healer to keep them alive that is highly focused on survival.

Observation: if you're balancing DPR potentials, then no wonder a dedicated healer is so valuable! He reduces enemy DPR by virtue of not having a high DPR himself, and he boosts party survivability through his healing capabilities. He's actually better at his job than a healer with potentially high DPR output[1] would be.

[1] Unusable due to opportunity cost in lost healing.

 

[bert1000]

I think that one point Hemlock wanted to make was that a system of scaling environmental challenges (eg Cave Slime) makes a type of GM laziness especially easy, of not changing the overall structure or deep nature of the game as the PCs level, instead just amping up the numbers and adding superficial descriptions (Astral Teflon Slime, Utra-violet Slime, etc) while leaving the basic dynamics of play unchanged.

I agree with Hemlock that Cave Slime and its relatives among the 4e system elements do lend themselves to this sort of laziness. I point to the HPE modules as evidence of this.

This is a really great point. It is lazy and not interesting. But it doesn't change the premise that these slimes are DIFFERENT slimes, right? The higher level slimes are tougher slimes.

This DC conversation has been interesting for me, because I came into it thinking there actually was a big difference between DC setting in 5e (fixed) and 4e (relative, subjective) but now I’m not sure 4e really does use “subjective” DCs in any real sense!

If you believe that the fiction must be appropriate to the DC, then all 4e really does is give you a handy reference chart that shows you typical percentage success rates for each level. This helps you determine the appropriate DCs for the fiction.

Whether you determine the fiction first, then assign a DC (level appropriate or not depending on the fiction), or start with the DCs and determine a fiction that fits (what kind of portal would be an appropriate challenge for a Level 15 PC?) are different approaches to DESIGN but it’s not really “subjective” any more than thinking about what is appropriate in 5e. You could use either method in 5e too. Hmm, I want to imagine a fortress that has Impossible locks what would that look like?

Even in SCs which seems like the ultimate ‘stick to the level guidelines’, the fiction is assumed appropriate right? You aren’t going to run a Level 25 SC for Level 25 PCs to chase down a common thief through city streets?

So for those that DO believe the fiction and DC must align, what does it mean to have subjective/relative DCs? Aren’t the 4e level guidelines just a way to help assign appropriate DCs to the fiction in the DESIGN phase? Once a DC is attached to the fiction it doesn’t change, right?

Pemerton, you seem like someone that believes the fiction and DC must align, and also thinks there is a difference between ‘fixed’ and ‘subjective’ DCs. Care to explain?

 

[BryonD]

I don't note that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] validated those opinions of 4e. One COULD respond with "fans of earlier editions uncharitably met any change in their game with hatred and derision, poisoning the community atmosphere and driving players away."

I don't claim he did. But I was called a h4ter and scared of change for disagreeing. I'm pleased to see that you and he take issue with that faction of the 4e fanbase.

I would note that a lot of new incoming D&Ders have had very positive experiences with 4e. It is quite an easy game to pick up, the rules are quite simple and orthogonal, its presentation of game elements is clear and straightforward, etc.

4E was AWESOME at being what it was supposed to be. It had a great design team.

There clearly were some issues of presentation that didn't help. In some respects the game might have given more of a nod to tradition, and in others its presentation was too timid and failed to explicate the full potentialities of the game.

OK. If you think the challenges with long term success are summed up in what you said here, you are not assessing without bias.

Still, one of the things that could happen is people could stop trying to characterize versions of the game they didn't care for as 'failed', etc. Analysis is one thing, but blind unending criticism of all aspects of a system because people had some issue with it has become monumentally tiresome.

Did I say "failed"? I probably did somewhere along the way, but context is important. It failed at being competitive with other options for my play style. It failed at being something WotC elected to stick with. It failed to revolutionize the number of people playing TTRPGs through bringing waves of fans from other media. It failed at avoiding a meaningful degree of fanbase burnout.

It was far and away removed from "failed" at delivering an awesome experience for a certain niche segment of the industry, it was a massive success at that.

Being called h4ter for not liking it got old about a day after 4E came out. Tony is still throwing that around non-stop and still preaching the delusion of conspiracy. If you want to be critical of blind undending criticism, you might want to start on your own side of the fence. I'm not saying that this is your obligations by any means. But if you want you indignation to seem fair, you might want to start there.

Blind uneding criticism is bad. Refusing to acknowledge, accept and adapt to considered and thoughtful criticism is also bad. There was a moment in time when the 4E fan, just maybe, could have embraced input and bettered the longevity of 4E. They did quite the opposite.

The problem with universal systems is just their very genericity. In order to fit into a variety of genre adequately well they tend not to explore or tailor themselves to any one of them with any significant depth. GURPS has quite a lot of in-depth mechanics for numerous genre, but it only really works for a style of gaming that is quite mechanistic in its tone, much like 3e. It always left me a bit cold, though I can definitely see how cross/mixed-genre play can profit from a system that supports both of them.

I'm not even going there. While *I* love GURPS, it ain't ever going to be the system for the masses. I was simply making the poitn that taking about Heroquest doesn't change anything.

I think you have to admit that the whole "its not an RPG" thing was a pretty objectionable conceit to start with, as well as being laughable. What people's tastes stem from isn't something I really generally care about, but when they keep waving a very narrow viewpoint in your face with the intention of backhandedly dissing what they don't care for, its more than a little tiresome, particularly when this is year 7 of such kinds of behavior.

Mostly yes. But some no.
Yes. It is beyond question an RPG. Period full stop

I find the "all D&D is D&D" just as absurd and thoughtless as "4E is not an RPG". The differences between OD&D and 3E are vast. They are hugely different games. And 4E is a whole other animal yet.
They are all fantasy RPGs. But so is WHF, GURPS fantasy, HERO, MERP, and on and on and on. Some of those games have vastly more in common with certain versions of D&D than some versions of D&D do with each other. And yet you see 4E fans trying to insist that "all D&D is D&D" as a means of tsk tsking people for not liking their chosen flavor. It is a dumb position.

Now, beyond that, you get into the whole "simulation / gamist" thing. It is easy for me to see how the gamist aspects make it that much more awesome AS AN RPG for some people. And it is also easy for em to see how it sucks out the very heart of what playing an RPG means to some people. To them, it really ISN'T a "good" RPG and far enough from it that simply saying it isn't does not is an adequate way to describe their position.

I can roleplay chess. Back in the long ago I had a group of friends that actually DID roleplay MtG games by narrating a story around the game as it went. These ARE NOT RPGs. These ARE NOT fair analogies to 4E. On a scale of 1 to 1,000 they may be 2s and 4E (to an anti-gamist person) is a 970. But if they are real strict about it anything below at 980 isn't good enough for them. That doesn't speak well of them as open minded. I'm not holding that up for praise. But it isn't some crime either. And ranting about them rather than considering why they feel that way may be the less constructive approach. Maybe year 8 is the year you start trying to understand why they feel that way. Hell, I don't even agree with the people who reject 4E as an RPG. I think that is stupid. But it is stupid that doesn't hurt them. Refusing to consider them as part of the marketplace DID hurt WotC and 4E fans.

Lastly, more directly personally, I've had multiple conversations with pemerton about the difference between "being" a character and running a character while having the powers of an author to change the world around you.
To me this is a very important issue. I have flat out said that if a player has powers that the character does not have, then I do not consider that to be roleplaying. You may roleplay for two hours and then use the power of an author for 30 seconds and then roleplay for another two hours after that. But once you have changed the world you have impacted everything subsequent and you have not interacted with the environment as a person within it.

I have NOTHING negative to say about this alternative game. But I don't count it as roleplaying anymore then I count narrating MtG as roleplaying. And, again, obviously you are expressing roleplaying in the two hours before and after, the context is the thing.

I don't claim that 4E makes this happen. But elements of it do push in that direct (back to: does the narrative inform the rules or do the rules inform the narrative). You can play 4E not this way and you can play 3E as this way. But in the case of 4E you are at least cutting against the grain when you don't. I think that is in part why Pemerton loves it. The grains goes with his taste. Adn ti makes it reasonable that people not wanting that may not grok why it doesn't work for them, it just doesn't. And thus it is fair for them to express that it doesn't deliver the same experience they expect from an RPG.

 

[BryonD]

(In practice, I think most play of the game tends to reduce STR just to musculature, and to reduce CON to fitness and health. And to ignore some of the tensions that might tend to emerge when STR is very high but CON very low.)

Sticking to male characters for simplicity: The strong guy is always the perfect version of Arnold as Conan and never the real version of Andre the Giant.

 

[tyrlaan]

Being called h4ter for not liking it got old about a day after 4E came out. Tony is still throwing that around non-stop and still preaching the delusion of conspiracy. If you want to be critical of blind undending criticism, you might want to start on your own side of the fence. I'm not saying that this is your obligations by any means. But if you want you indignation to seem fair, you might want to start there.

Blind uneding criticism is bad. Refusing to acknowledge, accept and adapt to considered and thoughtful criticism is also bad. There was a moment in time when the 4E fan, just maybe, could have embraced input and bettered the longevity of 4E. They did quite the opposite.

As a 4e fan, I can definitely tell you I perceived a lot of the same on the other side of the fence as well. All I'm really saying is the whole load of it was terrible. Terrible for fans of any edition of D&D. And what you say is so completely on point, but people tend to have trouble with criticism, which makes it tough for some not to take things to extremes. Which isn't to say that's an excuse - people should be willing to mature and grow and be capable of both receiving and giving criticism (and learning from it, like you say!) - but I think this is just easier for some than it is for others.

Mostly yes. But some no.
Yes. It is beyond question an RPG. Period full stop

I find the "all D&D is D&D" just as absurd and thoughtless as "4E is not an RPG". The differences between OD&D and 3E are vast. They are hugely different games. And 4E is a whole other animal yet.
They are all fantasy RPGs. But so is WHF, GURPS fantasy, HERO, MERP, and on and on and on. Some of those games have vastly more in common with certain versions of D&D than some versions of D&D do with each other. And yet you see 4E fans trying to insist that "all D&D is D&D" as a means of tsk tsking people for not liking their chosen flavor. It is a dumb position.

Now, beyond that, you get into the whole "simulation / gamist" thing. It is easy for me to see how the gamist aspects make it that much more awesome AS AN RPG for some people. And it is also easy for em to see how it sucks out the very heart of what playing an RPG means to some people. To them, it really ISN'T a "good" RPG and far enough from it that simply saying it isn't does not is an adequate way to describe their position.

I can roleplay chess. Back in the long ago I had a group of friends that actually DID roleplay MtG games by narrating a story around the game as it went. These ARE NOT RPGs. These ARE NOT fair analogies to 4E. On a scale of 1 to 1,000 they may be 2s and 4E (to an anti-gamist person) is a 970. But if they are real strict about it anything below at 980 isn't good enough for them. That doesn't speak well of them as open minded. I'm not holding that up for praise. But it isn't some crime either. And ranting about them rather than considering why they feel that way may be the less constructive approach. Maybe year 8 is the year you start trying to understand why they feel that way. Hell, I don't even agree with the people who reject 4E as an RPG. I think that is stupid. But it is stupid that doesn't hurt them. Refusing to consider them as part of the marketplace DID hurt WotC and 4E fans.

Lastly, more directly personally, I've had multiple conversations with pemerton about the difference between "being" a character and running a character while having the powers of an author to change the world around you.
To me this is a very important issue. I have flat out said that if a player has powers that the character does not have, then I do not consider that to be roleplaying. You may roleplay for two hours and then use the power of an author for 30 seconds and then roleplay for another two hours after that. But once you have changed the world you have impacted everything subsequent and you have not interacted with the environment as a person within it.

I have NOTHING negative to say about this alternative game. But I don't count it as roleplaying anymore then I count narrating MtG as roleplaying. And, again, obviously you are expressing roleplaying in the two hours before and after, the context is the thing.

I don't claim that 4E makes this happen. But elements of it do push in that direct (back to: does the narrative inform the rules or do the rules inform the narrative). You can play 4E not this way and you can play 3E as this way. But in the case of 4E you are at least cutting against the grain when you don't. I think that is in part why Pemerton loves it. The grains goes with his taste. Adn ti makes it reasonable that people not wanting that may not grok why it doesn't work for them, it just doesn't. And thus it is fair for them to express that it doesn't deliver the same experience they expect from an RPG.

It's amazingly refreshing to read a cogent, non-hyperbole-laden explanation of why someone does not/did not care for 4e. Shame it took so many years before I saw one but I'll take it

 

[BryonD]

As a 4e fan, I can definitely tell you I perceived a lot of the same on the other side of the fence as well.

Not disputing this.

It's amazingly refreshing to read a cogent, non-hyperbole-laden explanation of why someone does not/did not care for 4e. Shame it took so many years before I saw one but I'll take it

thanks

 

[Erechel]

OK, this is now so absurd that I'm just calling you on it. I flat out disbelieve this statement. Its utter nonsense. I DMed AD&D from 1977 to 1995 continuously on at least a weekly basis. I ran countless thousands of sessions of these games. There's nothing you can tell me about AD&D. I literally can run the game from rote memory without ever referring to a book with virtually 100% accuracy, even after 20 years. To survive any sort of serious adventure without a cleric in AD&D is absurd. I mean, sure, you may be quite able to deal with specific scenarios, but you are taking horrible, horrible risks and the survival rate of a party, of any level, won't even be half what it would be with a cleric.

You can believe it or not. This is more a matter of styles of play. Whenever "magical" healing was a need, we use to use a Druid. Simply, exploration and preparation were enough to assure a high survavility, making threats as basilisks an easy task for Lvl. 1 characters. Magical artillery, stealthy, ranged attacks and ambushes were the favourite methods. A rogue was actually much more useful than a cleric. As we see it, wasting a turn on healing was riskier than use it to attack. We used also a lot of the PO rules to play.

 

[pemerton]

In all of the above, the only thing I really would disagree with is that Phantom Steeds and flying towers are strategic resources. To me they still seem essentially operational, maybe even tactical.

I can see that.

When I say "strategic challenges" I'm thinking of challenges that you basically can't fight tactically

<snip>

Most official D&D modules that I've seen handle strategic threats by converting them back into tactical threats

In 4e they might still be skill challenges, which makes them mecanically tactical although remaining strategic in the fiction. (So not quite the same as the Rise of Tiamat climax that you criticise, which becomes tactical both in mechanics and in fiction.)

We don't use level+(x) or CR or any of that.

<snip>

Our encounter calculations center around DPR for and DPR against. The DPR number must be able to deliver a similar amount of damage to the PCs in challenging encounters.

I've only run a few sessions of 3E, and so don't know anything first hand about its CR system, though I've read plenty of online criticism.

4e's encounter building guidelines have been pretty robust. Certainly at paragon and above (my memory for heroic tier has now faded a bit), an on-level encounter is pretty simple, but a level+4 or higher encounter will require the players to put in a fair bit of effort. (And take a fair bit of table time to resolve.)

In the encounter I mentioned, Orcus had the ability (not at will) to reduce a PC to 0 hp with a single touch of his wand, while the balrog could hit for a crit that did 80 to 100 hp of damage. (The PCs have between 130-ish (the invoker/wizard) and 200+ (the fighter and paladin) hit points.) There were turns where PCs took 100+ hp damage, but other than when Orcus used his death touch I don't think any PC was dropped from full to zero in a single turn.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Empirically, AbdulAlhazred, you are wrong and Saelorn is correct.

Congratulations, you fell for the 'excluded middle.' Saelorn claims that the majority of gamers agree with him, and backs it up with the reasoning that he can't be the only one. Between 1 and 51% is the vast excluded middle where the truth probably can be found. Frankly, it's probably a lot closer to just him, but I offer no fallacious reasoning for that, it's JMHO.

 

[pemerton]

This is a really great point. It is lazy and not interesting. But it doesn't change the premise that these slimes are DIFFERENT slimes, right? The higher level slimes are tougher slimes.

Thanks, and yes - different slimes. So the fiction is boring but not inconsistent.

This DC conversation has been interesting for me, because I came into it thinking there actually was a big difference between DC setting in 5e (fixed) and 4e (relative, subjective) but now I’m not sure 4e really does use “subjective” DCs in any real sense!

<snip>

Pemerton, you seem like someone that believes the fiction and DC must align, and also thinks there is a difference between ‘fixed’ and ‘subjective’ DCs. Care to explain?

It's a fair question. In some of my posts over the past few pages I've been trying to say a bit about it, but it's probably not as clear as it could be.

I certainly don't want to be dogmatic about anything; on the other hand, from 1990 to 2008 I GMed a lot of Rolemaster (objective DCs), from 2009 to present I've GMed a lot of 4e (subjective DCs) and also some MHRP (subjective DCs) and BW (objective DCs), and this has given me an intuitive conviction that there is a difference.

I'm going to take a stab at three main differences. Analysis, and relevant play experiences that shed light, are very welcome!

First difference: "subjective" DCs encourage the GM to approach framing keeping in mind concerns of pacing/story - "How big a deal do I want this to be for the PCs, for the players, given the other dynamics going on in the campaign and at the table, etc?"

A really concrete demonstration of this might be deciding, in MHRP, whether or not to drop in a die from the Doom Pool (with the appropriate fictional narration for the opposition) - the fiction and DC are correlated, but the choice of what fiction to be created is driven by the narrative/pacing concerns and not just extrapolation from ingame concerns (like impersonal causal processes + NPC motivations).

Second difference (but not disconnected from the first): "objective" DCs put the focus squarely on ingame causal processes. What has happened, in the fiction, to make it the case that this gameworld element of this degree of difficulty is present here-and-now? As Luke Crane puts it in his Adventure Burner, DCs are the mechanism whereby the GM shows off the gameworld to the PCs and lets them get a concrete handle on it.

This tends to discourage too much off-the-wall craziness (say, setting a high DC and justifying it by reference to fate or luck, or a spontaneous "wild magic zone"). With "subjective" DCs players tend to rely on knowledge of the game's mechanical parameters to support their action declarations - so the fiction is something that has to be respected and accommodated as a parameter for action declaration, but meta-knowledge about pacing and story and so on. Whereas with "objective" DCs I think players are encouraged more into ingame-oriented tactical/optimisation reasoning (Burning Wheel has other bells and whistles in place to push back against this encouragement).

I think this is at least part of why "objective" DCs push towards grittiness. I think it also helps explain how objective DCs fit with bounded accuracy (which is part of 5e, and BE, and Rolemaster in virtue of its open-ended and crit/insta-death rules).

Third difference: "subjective DCs" tend to allow the looseness of fit between fiction and mechanics that we see in HeroQuest revised, Maelstrom Storytelling, 4e's adaptation to Dark Sun or Neverwinter or Gamma World, etc. Whereas "objective" DCs tend to encourage a greater integration of particular aspects of mechanics with particular minutiae of ingame causal processes.

Thoughts?