D&D 3E/3.5 Thoughts of a 3E/4E powergamer on starting to play 5E

[Tony Vargas]

1. I pretty much strictly DM, but I agree that currently there are fewer customization options than 4e/3e from WotC. However, there is already loads of content on the DMsGuild and even just the WotC content is pretty expansive for 1.5 yrs in.

In terms of player options, 5e has less material at 1.5 years in than any edition after 1e (if you start the clock at the release of the DMG, the final of the 3 books, it might not even beat 1e, or it might not maintain the lead after another year at the current rate, I'd have to check when some books came out...).

That said, I think the slow pace of releases is a good idea. It's muting my interest in playing, but as a DM, it makes things much more manageable, and leaves a lot of room to 'grow' the system if I ever want to create an elaborate original setting like I did for AD&D.

I'm not sure I follow this.

Two examples from 4e:

Come and Get It: the goons charge the Conan-esque (or Jet Li-esque) fighter, who cuts them down as they come adjacent. That looks like a combat rule that has been influenced by the assumed story.

Valiant Smite: the paladin becomes more likely to hit the more foes surround him/her. That also looks like a combat rule that has been influenced by the assumed story.

If an instance of "assumed story" in 5e is Fireball as a signature spell, I'm not sure how 4e differs - classes had signature moves, and signature orientations more generally (in virtue of "role" mechanics, preferred stats, etc).

It differs in that "assumed story" does not mean "magic is always superior." ;P

I meant story flavor was allowed to take precedence over balance, and/or that flavorful but unbalance-able (because extremely swingy) abilities were put into 5E. Neither of the examples you mentioned from 4E affect that edition's legendary balance.

Yet both are very story-appropriate (C&GI is a blatant reference to an action-hero trope; paladins are meant to be brave and face unfavorable odds), neither is possible in 5e, and both would probably be deemed 'broken' if implemented in 5e.

It's not 'story flavor,' but 'classic feel,' that's supported by fireball arguably being a little better than it should be.

But does Fireball unbalance 5e?

Compared to other 3rd-level spells, say to Haste or Revivify?

Maybe not. Damage scales fast in 5e to make up for Bounded Accuracy's lack of 'sense of advancement,' so fireball got a couple extra dice to fit the curve @ 5th level.

What is innovative in 5e (from the D&D perspective - not from the perspective of RPGing more genrally) is the personality/inspiration system.

Never has a parenthetical qualifier been more necessary. ;P

 

[thecasualoblivion]

You gotta understand that what both of us are talking about here a lot of the time are matters of taste. Matters of taste aren't right or wrong.

Yep, if you want 4e levels of options then 5e is not going to float the boat yet (of course when we ran 4e we only used the first PHB + errata, I can't keep up with all those options as a DM, so from that prospective a prefer fewer options). Obviously it is a personal opinion, but with background, race, class, & subclass there seem to be more than enough options for my group for over a year's worth of enjoyment. I have two multi-classed characters and 4 single-class characters and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. I would be curious how you felt when if you had a group of players that play like you and played through a 15-20 lvl campaign and see what you thought then.

I found with 4E you didn't need to keep up with player options. The game generally just worked, and when it (rarely)broke it broke on the side of something being too weak, not too strong. I ran 4E under the "everything is core" banner, let the players do whatever they wanted(by RAW), created and ran my adventures based on DMG guidelines alone without any real reference to what the PC's abilities were, and it all just worked.

What 5E gives might be enough for you but it's not enough for me. I'm not sure what you mean by the last part. Do you mean a level 15-20 game in 5E or some other system. My longest game in 4E went from level 1-26(before people moving ended it a little early). For 5E, I would expect like minded people not to play in that sort of game. The people I game with who match my tastes most closely either play 5E grudgingly(one is the local RPGA chief), refuse to play 5E and play something else instead, or quit RPGs altogether over the edition wars. Curse of Strahd is set over levels 1-10. We'll see where things are after that.

I don't hand out advantage, the players grab it - total player empowerment by RAW. There are just a boat load of methods to get advantage by RAW. That being said, they don't even need advantage to kick ass. I think you would need to play in a group with like minded players to see it, but you drop a bless on the group and suddenly your level 1 players are kicking ass.

Im not sure I follow. I've read the 5E PHB cover to cover a few times, and the number of abilities I saw that grant advantage by using the system alone are few and far between. In the 8 or so games I've played at a table, rolling with advantage has been fairly rare, I'd reckon 5-10% of the time on the whole. Mileage seems to vary.

What do mean - what in isolation?

OK, kinda off odd to pick and choose which part of which edition you want to compare to, but whatever. How is the combat not like / inferior to 2e and 13th age in your opinion?

I compare 5E to 2E and 13th age because being a light and fast system is the main thing to me that 5E has going for it. 4E and 3E as it's generally played(I think limiting 3E to E6 could be lighter) are not. I have played 2E extensively and prefer it to 5E, for reasons I went into detail about a few pages back. 13th Age I've only played a handful of sessions of, and it's not as light as 5E, but it's lighter than 3E/4E and a good compromise between speed and crunch. 13th Age generally isn't a random or boring compared to 5E, most PCs have more interesting things to do turn to turn(in general less spamming), and combat doesn't feel as trivial/irrelevant, each encounter feels like it matters as opposed to just being a speed bump that drains resources.

OK, so why are so heavily involved in a thread about 5e, even if you did start it? If you don't like something, and you don't want to play it, why are you discussing it? Your not looking to find ways to play 5e that you might enjoy, you are not looking for something you may have missed, you are just ranting? Is that correct? Just play what you like, what is the point of all this.

Because now and for the foreseeable future I'm now a 5E player. It's not that I don't want to play it so much that I'd much rather play something else. Wednesday nights between 6-9pm, there isn't another choice.

Obviously experiences vary, but we made the switch to 5e because the core is so easily modified that we found it easier to customize to how we want play then to continue with 4e. From my experience it is really uniquely modular and easily customize-able.

You found 5E to be a closer fit to what you wanted than 4E. Me and my group were and still are fine with 4E more or less as written, using "everything is core", aside from it being too slow. I'm not finding 5E particularly modular. It really has a specific feel to it, more than 2E or 3E, it I find modifying it tends to result in unintended consequences, which I don't like.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I found with 4E you didn't need to keep up with player options. The game generally just worked, and when it (rarely)broke it broke on the side of something being too weak, not too strong. I ran 4E under the "everything is core" banner, let the players do whatever they wanted(by RAW), created and ran my adventures based on DMG guidelines alone without any real reference to what the PC's abilities were, and it all just worked.

4e was terribly easy to run (on the topic of DMPCs, as balanced and 'above board' as 4e tended to run, a DNPC - preferably a companion character - was less problematic). That made it a different kind of fun to run than I've been having with 5e - though I find that now that I've gotten back to a more improvised style, I'm using it more when I run 4e, as well.

Obviously experiences vary, but we made the switch to 5e because the core is so easily modified... From my experience it is really uniquely modular and easily customize-able.

5e lends itself to customization, certainly, but I hesitate to endorse it as 'modular' - it has some recommended variants in the DMG, but they don't have the plug-and-play quality I'd expect from the term. And there's certainly nothing unique about it. DMs have always been able to customize D&D, and the attitude 5e has of being accepting of that (as radical as it seems compared to the 3.x community's RAW-obsession) is as much a call back to the classic game as anything else in 5e (and there's lots of calling back to the classic game in 5e).

 

[dave2008]

You gotta understand that what both of us are talking about here a lot of the time are matters of taste. Matters of taste aren't right or wrong.

100% agree

I found with 4E you didn't need to keep up with player options. The game generally just worked, and when it (rarely)broke it broke on the side of something being too weak, not too strong. I ran 4E under the "everything is core" banner, let the players do whatever they wanted(by RAW), created and ran my adventures based on DMG guidelines alone without any real reference to what the PC's abilities were, and it all just worked.

That was basically how I played, but I would say it worked less then what I am finding in 5e. There are some ways to abuse/use the action economy in 4e that I just gave up and assumed the players knew what they were doing. The options lead to a lot of broken (IMO) options/combinations/synergies. In order to keep up with the players I had to heavily modify encounters and monsters. I am having the same problem in 5e, but to a lesser degree.

What 5E gives might be enough for you but it's not enough for me. I'm not sure what you mean by the last part. Do you mean a level 15-20 game in 5E or some other system. My longest game in 4E went from level 1-26(before people moving ended it a little early). For 5E, I would expect like minded people not to play in that sort of game. The people I game with who match my tastes most closely either play 5E grudgingly(one is the local RPGA chief), refuse to play 5E and play something else instead, or quit RPGs altogether over the edition wars. Curse of Strahd is set over levels 1-10. We'll see where things are after that.

I mean I would be interested in how you felt after being in a 5e campaign the went from 1-15 or 20 levels. The first three AP were 1-15 btw.

Im not sure I follow. I've read the 5E PHB cover to cover a few times, and the number of abilities I saw that grant advantage by using the system alone are few and far between. In the 8 or so games I've played at a table, rolling with advantage has been fairly rare, I'd reckon 5-10% of the time on the whole. Mileage seems to vary.

Check out this link for some more ideas: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/show...Exhaustive-List-of-Advantage-and-Disadvantage

If you want to maximize for advantage you can pretty much have it up all the time. But like I said, you don't need advantage to kick butt in 5e, mostly because of BA.

I compare 5E to 2E and 13th age because being a light and fast system is the main thing to me that 5E has going for it. 4E and 3E as it's generally played(I think limiting 3E to E6 could be lighter) are not. I have played 2E extensively and prefer it to 5E, for reasons I went into detail about a few pages back. 13th Age I've only played a handful of sessions of, and it's not as light as 5E, but it's lighter than 3E/4E and a good compromise between speed and crunch. 13th Age generally isn't a random or boring compared to 5E, most PCs have more interesting things to do turn to turn(in general less spamming), and combat doesn't feel as trivial/irrelevant, each encounter feels like it matters as opposed to just being a speed bump that drains resources.

I think it comes down to a matter of taste like you said. My PCs seem to have plenty of interesting things to do, at least relative to the 4 yrs we played 4e. In 4e we had a lot more spamming of at-will powers than we are seeing in 5e.

Because now and for the foreseeable future I'm now a 5E player. It's not that I don't want to play it so much that I'd much rather play something else. Wednesday nights between 6-9pm, there isn't another choice.

Got it. Do you have the choice of another group that would play more your style?

You found 5E to be a closer fit to what you wanted than 4E. Me and my group were and still are fine with 4E more or less as written, using "everything is core", aside from it being too slow. I'm not finding 5E particularly modular. It really has a specific feel to it, more than 2E or 3E, it I find modifying it tends to result in unintended consequences, which I don't like.

No 5e is not closer to what I want than 4e, I would say they are about equally apart from what I want. I like 4e and 5e equally well from a DM perspective and I would happily still DM 4e (or my house ruled version of it). However, I find 5e much easier for me to modify as a DM with less consequences at the table than in 4e. I think this is mostly because of all the options, everything is core approach in 4e always seemed to result in unintended consequences when you made a change.

 

[dave2008]

5e lends itself to customization, certainly, but I hesitate to endorse it as 'modular' - it has some recommended variants in the DMG, but they don't have the plug-and-play quality I'd expect from the term. And there's certainly nothing unique about it. DMs have always been able to customize D&D, and the attitude 5e has of being accepting of that (as radical as it seems compared to the 3.x community's RAW-obsession) is as much a call back to the classic game as anything else in 5e (and there's lots of calling back to the classic game in 5e).

Agreed, I found it a lot easier to adapt my 26 pages on AD&D house rules to 5e then I did to 4e though. Plus I've added some bits of 4e to 5e with relative ease.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There are some ways to abuse/use the action economy in 4e that I just gave up and assumed the players knew what they were doing.

I thought those loopholes were closed? Or were similar ones re-opened by Essentials (issuing fewer updates turned out not to be the same thing as needing less errata).

My PCs seem to have plenty of interesting things to do, at least relative to the 4 yrs we played 4e. In 4e we had a lot more spamming of at-will powers than we are seeing in 5e.

What sort of encounters/day does your group tend towards? If you tend to be shy of the 6-8 recommended for 5e, for instance, casters will rarely have to fall back on at-wills (cantrips) even at modest levels - and, of course, the few non-casters don't have much of anything but 'at-wills.'

No 5e is not closer to what I want than 4e, I would say they are about equally apart from what I want. I like 4e and 5e equally well from a DM perspective and I would happily still DM 4e (or my house ruled version of it). However, I find 5e much easier for me to modify as a DM with less consequences at the table than in 4e. I think this is mostly because of all the options, everything is core approach in 4e always seemed to result in unintended consequences when you made a change.

I agree that 5e much more amenable to modding without inadvertently making it 'worse' - indeed, modding it is highly desirable to make it 'better' for whatever value of 'better' works for you.

Mechanically tweeking 4e was rarely worth the effort, it generally worked well enough, mechanically, and I could always get whatever I felt was missing by re-skinning an existing element (on the player side) or adding a new one (on the DM side). In 5e, changing or adding things on the DM side is viable, but the player side is more matter or requisitioning the needed mod from the DM.

Agreed, I found it a lot easier to adapt my 26 pages on AD&D house rules to 5e then I did to 4e though. Plus I've added some bits of 4e to 5e with relative ease.

Of course. I've never tried to adapt the extensive variants I used for AD&D (beyond adapting them from 1e to 2e), but I'm sure it'd be fairly straightforward to port them over to 5e, since 5e is so much like the classic game in so many ways. Porting them to 3e or 4e would be both potentially more problematic because of the basic mechanical differences, and there'd be less call for it, since there are variants I used - like 'confirming' criticals or proportional healing - that 3e or 4e already handled in their own ways, anyhow.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

That was basically how I played, but I would say it worked less then what I am finding in 5e. There are some ways to abuse/use the action economy in 4e that I just gave up and assumed the players knew what they were doing. The options lead to a lot of broken (IMO) options/combinations/synergies. In order to keep up with the players I had to heavily modify encounters and monsters. I am having the same problem in 5e, but to a lesser degree.

You have me a bit curious and confused with your description here of 4E. We played highly optimized PCs, by RAW, against monsters straight out of the MMs, generally stayed within the level+1 to level+4 range, and never encountered anything like abuse of the action economy or broken options/combinations/synergies. These were often PCs nearly straight out of the optimization guides. As a DM I had the highest level of system mastery at the table, and was also the most skilled tactical wargamer, which I imagine had an impact, but I never saw an issue keeping up with the players. It was rarely an issue when the situation was reversed and I was the player. Yeah, I tended to be the biggest contributor and sometimes I'd come up with something clever that trivialized an encounter, but was rarely a case of the DM struggling to keep up.

I'm not sure where the issue in 5E is, though you don't sound like you're following the 6-8 encounter per day guidelines.

I mean I would be interested in how you felt after being in a 5e campaign the went from 1-15 or 20 levels. The first three AP were 1-15 btw.

I'd be curious to see where caster dominance starts, or what the sweet spot for me personally would be. I imagine it would be narrower than for most,

Check out this link for some more ideas: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/show...Exhaustive-List-of-Advantage-and-Disadvantage

If you want to maximize for advantage you can pretty much have it up all the time. But like I said, you don't need advantage to kick butt in 5e, mostly because of BA.

Theres things like reckless attack for Barbarian and darkness monk, but I find it hard to believe that it's that easy across the board.

I think it comes down to a matter of taste like you said. My PCs seem to have plenty of interesting things to do, at least relative to the 4 yrs we played 4e. In 4e we had a lot more spamming of at-will powers than we are seeing in 5e.

In my experience, optimized PCs would defeat a level appropriate encounter in 3-6 rounds. A level 11 non-essentials PC with a theme would have 5 encounter attack powers. Add in Daily powers, and past a certain point at-will use became rare. At level 3 you would have 3 encounter powers. At-Will spam in 4E in my experience was either a failure state(the encounter went too long because of bad luck, player mistakes, or bad DM design) or something you built your character specifically to do.

Looking at 5E, with the exception of full casters it looks like at-will spam is more or less what you do. I'm playing a Paladin right now, and given the 6-8 encounter day I don't really see a future where my limited per day abilities allow me to not spam a basic attack most turns.

Got it. Do you have the choice of another group that would play more your style?

Aside from their annoying tendency to go pixel bitching, I'm pretty ok with this group. They are a fun and casual group, about half of whom I know from 4E Living Forgotten Realms games.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

This is the list in question

Attacks:
- Enemy is Blinded
- Enemy is Paralyzed
- You are Invisible
- Enemy is Prone, and you are within 5 feet
- Enemy is Restrained
- Enemy is Stunned
- Enemy is Unconscious
- You have “Help” from an ally
- You are hidden, or the enemy is otherwise unaware of your presence
- Vengeance Paladin’s Vow of Enmity
- The creature is threatened by one or more of your allies (optional rule)
- If the target is affected by Faerie Fire (spell) and you can see them
- You are the target of Foresight (spell)
- The target has been hit by Guiding Bolt (spell), and the casters next turn has not started
- The target is affected by Otto’s Irresistible Dance (spell)
- True Strike (spell) grants advantage on your next attack against the target
- You attack with Shocking Grasp, and the target is wearing metal armor
- Reckless Attack (Barbarian, 2nd level)
- Assassinate (Rogue, 3rd level): Advantage against targets that have not taken a turn in combat
- Mounted Combatant (Feat) advantage against unmounted creatures smaller than your mount
- Inspiration

Most of this list is either situational or requires burning daily resources. I look at this list and don't see how anyone is getting advantage most of the time unless they are something like a darkness monk, barbarian, or spamming stealth(and spamming stealth is such a murky rules issue that I wouldn't take it for granted it was available). Not in terms of getting advantage most of the time over the course of a 6-8 encounter day.

 

[JonnyP71]

The whole system is really much more flexible than that list - if you adopt the rule of cool !

If a player says to me - "I attempt to leap onto the table, kick the bowl of vegetables into the face of the Lord at the end of the table, then jump on him and grapple him".... my reply would be - "Make an athletics check, if you pass it you can make the grapple attempt with advantage!"

(I'd make a secret Dex save for the Lord in question, if the PC's Athletics check is higher then they get advantage)

 

[Sunseeker]

Not so much, no, because players are limited in their excesses by both needing to follow the rules, and by the judgment of the DM. While the DM, ultimately, isn't even restrained by the rules (and in games like 5e is particularly encouraged not to be so).

The DM is retrained, ultimately, by the players. So if the players expect the DM to constantly "make it up" well I assume they expect him to apply the same to them, but then, that's a rule of it's own isn't it?

Which is a particular issue when the rules frequently punt to the DM for a ruling.

...

Every check in essence calls for a ruling. That's an intentional design feature that encourages players to be accepting of rulings - a cornerstone of 5e's DM Empowerment. You can't, and shouldn't, try to evade such responsibility as a DM, but you should rule for the good of the campaign (the story, the players' enjoyment, &c), and running a DMPC can introduce quite a temptation to do otherwise. Especially if you're running primarily to get a play experience that requires extensive use of modules & house-ruling...

When I speak of "sticking to the rules" that equally applies to "stick to the rulings". Every check is not even remotely so unique as to require a new and different ruling. As Moonsong said they are unable to do: the issue is self-policing. Hold yourself to the same standard you hold everyone else. Once you've made a ruling, stick to that ruling. If every single iota of the game needs a ruling, then we might as well throw the book out the window because it's obviously useless, since the purpose of a rulebook is to provide rules.

DM Empowerment is as much a misnomer as the wording of Stealth in 5E. If you have to constantly make rules, you're not empowered you're burdened. Empowerment is allowing a DM to go above and beyond what the rules allow or call for, in order to make the game better. A burden is requiring the DM to constantly make rulings because the rules do not serve their purpose.

How can you tell the difference? It's simple:

Can you play 5E, right out of the box, without making any rulings?

No. You cannot. (see: Stealth)

Therefore, 5E is not empowering. It is burdening. The rules aren't rules, they're guidelines, or suggestions. It's not empowering to be told as a DM, that you have to always be ready to make a ruling on anything in the game. It IS empowering when the DM has the choice to make a ruling or say "no, it's by-the-book.". Empowerment is about choice, 5E does not provide choice. It forces the DM to make rulings, because the rules to not provide adequate instruction on how to perform many, often simple tasks.