D&D 5E What official material is considered problematic to the point where it is not balanced and presents a problem?

[Corpsetaker]

I've seen a few posters talk about how official D&D material has it's share of problems. Now I can understand that past editions had their problems mechanically, but what problems are their with the current game?

I've gone through and I don't really see anything that's game breaking or is a cause for concern. I know of all the wacky combos of 3rd and 4th edition but I don't see those in this current edition. I know there has been some errata, but that seems to have just cleared some things up.

People give out about people being cautious over 3PP mechanical options and counter with, "well official D&D material has it's problems as well", but is this more or less a knee-jerk reaction to what has come before? Now mind you a lot of the 5th edition fan made material on DMsGuild has lots of issues with balance and DM's are justified in being cautious, but has 5th edition given anyone a cause for concern with regards to balance?

PS: UA material doesn't count because it's not official material, it's basically just playtest material that we are allowed to playtest for ourselves and give feedback on.

 

[I'm A Banana]

A short list of RAWs That Are Kind Of Borked IMO:

• Stealth
• Perception vs. Investigation
• Surprise/Ambushes
• Mounts (especially as they relate to beastmaster rangers)
• The rules for what occupies each of your "hand slots" during a fight and what it takes to swap out those slots

Depending on who you ask, you might add certain feats (GWM, Sharpshooter, Crossbow Expert, Polearm Master), certain classes/subclasses (Champions, Beast Masters, Sorcerers, Moon Druids), and the encounter guidelines ("I need to go 8x Deadly to even have my party feel a SLIGHT challenge!" / "These don't work well for draining all of a party's resources in 1 encounter") to the list, though I personally think those are A-OK.

Now mind you a lot of the 5th edition fan made material on DMsGuild has lots of issues with balance and DM's are justified in being cautious, but has 5th edition given anyone a cause for concern with regards to balance?

"Balance" is a moving target. If balance falls in a forest and nobody is around, does it make a sound? Or, rather, if a DM makes rulings about the wonky rules and everyone is on the same page and happy, does it matter if it's balanced? If it favors WIS characters over INT characters or makes spellcasting a little easier or discourages ambushes, but nobody at the table cares, do we actually have a problem? If someone were to suddenly care, would there be a problem then?

I don't think of balance as an end in and of itself, but a tool in the service of a fun game. A little balance goes a long way, but you quickly get diminishing returns, and it can have some negative effects. One of those negative effects is if the Unbalanced Boogeyman keeps you away from potentially awesome and fun stuff just because you might have to tell a player, "Hey, that seems weirdly powerful, maybe we should tone it down?"

 

[Prism]

Encounter design guidelines. They are presented as a single set of calculated guidelines however there are a number of factors that seem to unbalance them.

Timing - an encounter early in the day or after a short rest can be a very different affair than the same encounter after a series of others, when the party is low on resources and on less than half hit points.

Party size - it seems to me that parties of 5 or more seem to have very little trouble with typical encounters. Our group consists of 4 PCs and although we are experienced players we do find hard and deadly encounters pretty difficult (although not always.. see above). A party of 4 usually has a weakness within it like only 1 dedicated melee type, or no ranged, or no healer etc.

DM influence - I'm a fairly soft DM combat wise, but two of our group play hard as DMs. Their monsters use terrain, flee and regroup, target spellcasters (if tactical/intelligent), focus fire, sometimes have magic items etc. Fair fights are generally hard.

How you balance for this variance I don't know, but a couple of pages in the DMG doesn't seem enough.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think those items mentioned already by [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] and [MENTION=9501]Prism[/MENTION] summarize most of the areas folks have cited as being an issue. Some of the feats, especially the -5/+10 damage ones, seem to be a big point of contention. And the encounters per day expectation of the game.

Personally, I don't have strong feelings about these myself...I think they're easily mitigated. However, the more that is added to the game, the greater the chances that there will be some material that negatively affects the game.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Party size - it seems to me that parties of 5 or more seem to have very little trouble with typical encounters. Our group consists of 4 PCs and although we are experienced players we do find hard and deadly encounters pretty difficult (although not always.. see above). A party of 4 usually has a weakness within it like only 1 dedicated melee type, or no ranged, or no healer etc.

But isn't that essentially an issue as a DM and not the rules?

 

[Zardnaar]

A short list of RAWs That Are Kind Of Borked IMO:

• Stealth
• Perception vs. Investigation
• Surprise/Ambushes
• Mounts (especially as they relate to beastmaster rangers)
• The rules for what occupies each of your "hand slots" during a fight and what it takes to swap out those slots

Depending on who you ask, you might add certain feats (GWM, Sharpshooter, Crossbow Expert, Polearm Master), certain classes/subclasses (Champions, Beast Masters, Sorcerers, Moon Druids), and the encounter guidelines ("I need to go 8x Deadly to even have my party feel a SLIGHT challenge!" / "These don't work well for draining all of a party's resources in 1 encounter") to the list, though I personally think those are A-OK.


"Balance" is a moving target. If balance falls in a forest and nobody is around, does it make a sound? Or, rather, if a DM makes rulings about the wonky rules and everyone is on the same page and happy, does it matter if it's balanced? If it favors WIS characters over INT characters or makes spellcasting a little easier or discourages ambushes, but nobody at the table cares, do we actually have a problem? If someone were to suddenly care, would there be a problem then?

I don't think of balance as an end in and of itself, but a tool in the service of a fun game. A little balance goes a long way, but you quickly get diminishing returns, and it can have some negative effects. One of those negative effects is if the Unbalanced Boogeyman keeps you away from potentially awesome and fun stuff just because you might have to tell a player, "Hey, that seems weirdly powerful, maybe we should tone it down?"

I think I agree with all of those. I will add to the list.

Armor and how it functions -may as well have 2 armor types in the game- studded leather and plate.

Saving throws- at higher levels and intelligence saves being all but useless.

A few feats- sharpshooter is the big one IMHO, Great Weapon and Polearm Master to a lesser extent maybe the healer feat. They are just better than the other feats PAM for example lets you use your bonus action and reaction, healer feat makes pacing hard for the DM, the -5/+10 feats are abuse able.

Some of the classes are underpowered relative to other subclasses let alone other classes (Champion, Land Druid, Valor Bard, Wild mage, Elemental Monk, Beastmaster Ranger).

Encounter rules. They are not that good an d the books do not make the short rest thing clear.

Monster design/CRs. Partly related to encounter rules but its rough. Some monsters are stupidly nasty for their CRs while others are pitiful.

Dexterity vs strength. Without feats one is a lot better(dex), with feats dex based melee sucks.




A level 11 fighter for example uses a greatsword and a ranged encounter happens. He puts his sword away has to attack and the next round. The next round he pulls out a spear or javelin and throws it only making one attack because you can only draw 1 weapon a turn.

Its one of the few situations where dex based is an advantage. A dual wielder with the fear walks around with 1 weapon drawn. If he needs to draw another sword they have that options or they can put the sword away and draw a bow and immediately have 3 attacks with it. Over the 2 rounds the dex based fighter gets 6 attacks vs the strength based fighters 1 attack.

Without feats the combat styles are a lot more balanced and the dex based fighter from the above example only get 3 attacks vs the strength based fighters 1. The combat styles are very narrow though in regards to balance and it is a long time befoe great weapon pays off vs the other two styles and even then only for a fighter. There is less opportunity cost going dex based as without feat you can have 20 dex by level 8 with every class. Dex based you can be good at range and melee and dex has a lot more use in regards to skills, initiative, saves. Without Polearm/Shield/Greatweapon master strength based melee (or anything really) sucks.

 

[Ath-kethin]

I haven't had any issues myself, but based on complaints from a few parties I think it's safe to say that material from the Player's Handbook should be avoided at all costs.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Are those game breakers though? Do they cause you to become cautious any time Wizards introduces more crunch into their products?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Are those game breakers though? Do they cause you to become cautious any time Wizards introduces more crunch into their products?

I'm just as cautious with Wizard's products as I would be with any other product I'd add to my game: generally permissive, but I'll keep an eye out for anything that seems wonky and it's always provisional. With that standard, it's never been the case that anything from WotC or otherwise has broken my games - if I'm not able to get out ahead of it, I'm able to evaluate it after the fact and protect for it.

Like, last game, our party diviner picked up Arcane Eye and used it to scout out the dungeon. My initial reaction was "Jeebus criminey, this is a broke-ass spell. It just NUKES the exploration element of the game from orbit. An hour later, you have a perfect map of the dungeon, congratulations, guess all my surprises are over!" But taking a deep breath, I was able to talk with the player and arrive at a consensus: "Hey, this seems kind of huge...mind if we nerf it? Maybe say it takes you 5 minutes per room? That still seems like a LOT of scouting. Is it enough?" Player seemed cool with that nerf. I'm still mulling over whether that was strictly necessary or not, but that's how every conversation goes about anything that happens at my tables if it seems too much: let's talk and get at something we're both comfortable with.

That is the case regardless of the publisher of the material.

 

[Sacrosanct]

People give out about people being cautious over 3PP mechanical options and counter with, "well official D&D material has it's problems as well", but is this more or less a knee-jerk reaction to what has come before? Now mind you a lot of the 5th edition fan made material on DMsGuild has lots of issues with balance and DM's are justified in being cautious, but has 5th edition given anyone a cause for concern with regards to balance?
.

This part, it drips with irony. For example, while some people have said "official D&D material has problems", what people have said more often is that there is a lot of good non-official material. Why you would focus on the minority reason and ignore the most often used one is beyond me. Wait, no it's not. You have a clear agenda. Secondly, if people did say that, it's no more a knee jerk reaction than someone automatically saying that 3PP is bad, which is what you just did in the next sentence. Hence the irony.

And while I don't have a lot of issues with official stuff, apparently a lot of people have issues with things like GWM or Sharpshooter feats, since we have threads about them once a month of people complaining about them.

I also find it odd that you'd say you "...don't really see anything that's game breaking or is a cause for concern." since since 5e has been released, you've done nothing but complain about how bad it is. If someone constantly complains about how bad something is, that tells me that they probably see a cause for concern. That, or they just want to complain for the sake of complaining and/or trolling.