Advantage & Disadvantage - Looking for a synopsis

[abirdcall]

In my experience the people who have the most trouble learning 5e are 3e players.

It is very intuitive. People new to RPGs tend to have an easy time picking it up, which is probably a huge factor in its immense popularity.

 

[Ferox4]

In my experience the people who have the most trouble learning 5e are 3e players.

It is very intuitive. People new to RPGs tend to have an easy time picking it up, which is probably a huge factor in its immense popularity.

Interesting.... There are still a lot of the 3E basic concepts in 5E - movement, actions, conditional modifiers, AoOs. Granted, 5E takes a lot of the bloat away. Is it the minutiae of 3E that makes 5E more difficult for us dinosaurs?

 

[Henry]

Sidebar: We were initially concerned about the level of violence in the game when we started playing with the kids (ages range from 10-13). Four sessions in, those kids were rolling die to see which one got to mercilessly kill a bound, Goblin prisoner.

Does this make you all LESS worried or MORE worried? ;-)

Seriously, passing the torch is awesome. Great to hear it.

Interesting.... There are still a lot of the 3E basic concepts in 5E - movement, actions, conditional modifiers, AoOs. Granted, 5E takes a lot of the bloat away. Is it the minutiae of 3E that makes 5E more difficult for us dinosaurs?

I suspect so -- it's the retraining of old habits that can always make a task difficult. In the case of new games such as Pathfinder and 5e, all across the board, designers are simplifying everything from microgradations in skills, to even the action system. Even the Pathfinder 2nd edition playtest revealed that PF is switching from the 3E actions system to a "three actions per round/only three or four types of actions total" model, to almost universal acclaim among playtesters. A year from now, even Pathfinder (the last great 3rd edition bastion) will look like a hybrid of 3E and 5e, with a pinch of 4e thrown in to a couple of rules subsystems where it made sense.

 

[Ferox4]

Does this make you all LESS worried or MORE worried? ;-)

Seriously, passing the torch is awesome. Great to hear it.

It has been a topic of discussion among the "elders" all week. Zero compunction among the kids - which did serve as a valuable moment to address alignment. Apparently we are party to raising a new generation of Sociopaths

The best part is that the kids really like it, and have come up with some highly creative solutions to obstacles. I'm proud of our group letting the kids play without micro-managing them. As we love to say around our table, "Don't be playing my character!"

 

[abirdcall]

Interesting.... There are still a lot of the 3E basic concepts in 5E - movement, actions, conditional modifiers, AoOs. Granted, 5E takes a lot of the bloat away. Is it the minutiae of 3E that makes 5E more difficult for us dinosaurs?

They use many of the same terms but they are not the same. This is where the confusion comes in.

There is no move action in 5e. You just move around whenever you like during your turn. Most RPGs are going to let a character move around.

You get an action on your turn. You get to do a thing. Sometimes you have an ability that lets you do a bonus thing. That is not 3e specific.

With the exception of cover you just get advantage or disadvantage to doing a thing. I don't see anything 3e specific in that. Other games are also going to have the ability to make something easier or harder. Some spells or abilities allow you to add dice to rolls and that is pretty close to a 3e way of handling modifiers but is still different. For example, there are no modifier types in 5e.

Opportunity Attacks (OAs) occur when a creature leaves your melee attack range and cost your Reaction. That's it. That is very different than the AoO system of 3e.

Other things that are very different:

Ability Checks. They are now only called for if they are interesting, there is a meaningful consequence for failure, and the outcome is uncertain. So 5e has a lot fewer ability check rolls. Players also don't declare skill use. They describe what they are doing and the DM determines if an ability check is called for and if a skill proficiency can be added to it. This is something I find 3e players have a tough time with.

There are many other things which use similar language but are much different. Surprise and CR calculation come to mind.

 

[Ferox4]

I suspect so -- it's the retraining of old habits that can always make a task difficult. In the case of new games such as Pathfinder and 5e, all across the board, designers are simplifying everything from microgradations in skills, to even the action system. Even the Pathfinder 2nd edition playtest revealed that PF is switching from the 3E actions system to a "three actions per round/only three or four types of actions total" model, to almost universal acclaim among playtesters. A year from now, even Pathfinder (the last great 3rd edition bastion) will look like a hybrid of 3E and 5e, with a pinch of 4e thrown in to a couple of rules subsystems where it made sense.

As a player and DM in the 3E system I agree that there are too many idiosyncratic mechanics in place to resolve issues - too easy to get bogged down with constant die rolls. As was pointed out earlier, 5E gives the DM more latitude to manage the game. It puts more onus on the DM, which is cool, but you better have a good one.

 

[Ferox4]

They use many of the same terms but they are not the same. This is where the confusion comes in.

There is no move action in 5e. You just move around whenever you like during your turn. Most RPGs are going to let a character move around.

You can break up your move in 3E almost the same in 5E, no?

You get an action on your turn. You get to do a thing. Sometimes you have an ability that lets you do a bonus thing. That is not 3e specific.

No, not 3E specific, however the specific concept of moves and actions was introduced in 3E

With the exception of cover you just get advantage or disadvantage to doing a thing. I don't see anything 3e specific in that. Other games are also going to have the ability to make something easier or harder. Some spells or abilities allow you to add dice to rolls and that is pretty close to a 3e way of handling modifiers but is still different. For example, there are no modifier types in 5e.

Conditional modifiers for Prone are the same. Are there not the same modifiers for other conditions? - Dazed, Stunned, Blinded, Paralyzed, Deafened, etc.

Opportunity Attacks (OAs) occur when a creature leaves your melee attack range and cost your Reaction. That's it. That is very different than the AoO system of 3e.

No argument there.

Other things that are very different:

Ability Checks. They are now only called for if they are interesting, there is a meaningful consequence for failure, and the outcome is uncertain. So 5e has a lot fewer ability check rolls. Players also don't declare skill use. They describe what they are doing and the DM determines if an ability check is called for and if a skill proficiency can be added to it. This is something I find 3e players have a tough time with.

There are many other things which use similar language but are much different. Surprise and CR calculation come to mind.

Call them Skill checks or Ability checks, they are still used to determine the result of a situation, and they must come up a fair amount. Yes, they are Ability based (and stripped down) and I get the Proficiency modifier (which I love), but that's not a whole lot different than the 3E system. I'm not versed on the 5E surprise mechanic, so I can't comment. CR has been, and always will be, a campaign specific number.

 

[Ferox4]

Thanks for all the commentary. It's been a big help in seeing the differences in the game mechanics. EN World is a great touchstone.

 

[GothicEmperor]

Call them Skill checks or Ability checks, they are still used to determine the result of a situation, and they must come up a fair amount. Yes, they are Ability based (and stripped down) and I get the Proficiency modifier (which I love), but that's not a whole lot different than the 3E system.

The biggest difference is more in how DCs work; they don't scale nearly as much as in previous editions, they only very rarely get modified, most circumstantial modifiers are part of Advantage/Disadvantage and so on. There's a fixed table of generic difficulties that DMs can use for practically all actions, allowing for quick DM adjucation based on its superficial difficulty (ie. if something's Very Hard to do, it's DC 25).

Mind, it's also one of the things that 3.5e players tend to have the hardest time with. 5e doesn't pretend to be a cohesive theory of everything physics-wise, so you have to get used to the game not being a pseudo-simulation.

 

[Charlaquin]

Call them Skill checks or Ability checks, they are still used to determine the result of a situation, and they must come up a fair amount.

The subtle distinction that makes a world of difference is that in 5e, they are only used to determine the result of a situation that has both an uncertain outcome and dramatic consequences.

This shift in thinking is why a lot of 3e (and to a lesser extent 4e players) have trouble making the shift. In 3e especially, there was an effort to take DM judgment out of the task resolution system. If you wanted to do a thing, you made a roll, because that was how the game’s engine worked. In 5e, the DM’s judgment is an essential part of the system. The player describes what they want to accomplish and how their character is trying to accomplish it, and the DM asks themselves, “can this approach succeed in achieving its goal? Can it fail to achieve its goal? Is there a cost or consequence for failing to achieve this goal?” and only if the answer to all three questions is yes does the DM call for a roll to be made. YMMV, but in my 5e games, checks are actually pretty rare, because most of the time the results of an action are easy enough to determine without that random element, and in many of the cases where the outcome is uncertain enough to merit a dice roll to resolve it, there aren’t actually any costs or consequences if it fails.

A good example of where the difference comes in is with the simple act of picking a lock. In 3e, the character comes across a locked door and says, “I want to pick the lock, can I make an Open Lock check?” and unless there’s anything that would prevent them from attempting to pick the lock like a spell or a trap, the DM would say yes. The player would make their check. On a high enough result they would pick it, on too low of a result they would fail, and in either case they wouldn’t be able to attempt again because the roll represented their best effort.

In 5e, that situation would go very differently. The player would encounter the locked door, and if they asked to roll thieves’ tools, the DM might say something like “I’m hearing you want to unlock the door by picking the lock with your thieves’ tools?” to make sure they have the correct goal and approach. Then the DM would ask themselves if the action can succeed (which it probably can, unless the DC is higher than the character can achieve on a natural 20 or they lack proficiency in Thieves’ Tools), if it can fail (which it probably can, unless the character has a particular high-level Rogue feature), and if it has a cost or consequence for failure. Now this is where things can get pretty different. If the time it takes to attempt to pick the lock is a meaningful cost (for example, if it will trigger a check for wandering monsters, or if the room is filling up with poison gas and every second counts), or if something bad happens on a failure (like a trap triggering), then the DM would call for a Dexterity check plus any relevant proficiency bonus (probably thieves tools). But if the attempt doesn’t cost the charactee anything meaningful and failure doesn’t cause anything to happen beyond the door still being locked, then it’s assumed the character just takes as much time to do it as they need and the DM narrates the action’s eventual success.