D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[sunshadow21]

I have a good example of what I'm talking about. In our 4e Darksun game, we spent several levels on survival. It's Darksun so that makes sense. Travel is difficult and dangerous. Cool.

Then we got the Phantom Steed ritual. On its own not a big deal. But one of the pc's had a ridiculously high Arcana check. Suddenly we could reliably get flying mounts every day. We went from traveling miles per day to over a hundred miles per day and we could avoid nearly all encounters and hazards.

It totally changed the feel of the campaign. One single ritual and a very large part of the campaign was lost.

That's what I don't want to see. Campaign changing magic.

Than you need to find a different system. D&D has always had that kind of campaign changing magic and always will. It shows it in different ways at different times in different versions, but any campaign that lasts a decent period of time is going to have that kind of change at some point and a long campaign will have several. It's one of the biggest reasons why most campaigns end around 10th-12th level. Take that away, and it's no longer D&D and people's acceptance of it will drop accordingly. Even 4E, which still had it, despite being far better masked, had to overcome the very real argument that for many, it did not feel like D&D. It's part of the system. You can mask it all you want, you can try to mitigate it all you want, but most people who play D&D at this point do so precisely because of that type of magic, and those who want to play low magic while using this system consistently have to fight not only the system, but the perceptions of most of their players as well. The idea of low magic simply does not fit well with a system where half of the classic party are full casters.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Maybe I'm not following your proposition here, because designing for no healing needed plus a full action-spending healer doesn't sound "tough to balance", it just sounds pointless.

Well, it helps that Healing Surges pretty much get everyone close to full after each session already. They could have played that angle up a little bit further.

On an encounter basis, both sides should be close to exhausting their HP by the end of the fight (if it's going to be a close fight, and there's no point of running the fight if there's no chance of failure). Maybe a party with four attackers and no healer could defeat the enemy in three rounds, but would fail if it went to four rounds; keeping that math, taking a healer instead of an extra attacker would mean that it takes four rounds for that same encounter, so the healer needs to provide enough healing that they can all survive those four round (but might fail if it goes to five or six rounds).

Ideally, a healer would provide greater stability at the cost of expediency. You could go on without one, but you'd have to play more aggressively to make up for the lack of a safety net, and it shouldn't hurt you in the long run (no downward spiral over the course of the day) as long as out-of-combat healing was plentiful.

I mean, they could have done that.

 

[Hussar]

The problem is Sunshadow21, I don't want every DnD game to be set in Eberon. Which is what you're essentially talking about.

And no, not every version of DnD had this. Prior to 3e it was pretty easy to keep the setting lowish magic. Or rather it was easy to play without having magic be the first solution to every problem.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

On an encounter basis, both sides should be close to exhausting their HP by the end of the fight (if it's going to be a close fight, and there's no point of running the fight if there's no chance of failure).

Tangent, but: assuming we're talking about 5E and not 4E, I can't really agree that fights that don't exhaust HP were pointless. What you want is tension, uncertainty, not knowing who's going to win. (Sometimes not even the DM knows, but certainly you don't want the players knowing.) You can get that by simply balancing DPR and total hit points on both sides, as well as special powers--mirror image fights can be quite tense. But you don't have to get it that way. Sometimes I'll set up fights with a trick to them: last week was a high-Deadly encounter (130% of the daily encounter budget, all in one fight--it was the fourth fight of the day without even a short rest beforehand), but because the enemies were vampires and the time of day was early afternoon, one of the vampires got taken out simply by grappling it and dragging it into the sunlight. (Vampires get disadvantage to ability checks in sunlight so it was basically impossible to break free once it was in sunlight.) The PCs could have chosen to approach the fight straightforwardly, which might have killed them, or they could have cat-and-moused the vampires one at a time by darting into the house, snatching a vampire, and retreating around a corner. As it turned out they took something of a middle path, and though two of the PCs were mostly depleted of HP by the end of the encounter, the encounter would have been exactly as difficult if they'd chosen a strategy which let them win at a loss of only a handful of HP.

Other things which can make the outcome of a combat uncertain include potential for reinforcements (i.e. occluded visiblity such as in a catacomb or cave, and a precedent that monsters sometimes break up into multiple small groups, so players don't know how many are in the vicinity), illusions (Seeming can make a necromancer and his skeletons look like a bunch of scrawny goblins), environmental hazards (pit traps, caltrops, cliffs to shove people off), enemy spellcasters, enemy archers with partial or full cover, darkness, and running water. Ideally you want it to be an actual decision point as to whether or not combat will be the approach taken in this situation, or if they will bluff/negotiate/sneak instead. That only happens when combat is perceived as risky.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Tangent, but: assuming we're talking about 5E and not 4E, I can't really agree that fights that don't exhaust HP were pointless.

I was talking about 4E, and it's definitely not true in 5E, since 5E restored the attrition model which can cause your eighth fight to end in failure due to over-expenditure of resources in an earlier fight. If you just really botch the first encounter of the day, even if there's no chance that anyone is going to die from that, you might not be in optimal condition for the last fight, which could tip the balance.

Or an "easy" wandering monster could show up after the Big Boss fight, and clean up while everyone is tapped.

 

[pemerton]

I think some MBAs would be much better at explaining what WotC has been up to than some D&D fans.

That seems right to me.

The main thing I notice is that Ryan Dancey, some time ago now, said or wrote (and it was quoted here) that, if the "core brand" strategy for D&D (that 4e was spearheading) failed, then the D&D staff would be reduced to a rump who would keep the game alive but not much more. It seems to me, based on casual external observation, that something like this is roughly what has come to pass. With the licensing ambitions hopefully serving as a non-RPG led pathway to larger success. (But perhaps one that still won't involve the D&D team itself growing very much, or if it does grow doing so on the licensing/commercial side rather than the designer/author side.)

 

[pemerton]

the 3E Healer didn't have enough spells to justify casting one every round, but when someone did need healing, the healer could maneuver into position and spend a round actually healing someone. You had to give up your turn, and worry about opportunity attacks, but it felt like you were really contributing whenever you did it.

With the minor action healing, even if it gave me more healing throughput per fight since I never had to worry about being in the right spot, it didn't feel like I was actually doing anything.

I don't understand why you didn't have to worry about being in the right spot. Healing Word is a close burst 5 at heroic tier. At least in my experience, many 4e combats involve the PCs becoming separated by more than 5 squares.

And for what it's worth, the healer in my 4e game feels like he is contributing in the same sort of way that the invoker/wizard feels he is contributing when he slides or teleports an ally: its doing something to help an ally, that the ally couldn't do on his/her own.

Sure, there was Cure Light Wounds, once per day. As though I was back playing a level 1 character in AD&D, but that was rarely even necessary in the light of everything else that was going on. (It did have the niche of not requiring a healing surge, if I recall correctly, but we only played the game for six months so we never got around to appreciating that aspect of it.)

On an encounter basis, both sides should be close to exhausting their HP by the end of the fight (if it's going to be a close fight, and there's no point of running the fight if there's no chance of failure). Maybe a party with four attackers and no healer could defeat the enemy in three rounds, but would fail if it went to four rounds; keeping that math, taking a healer instead of an extra attacker would mean that it takes four rounds for that same encounter, so the healer needs to provide enough healing that they can all survive those four round (but might fail if it goes to five or six rounds).

<snip>

I mean, they could have done that.

They roughly did do this.

(1) Most encounters will more than exhaust the hit points of at least some of the PCs. At epic tier, in a typical combat the defenders in my party will take damage equal to twice their hit points or more. That is why in-combat healing (whether provided by another PC, or by the defender him-/herself) is important.

(2) There is a lot of discussion among 4e players about optimal party design, and whether a party is better off with a serious healer, a part-time healer (which is the option my group uses), or just another striker. One design reason not to encourage a completely non-attacking healer is that it produces grindy combat, because it takes longer (due to the healer PC not contributing by way of damage or control/condition-infliction) but is less dramatic because the healer can generate enough healing to offset the damage taken.

That's while you'll see many 4e players recommend against two leaders in a party, at least as a default approach to party composition.

 

[sunshadow21]

The problem is Sunshadow21, I don't want every DnD game to be set in Eberon. Which is what you're essentially talking about.

And no, not every version of DnD had this. Prior to 3e it was pretty easy to keep the setting lowish magic. Or rather it was easy to play without having magic be the first solution to every problem.

Before 3rd, it was also far more common that groups were relatively isolated from each other and knew each other before starting to play, making it far easier to control. The internet and the RPGA busted both of those genies out and they aren't going back into the bottle. Like it or not, I'm afraid those days are gone, and with them, the ability to easily run a low magic game in this system.

 

[pemerton]

Blaming the system is not likely going to get you very far; D&D is what it is, and magic being powerful is part of that. It's up to the DM to control the rarity of it, and therefore the problems it can cause at the table.

Are you saying that the GM is meant to limit how many PCs can play magic-users? How does that work in 5e, when so many classes have spells and/or magical class features?

getting to the point where you know it's going to have that impact is part of the challenge, and that's where roleplay, skill checks, character backgrounds, and world contacts come into play. The zone of truth is massively effective at getting the confession, but you have to know the right time and place to use it in order for it to work. Invisibility can be a game saver in that key moment, but you have to know it's the key moment.

Magic and spells are designed to be flashy and cool and kickass and really noticeable and memorable, and the reasons that many people play D&D is to have characters that are flashy, cool, kickass, and have lots of really cool and memorable stories. Accomplishing the latter in D&D that doesn't somehow involve magic as the final step is really, really, really, really tough unless the entire table is onboard with it, which means that all it takes is one person to screw that goal up.

<snip>

This is true of every single edition of D&D, past, current, and almost certainly future.

<snip>

Even 4E only got around it by accepting it for what it was, and making everyone that powerful starting at level 1.

I don't agree that magic is the only thing that can be "flashy and cool and kickasss and really noticeable and memorable". Nor is it especially tough to have non-magical things that are flashy and cool etc happen in a D&D game.

It's nearly 20 years since I played in a 2nd ed AD&D game, but one of the things I remember from our first session was my S&P fighter/cleric type beating up some sort of thugs with his percentile strength and weapon specialisation. That was flashy, cool and memorable (I remember it 19 years later).

In my 4e game, some non-magical things I remember are the fighter jumping from the PCs' flying tower onto the back of a white dragon, pinning its wings and then driving it the ground (mechanically: immobilising it with a basic attack obtained as an OA when the dragon moved; and then hitting it with some sort of attack that knocked it prone); the same character running amok through Torog's Soul Abattoir, destroying personnel and equipment; and the ranger-cleric shooting fleeing enemies (eg a doppelganger), taking them down with the last, lucky arrow before they move out of range.

There's plenty of magical action in the game too, but there is no reason (of genre, of system) why that has to have some sort of default monopoly on being the only stuff that counts when the crunch comes.

 

[pemerton]

And again, a lot of the grousing in that thread seemed to me to be basically a cloaked example of caster entitlement. "Hey, why is your Diplomat bored, just because the wizard snapped his fingers and solved the major challenge of the day, you'll still get to convince the shop keeper to give us more bread." That's basically how I read a lot of that (IE if the difficulty doesn't resolve around what the means are of solving the challenge, then it implies that the 'superior means', which is ALWAYS casting a spell in these debates, isn't automatically extra-special).

I hadn't looked at it that way. (Which is not to say you're wrong.)

To me, it seems more like your discussion with [MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION]: he wants to frame DCs by reference to Conan and Aragorn, you want to frame them by reference to paragon-tier PCs, and BryonD sees some radical contrast whereas - like you - I don't see the issue at all. What are Conan and Aragorn, after all, but (in 4e terms) paradigms of the paragon tier?

You are saying "well, Aragorn or Conan" could do this, and my PCs are like them, so I'll set the DC such that they can do it too. Isn't that exactly the same thing? IMHO its really one or the other, either the DC reflects some game world physical considerations that can be determined entirely without reference to the PCs or else its a story-centered DC that exists because it will further the action in the desired way.

Nope, not at all. Because I didn't say "well, Aragorn or Conan" could do this" and I didn't say "my PCs are like them". I said I'd use what they could do to judge where the DCs should be.
It may be that I say it is too hard for Conan, so the DC is higher. Or it might be that it is trivially simple and the DC are lower. Note that "my PCs" have not yet entered the conversation and I've set the DCs.

How do we tell if a DC is higher than what Conan can do? What is Conan's bonus to climbing, survival, etc? It seems to me that has to be determined on a genre basis - REH didn't pencil D&D stats into his margins.

It seems to me the real issue is whether the GM, in framing some challenge and assigning it a mechanical difficulty within the system, has regard to the likely prospects of success for his/her players' PCs, and to the likely pacing consequences of the players engaging that ingame situation via their PCs. Some systems make this easier for the GM who wants to do so (Robin Laws's HeroQuest Revised is probably the poster child here, but 4e is at least in the same general neighbourhood). For reasons I don't really understand some people seem to think that having regard to such considerations, as a GM, is inimical to "real" roleplaying. (But many of those critics still use hit point ablation as their combat mechanic!)

I always pictured 4E minions like balloons popping. That's what I felt like I was doing as a 4E wizard with my at will AoE...popping balloons. One of those strange little rules that ruined verisimilitude for me.

And yet fantasy fiction is heavily populated by minor antagonists who fall to a single sword blow from Conan, Aragorn, Gandalf, Lancelot, etc, etc.

In a system that uses hit point ablation to prevent one-shot kills, you need to sidestep that system if you want that sort of event to take place. You can either do this on the player side - give the players resources that permit them to bypass NPC/monster hit points and one-shot them - or you can do it on the GM side. 4e does it on the GM side by default, though plenty of 4e games also feature it on the player side, with "minionisation" via successful skill check or skill challenge.

On the question of verisimilitude, I personally can't see the hit point system as a measure of what seems true-to -life, as if it is unrealistic that anyone should ever fall to a single arrow or magic missile or mighty-thewed swing of the sword.