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

[Prism]

I'm okay with this one, seems like it should be harder after a long day of adventuring.

Yes I am too. I wasn't very clear in my post. What I meant was that the guidelines don't account for this at all, nor provide any suggestions about how to plan for or adjust combats based upon the adventuring day.

Now common sense applies of course that combats will get harder towards the end, and it very much depends on how well the party conserves their strength. And in a sandbox its not that relevant anyway. But some thoughts and maybe some scaling advice would be nice.

Having a table that states xx number of xp = deadly seems kind of pointless with so many moving parts

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Acknowledge all the rational reasons for scouting. Make sure all agree the most important thing is that everybody is having fun.

Then ask them to experience the dungeon together.

That's meta-gaming, though, by asking the players to make a different decision than their characters would make. Any mechanic which encourages meta-gaming as a solution is a broken mechanic for an RPG.

A better solution would be to just ban the spell outright, or skip the twenty minutes of solo play and hand the players a map. It sounds like this spell removes an interesting element of gameplay for some groups, but that's no different than a spell to create food and water which removes a different element of gameplay that another group might enjoy. It's kind of a thing that higher spell levels will let you ignore more and more inconveniences, starting with Light and ending with Teleport.

 

[Prism]

Timing - to me and others, this is a feature, not a bug

Absolutely, preservation of resources is one of my favourite elements of the game. One of the misses of 4e for me.

 

[Prism]

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!"

Yeah this has been an interesting spell since 3e for us. I played a diviner and I could tell that the DM was getting a little frustrated having to plan their adventurers with it in mind. It was a standard spell to cast before entering anything unknown. Best way to deal with it is just assume that by 7th level you need to plan for adventures differently. If the party are not casting arcane eye, then they are dissolving walls with stone shape. Next up its scrying and contact other plane, all leading up to 17th level and Gate where the party simply avoids most of your stuff and teleports to an exact spot of their choosing on any plane they fancy.

I suppose its not too different from a druid at 1st level that turns into a spider and scouts the area before the party enters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yeah this has been an interesting spell since 3e for us. I played a diviner and I could tell that the DM was getting a little frustrated having to plan their adventurers with it in mind. It was a standard spell to cast before entering anything unknown. Best way to deal with it is just assume that by 7th level you need to plan for adventures differently. If the party are not casting arcane eye, then they are dissolving walls with stone shape. Next up its scrying and contact other plane, all leading up to 17th level and Gate where the party simply avoids most of your stuff and teleports to an exact spot of their choosing on any plane they fancy.

I suppose its not too different from a druid at 1st level that turns into a spider and scouts the area before the party enters.

Yeah, I think the only real difference is risk. That druid risks a lot, but the caster of Arcane Eye doesn't risk much, making it a much more usable strategy.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I mean, one character exploring an entire dungeon by themselves is, at the very least, like 15-20 minutes of real-world yawn-time for the rest of the party to go grab a beer. It's also a useful "I have an entire map of this place now" spell, combined with an "I know the surface-level contents of every room" spell with a dash of "I know how many creatures and of what type are living here" spell. That's not every avenue for surprise shut down, but it's a lot of 'em. It should be a useful spell (a 5th level Divination spell ain't nothin'!), but that seemed like an outsized effect that also had a negative effect on the other players of the game.

I wish I had this kind of excuse to just hand my players info about the level they're on. It would make my job (telegraphing challenges to the players in advance so they can choose which ones to engage with) soooo much easier. I could just hand them a map of the area (keeping some surprises in reserve if they wouldn't show up to Arcane Eye).

BTW, Find Familiar + Invisibility is pretty good for scouting too.

 

[TwoSix]

That's meta-gaming, though, by asking the players to make a different decision than their characters would make. Any mechanic which encourages meta-gaming as a solution is a broken mechanic for an RPG.

No.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

That's meta-gaming, though, by asking the players to make a different decision than their characters would make.

Making choices because the players find those choices to be the ones that lead to the most fun is not "meta-gaming" - it's just "gaming". Right up to the point that the player makes a decision for the character that it is out-right impossible - not just improbable, unexpected, or even unreasonable or stupid - for the character to make.

 

[Hussar]

That's meta-gaming, though, by asking the players to make a different decision than their characters would make. Any mechanic which encourages meta-gaming as a solution is a broken mechanic for an RPG.

No, it really, really isn't. It's something you happen not to like, but, you not liking it doesn't make it broken.

The tendency to conflate personal taste for value judgements is nearly universal.

A better solution would be to just ban the spell outright, or skip the twenty minutes of solo play and hand the players a map. It sounds like this spell removes an interesting element of gameplay for some groups, but that's no different than a spell to create food and water which removes a different element of gameplay that another group might enjoy. It's kind of a thing that higher spell levels will let you ignore more and more inconveniences, starting with Light and ending with Teleport.

Not really though. Foraging for food and water, in most games, is a single die roll. It's 30 seconds at the table. Adding in a Goodberry spell to the group basically means that the group is losing out on 30 seconds of play. I've never seen a group spend twenty minutes of game time on food foraging and preparation. Perhaps my experience is just too limited.

The issue with this spell is that it creates a Shadowrunesque Decker problem. The player uses his spell, which lasts a LONG time (1 minute/level, 10 minutes/level? I forget, but, at 10 actions/minute, that's a HELL of a lot of exploration) and can basically ROV the entire dungeon/building/whatever, at zero risk to the character. It's going to catch a LOT of the exploration aspect of a very large dungeon.

And the problem is, it's all one character doing it. Generally sending the wild shaped druid in to do searching results in the druid player checking stuff out for a minute or two, then coming back and reporting to the party in order to deal with whatever it is the character has found. It rarely means that the entire region gets explored. And besides that, you might even have two or three PC's going scouting at the same time - after all, it's not unlikely that a group will have more than one stealthy character.

I can see this as being a real PITA when it hits the table. This is something that's going to hit the light of day an awful lot once the players realize just how incredibly useful it is.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No, it really, really isn't. It's something you happen not to like, but, you not liking it doesn't make it broken.

You cannot claim that meta-gaming is ever a good thing for a role-playing game. At best, there may be times where it is the lesser of two evils. It is objectively and definitionally counter to role-playing, no matter how you may personally feel about it.

Not really though. Foraging for food and water, in most games, is a single die roll. It's 30 seconds at the table. Adding in a Goodberry spell to the group basically means that the group is losing out on 30 seconds of play. I've never seen a group spend twenty minutes of game time on food foraging and preparation. Perhaps my experience is just too limited.

That assumes there is food and water to be found. Maybe that's a side effect of the skill check DCs being too low in this edition, so it's unlikely to come up anyway, but the logistic problem that food creation bypasses is one where you need to track rations because you can't forage - crossing a great desert, high mountains, certain regions of the Underdark, or other planes of existence.

If you don't have Goodberry, and you can't make a skill check because the outcome is certain - there's no food to be found - then you get to play the food rationing and provisions encumbrance mini-game. If you have Goodberry, or if you're in a bountiful region of the wilderness, then you get to bypass that. It's the same as the Arcane Eye spell bypassing the "look in every room that isn't sealed" mini-game, or the Teleport spell bypassing the "travel" mini-game. Which of those mini-games is fun and worth playing, and which of those is a pointless waste of time, is going to vary from group to group.