D&D 5E What is "broken" in 5e?

[CapnZapp]

Shield is ... problematic. The problem is that a d20 has so much variation compared to the delta of to hit vs. AC under bounded accuracy that you need a high bonus to overcome the die and make it worthwhile in the first place. But without needing to be upcast it scales very well, and it's virtually a get-out-of-jail-free once the resource cost of a 1st level spell slot diminishes. Also as a 1st level spell it's very easy to pick it up via cherry-picking.

The harsh truth is that +5 is equally powerful and desirable at every level. While the cost of a first level spell slot only diminishes as you level up.

By this logic Shield should require a higher spell slot in order to provide defense for a higher level character. Let me illustrate:

An invisible barrier of magical force appears and protects you. Until the start of your next turn, you have a bonus to AC equal to 7 minus your proficiency bonus (maximum 5), including against the triggering attack, and you take no damage from magic missile.

At higher levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the AC bonus is increased by one (maximum is still 5) for each slot level above 1st.​

 

[CapnZapp]

You know, I mentions things that I could fix with house rules, but didn't mention my absolute biggest complaint with 5e. It's the only thing about 5e that I hate.

Expected Encounters per Long or Short Rests - this is a killer. The game really is balanced around 6-8 encounters per long rest and 2-3 per short rest. People talk about how their players walk all over encounters, and then hand wave that it's their fault when it's the only encounter in a day and the players know it. It's insidious because it is freaking huge in second order effects but not so obvious directly.

Tying getting everything back to a period of time, has a lot of verisimilitude. But then expecting that DMs will want to run every adventuring day so that there are no combat encounters, or 6-8 medium/difficult encounters breaks everything. Very often that number doesn't make sense for what's happening. Heck, I use the 5 Room Dungeon design philosophy often, I don't have 6-8 combat encounters planned for the whole adventure. I run evenings every other week and would be lucky to get 2 medium difficulty combats in, so we're talking about 1.5-2 MONTHS of real time for each adventuring day to maintain the pace it's balanced against.

You can run more difficult combats. They don't use up resources at the same rate. Buffs may last for a full combat regardless of how difficult, etc. It helps, it's not a solution.

Basically, I want, no I need the freedom to: not force a certain amount of combats between people sleeping. But at the least make it a more reasonable like 3-4 encounters and short rest become per-encounter.

My "worst case" solution above will give me the least satisfaction but will also require redoing the resource management and balance of every class. At that point just play another game.

But the other part can be handled by to unlatching regaining resources from sleeping. There are DMG variants that change it to a week or whatever. Frankly, I'd rather have it based on my needs for my current adventure, so I'd rather be a bit gamist and make short rest resources come back after every other fight and long rest come back after every 6 fights. Regardless of sleeping. (Maybe leave recuperating HD to sleep.) But that can break the narrative and verisimilitude easily.

My thoughts EXACTLY.

So very much would be gained if the PHB and DMG stopped promising a long rest a day unless the DM actively is a dick, and instead began by saying the rest interval is up the DM and the adventure.

THEN it could continue by saying many adventures work well with a hour's short rest and a day's long rest, but by this time players can't expect and demand these rest durations, they can only hope for them.

 

[CapnZapp]

If what you say is true, we should be seeing very few one-handed melee weapons wielded by fighters. Perhaps that is the case. Since I play in one group and I don't participate in organized play nor attend gaming conventions, I don't really know what it is that constitutes normative play. But I do know that I chose a longsword and a shield for my battlemaster. He gets +2 to AC and he knocks adversaries prone as a bonus action via the Shield Master feat. I've played the character through 11 levels and I'm very happy with my choices.

We also have a champion in our party. He's a great weapon guy. GWF/GWM/Polarm Master. He gets knocked down to 0 hp a lot. I don't. And I'm pretty sure I out-damage him, though we aren't keeping score.

As for Sharpshooter/Crossbow Expert, no one in our party of seven, over two 5e campaigns so far, has seen fit to play an archer. Too boring. Melee is where it's at, or spellcasting. Or both. In fact, we have an all-melee party, though most of them are also spellcasters. All-melee by accident. With 7 players. And it's not the first time it's happened. We had an all-melee party in 4e as well. Great campaign. I was the tactical warlord. I had 6 permanently summoned monsters. My DPR was insane.

This could all be attributed to playing style, our DM, our micro-culture. Or, it could be that some people really want to do the most damage per round; that's what makes them happy, while other people find their happiness elsewhere. Between the shield smash, Trip Attack, Menacing Attack and Pushing Attack, my battlemaster is quite the defender, which brings me joy. Commanders Strike helps me recall those salad days as a warlord, or it would if our swashbuckler ever tarried next to a target. Not that I blame him. I don't either. The champion does. Heh. And Fleet of Foot allows me to, on occasion, dance across the battlegrid. This sword & board guy is a hoot.

Maybe we don't need a Medium Weapon Master feat. If there was such a thing, would I take it? I don't know. Are feats taxes? We just hit 12th level last night. I'm trying to decide between Martial Adept and Mobile. Mobile will cut into Riposte, but I'll be a better dancer. People who are focused on DPR, I don't know what game they're playing. But there are some feats for them. I don't know that we need more.

This is a perfect example of responding the right way.

Instead of accusing me of producing faulty findings this poster simply relates how he and his group haven't come across the issues I have.

The important take way, however, is:
* just because Alatar hasn't experienced these issues doesn't mean they aren't real
* if the game were to fix the issues, gamers like Alatar would likely not even notice the difference (especially since they haven't explored that area and those builds that manifest the issues).

Thank you

 

[Willie the Duck]

2/ of my 5E core books have fallen apart. Yet my 1E stuff is fine. Progress.

That is not the normal experience of 1e material (assuming your home library has material from the entire 1e timeframe).

 

[Sacrosanct]

That is not the normal experience of 1e material (assuming your home library has material from the entire 1e timeframe).

LOL, truth. Keep in mind I played AD&D from 1981 to 2012 before the playtest as my primary game. Some books held up great, like the original big 3 original printings and are still going strong after 35 years of continuous use. But my UA, OA, 2e PHB first printing, and a few others fell apart weeks after they came out. I have so much tape and crap on those books they probably weigh 5 pounds each lol.

 

[Bacon Bits]

You know, I mentions things that I could fix with house rules, but didn't mention my absolute biggest complaint with 5e. It's the only thing about 5e that I hate.

Expected Encounters per Long or Short Rests - this is a killer. The game really is balanced around 6-8 encounters per long rest and 2-3 per short rest. People talk about how their players walk all over encounters, and then hand wave that it's their fault when it's the only encounter in a day and the players know it. It's insidious because it is freaking huge in second order effects but not so obvious directly.

Tying getting everything back to a period of time, has a lot of verisimilitude. But then expecting that DMs will want to run every adventuring day so that there are no combat encounters, or 6-8 medium/difficult encounters breaks everything. Very often that number doesn't make sense for what's happening. Heck, I use the 5 Room Dungeon design philosophy often, I don't have 6-8 combat encounters planned for the whole adventure. I run evenings every other week and would be lucky to get 2 medium difficulty combats in, so we're talking about 1.5-2 MONTHS of real time for each adventuring day to maintain the pace it's balanced against.

You can run more difficult combats. They don't use up resources at the same rate. Buffs may last for a full combat regardless of how difficult, etc. It helps, it's not a solution.

Basically, I want, no I need the freedom to: not force a certain amount of combats between people sleeping. But at the least make it a more reasonable like 3-4 encounters and short rest become per-encounter.

My "worst case" solution above will give me the least satisfaction but will also require redoing the resource management and balance of every class. At that point just play another game.

But the other part can be handled by to unlatching regaining resources from sleeping. There are DMG variants that change it to a week or whatever. Frankly, I'd rather have it based on my needs for my current adventure, so I'd rather be a bit gamist and make short rest resources come back after every other fight and long rest come back after every 6 fights. Regardless of sleeping. (Maybe leave recuperating HD to sleep.) But that can break the narrative and verisimilitude easily.

This is my biggest gripe with 5e. It's the reason that I've often said that short rests don't work for us.

In my primary group that still plays regularly, we run a big group. 7 or 8 players. Additionally, we don't like easy encounters. They're always Deadly++. If the module says that for a party of 5 there should be a troll, we run it such that there's 2 trolls. And 2 more that were out on patrol that show up in the third round. This means that regular encounters just get rolled because we always expect bad situations to get much worse. Our adventuring days are 2-3 combat encounters, with some single encounter days and some 4 encounter days being spread about. 6-8? That's just laughable.

We've played this way -- in the same group with largely the same people -- for over 20 years. We didn't change for 3e. We didn't change for 4e. We're not changing for 5e. We like the tension it adds. We don't like encounters that don't really challenge the party. They're a waste of game time. Adventuring is dangerous business, and you don't start out by travelling to the dungeon that says "Appropriate For Level 1 Adventurers" on a sign outside the door even if that's what it says on the module cover.

It does create a real problem, however, because short rest classes are terrible if you get 0-1 short rests a day. As you progress in levels, you tend to short rest less and less as it is, but if you're not getting your requisite 2 short rests a day, then long rest classes get significantly better.

There needs to be a way for a DM to manipulate the encounter rate without breaking the class balance between long and short rest classes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Expected Encounters per Long or Short Rests - this is a killer. The game really is balanced around 6-8 encounters per long rest and 2-3 per short rest. People talk about how their players walk all over encounters, and then hand wave that it's their fault when it's the only encounter in a day and the players know it. It's insidious because it is freaking huge in second order effects but not so obvious directly.

Heh. 5e isn't really balanced around the 6-8 encounter/2-3 short rest day, that's more the point it gets closest to balanced, really. ;P
Seriously, though, that guideline is perhaps the clearest example of Mike 'promising' us something in the playtest and coming through with it as promised. It's that "crystal clear guidance" he committed to. It's funny that so many people are so upset to see WotC deliver.

It /is/ just a guideline, and just a starting point - balance won't be automatic for every table - but it's a darn good start, and it's an explicit guideline, virtually for the first time (or, at least, clearer or more definite than in 3e or 4e).

Basically, I want, no I need the freedom to: not force a certain amount of combats between people sleeping. But at the least make it a more reasonable like 3-4 encounters and short rest become per-encounter.

For that you would need resource-balance among classes. Obviously, 5e didn't go there, and it'd be hard to impose at this late date (short of an expedient like having everyone play the same class*).
















* Edit: Y'konw, that might not be as crazy as it sounds. Some classes, like Cleric, for instance, have a lot of sub-classes, and some variety of emphasis among them.

 

[Zardnaar]

LOL, truth. Keep in mind I played AD&D from 1981 to 2012 before the playtest as my primary game. Some books held up great, like the original big 3 original printings and are still going strong after 35 years of continuous use. But my UA, OA, 2e PHB first printing, and a few others fell apart weeks after they came out. I have so much tape and crap on those books they probably weigh 5 pounds each lol.

Early AD&D is semi indestructible, the mid 80's stuff was rubbish. My OA book is falling apart.

 

[Blue]

For that you would need resource-balance among classes. Obviously, 5e didn't go there, and it'd be hard to impose at this late date (short of an expedient like having everyone play the same class).

I'm in complete agreement. I even mentioned at the top that all of my other "broken" comments were things I could address with house rules but not this one.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What about Thor (norse myth, not marvel comics)? Beowulf? Maybe Conan? Odysseus was a really strong guy, what about him?

Having recently audio-read a couple of Conan stories, I can confirm that he needs two hands to grapple anyone larger than himself.

Thor and Odysseus have divine heritage, so there's nothing wrong with them doing something that should be physically impossible. If a PC could do it while wearing Thor's girdle of giant strength, but it was an unlikely task for mere mortals, then that would be reasonable. Mathematically speaking, if you had disadvantage on attempts to grapple anyone larger than yourself, that would go a long way.