D&D 5E (2014) Why does 5E SUCK?

[Hussar]

I think the point is Ticket to Ride is a much more streamlined game, while the 18xx games are on the level of something like Squad Leader or other very involved historical recreation games.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

It's interesting that some feel 5E is lite in complexity...I'd consider it more of a low-end medium complexity. Swords & Wizardry? Now that's lite.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's interesting that some feel 5E is lite in complexity...I'd consider it more of a low-end medium complexity. Swords & Wizardry? Now that's lite.

I'd call it a high complexity system, its no simpler than 3.x or 4e, nor 2e. All of them have complex mechanics. Maybe its on the lower end of highly complex, there are some pretty stupidly detailed systems out there, but in no way shape or form is 5e 'lite', not even close.

 

[Imaro]

I'd call it a high complexity system, its no simpler than 3.x or 4e, nor 2e. All of them have complex mechanics. Maybe its on the lower end of highly complex, there are some pretty stupidly detailed systems out there, but in no way shape or form is 5e 'lite', not even close.

Going to disagree... the Different DC's in 3e and numerous per round modifiers in 4e alone make this claim ring pretty false in my ears.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't think so.

Games that heavily favor balance -- or, more precisely, heavily limit imbalance -- are universally games of competition.

Nope, they're games.

If anything, cooperative games need balance even more critically than competitive ones. Competitive games can get by on fairness. Imbalance still looks bad, but it doesn't necessarily hurt play, and it can even enhance it, in that figuring out the best choices becomes part of the challenge of mastering the game - so long as the same imbalanced choices are available to all players, it's "fair."

With D&D, however, there's not really any competition inherent to the game.

In traditional D&D there often was. Tournament play was around from very early, so there could be victory conditions. Even if there weren't, there was often an implicit competition to survive, get the most treasure, the best items, the most exp, or otherwise emerge from the dungeon with the best character.

What about the DM? Well, there's no contest with the DM.

Adversarial DMing's a thing. From the Killer DMs of the early hobby to those who want to 'challenge' their players, today. It's only as fair as the DM chooses to make it, and balance on the PC class side still only matters in the cooperative context...

... why is balance considered such a Holy Grail of D&D game design?

Because, in spite of the above, D&D is mainly a cooperative game. Whether the players are cooperating just as much as necessary to 'win' the most treasure/exp/whatever individually, cooperating to tell an epic story, cooperating to beat the level-appropriate challenges presented by the DM, cooperating to meet some campaign objective, or just to explore an imaginary world, what each PC brings to the party (npi) is critical to the player contributing and even participating in the game meaningfully. Class balance is thus absolutely critical to a decent play experience. Even versions of the game, like 5e, that don't build class balance into the rules expect the DM to impose it from above by tailoring challenges to give each PC time in the metaphorical 'spotlight.'

Even if you personally want a highly balanced game, D&D is generally not designed for a single play style.

I'm not sure it was originally designed with a playstyle in mind. Perhaps it happened organically. Gygax & Arneson played the game as they were creating it, and it ended up a certain way (a treasure-hunting game suitable for tournament play). People got ahold of it and created variations that played differently - though, again, probably not with a conscious design intent. By the 90s, there were lots of games that did aim for very specific modes of play, like 'troupe style play' or 'storytelling,' and 2e D&D did edge towards getting with that program, a bit. 3.0 turned away from it, and 3.x because about a very specific style of play emphasizing RAW and system mastery.

When D&D did break out of that mold and present a more flexible, balanced system, it didn't go so well, it was too unfamiliar, and enacted at the price of invalidating all that 3.x system mastery. So 5e is back to being balanced & flexible in the traditional way - through DM interventions & customization, preferably via informal and ad-hoc, rulings not rules modifications.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'd call it a high complexity system, its no simpler than 3.x or 4e, nor 2e. All of them have complex mechanics. Maybe its on the lower end of highly complex, there are some pretty stupidly detailed systems out there, but in no way shape or form is 5e 'lite', not even close.

D&D has generally been a fairly complex, often very complicated, system. It's just the nature of RPGs in general, and class & level based ones, in particular, that they're complex games, and, on top of that, D&D is also 'list based' - you add to it by adding to lists of things, not by re-combining existing elements into new material - so grows in complexity as you expand options. The basic system in 5e is as complex as any d20 game (since it is d20), and thus a bit less complex than the arbitrary/varied sub-systems of classic D&D, 2e included. But that's less complex in the sense that a rhino is lighter than an elephant - it doesn't make the rhino a hummingbird. 5e is far from a rules lite game, and only promises to become more complex as more material is added (one reason the 'slow pace of releases' shouldn't be so discouraging, it means slower growth in complexity).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Going to disagree... the Different DC's in 3e and numerous per round modifiers in 4e alone make this claim ring pretty false in my ears.

I've never understood why "lots of numbers to add" equates to "complex game."

The hundred+ pages of spells, on the other hand, definitely communicates "complex game" to me. Just as "8-12 pages of powers per class" communicates "complex" game. It may not be frighteningly complex, but it's definitely not "lite." Dungeon World is lite. Compared to DW, 5e is imperceptibly different from 3e and 4e.

To give some explanation, for anyone unfamiliar with DW: the absolutely most complex classes in the game (Cleric and Wizard) have a single extra double-sided character sheet, which includes everything you can do, spell-wise (not just a list of spell names, the effects of those spells too). Normally, characters are a single double-sided character sheet; casters are two double-sided pages. Any (default) character who acquires spellcasting does so by taking a move that lets them cast as a Cleric (of one level lower--Druids, Paladins, and Rangers), so you just add the Cleric spell list to your character sheet. "Multiclassing" is as simple as taking a move from another class, either because you have a Multiclass Move on your character's options, or because the DM gives the OK.

By comparison, every version of D&D I've ever played (2e, 3e, 4e, 5e playtest, and B/X) is dramatically more complex.

 

[Imaro]

I've never understood why "lots of numbers to add" equates to "complex game."

The hundred+ pages of spells, on the other hand, definitely communicates "complex game" to me. It may not be frighteningly complex, but it's definitely not "lite." Dungeon World is lite. Compared to DW, 5e is imperceptibly different from 3e and 4e.

Because lots of numbers to add means more to remember, more to take into consideration for interaction and more to process... It seems pretty self-explanatory to me.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've never understood why "lots of numbers to add" equates to "complex game."

Because it's complex. It may be only a fraction of the game's overall complexity, but it's a fraction that is noticeable in play, and a fraction that 5e reduced noticeably, particularly relative to 3e, via the Combat Advantage mechanic.

The hundred+ pages of spells, on the other hand, definitely communicates "complex game" to me.

Hundreds of pages is an exaggeration, 5e only has hundreds of spells, I don't think they even take up a whole hundred pages, not much more than a third or so of the PH. But, yes, that's a ton of complexity.

 

[Ratskinner]

I prefer a game in which every player has the same degree of capacity to impact the fiction via his/her PC.

There are a range of different ways this can be achieved. In D&D, given (i) the absence of GM-side mechanics to constrain/control scene-framing, and (ii) of a metagame economy driven by PC descriptors (like MHRP plot points, FATE fate points, etc), I think this is best achieved via comparable mechanical effectiveness.

I actually think this highlights my problems with considering D&D a story game. The only way I can conceive to measure "impact on the fiction" at the table is through the use of such "metagame" (still hate that term, they're "abstract" or "metafictional", not "metagame") mechanics. That is to say, what is worth 1 unit of fictional importance varies between fictional situations. The only way to deal with that is by using the human participants as a metric/gatekeeper for what's worth spending the points on. No edition of D&D does a terribly good job of this, IMO. (Even though HP are such a metafictional mechanic, players don't get to arbitrarily spend them in any meaningful way, and so they end up not being effective.)