D&D 5E My biggest gripe with 5e design

[coolAlias]

In one of my games, I changed made shadows a lot scarier simply by changing ability damage to recover on a long rest instead of a short rest.

We also played it for a bit where you had to use HD to recover it, and that was pretty terrifying for the players.

The poor wizard would position himself in the middle of the party only to have his allies move to engage the enemy, and now suddenly he is alone at the back... shouldn't have dumped Str, brother.

 

[5ekyu]

Its possible to challenge nearly all numbers on the character sheet:

• Creatures X. Y, Z are no longer considered allies for X time.
• Steal/drain spell slots
• Remove/steal for yourself/reverse a player Immunity/Resistance.
• Have your players be ''brittle'' after saving against the first save the of petrification for X time, with vulnerability to bludgeon damage.
• Curses/parasites that ''booby-trap'' spell slots. Like a Geas around spells of 7th level: the caster can use its slot, but if he spends the 7th level slot, he takes damage, like 5xspell level psychic damage or such.
• Reduced sight, like the blinding shot from the Arcane Archer. Cannot see beyond 10' or whatevs.
• Damage weapon and armor, like the rust monster. You can have the equivalent of the rust monster but for arcane focus/component pouches/spell book

Dont be afraid to have massive acid or necrotic damage avoid the whole ''3 death saves'' if they drop the PC to 0 hp, ala Disintegrate. Raise the PC as zombie if the damage was necrotic.

Exactly. A temporary paralysis or petrifications is dangerous and lethal risk if it is part of a hunting play where the isolated prey gets eaten- noting lore about eating the rocks for some of the stoners. A temporary paralysis creating a heavy and immobile PC likely very dangerous if during that 24 hours draws other threats - perhaps tandem ones - and the party has to choose to fight the bigger threat or run away.

To me, its kind of the difference between die-driver threat (roll x CBS this guy, burn sheet possible) and scene or environment or cunning driven threat. Do wild cockatrices loiter around tougher bigger threats swooping in during conflicts with others to pick off and pin down some new tasty elf planning to feast on it during or after the conflict? Seems like a very beneficial symbiosis.

That one-die roll gone from old days reminds me of the 0 hp dead. Way before 3e we had adopted a loosey goosey "down is at risk" drama driven thing not unlike death saves - if you moved quickly to stabilize downed folks they likely did not die outright. If you let them lie there, kept up with the fight, then likely they died. So, it created drama in play, in the moment, etc.

Thats really where many of our gameplay changes went. "What will be seen to create challenges and dramatic urgencies in the thick of thing" not cause "aftermath paperwork" like "creating new characters" or inventory challenges like "we gotta make sure we got enough potions of macguffin protection."

5e seems to have gone that way too. Lower cr creatures provide temporary threats but mid to high get more severe and all are eadily capable of being threats in a thought out setup. 5e seems much more focused on making death and lose character threats less of an "out of the box" default state and more of an intentional choice option - special not routine.

To us, that makes it nice to be able to focus more on "loss" as in " of objectives" and the risk being not as hung up on "survival."

 

[Li Shenron]

I think 5e already has a mechanic that most players dread: exhaustion. I don't think bringing back level draining is the answer (most people loathe it). But I think there is room to diversify the hazards a PC can face long term other than HP loss (and even that is short term). Everything in 5e seems to reset on a long rest. Boo! lol. I think exhaustion should be utilized more often, and can be used to reflect things like disease, or the effects of potent poison, or even gaining a level of exhaustion if you've been raised/revivafied/healed from 0 hp. Change the life force draining ability of undead that brought the fear of God(s) into the PCs to inflict levels of exhaustion as a way to reflect the life draining aspect. Metagaming is always going to be part of the game (everyone knows to use fire against the troll), so bring back the fear of the undead. And slimes. And other monsters. Make trap disarming a suspenseful event again.

Absolutely good idea.

I am not super-fond of exhaustion rules as-is, mainly because IMHO they underestimated the consequences of disadvantage on ability checks OR perhaps they designed exhaustion rules too much with combat in mind: thus, they put disadvantage on ability checks as 1st exhaustion level, because it matters little in combat compared to for example movement speed. But OTOH it matters A LOT outside of combat!

Besides this minor issue, I think exhaustion levels could be easily added to some monster's attacks effect, or alternatively they could be more generally added to dropping to 0 hp.

A group can figure out a rule that works well for them, it could be simply adding 1 exhaustion level each time you drop to 0 hp, or something else.

The option I've toying with before, is replacing the default "unconsciousness" with a random effect: roll d6 and gain one single random level of exhaustion (replacing "death" with the original "unconsciousness" when rolling a 6). By this I mean that if you e.g. roll 5 then your speed drops to 0 but you do not gain the previous exhaustion levels. I prefer the levels of exhaustion to be in random order. And next step could be of course coming up with new exhaustion levels effects

Then, specific monsters can also trigger an exhaustion level (random or not) without dropping you to 0.

 

[sim-h]

Depends on your group I guess. Mine have had many brushes with death, lost a L5 PC to petrification (second save a one and a two with advantage? Oops).

I had to let one guy off by allowing him to use 'Shield' as a reaction to deflect some of the magical fire trap damage that would have killed him at L2 by two points (ToA I'm looking at you...). Never forgiven myself, but the player is obviously happy about it...

They are cautious.

For me 5e is pretty much perfect for the job in hand (using 'Slower Natural Healing' optional rule). You puppy beaters are crazy!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The occasional exceptions drive my players crazy. A CR 3 sabre-tooth tiger mummy on the Isle of Dread (Goodman Games version) inflicted mummy rot on a PC last session. The party is 4th level, and there wasn’t an NPC caster for dozens of miles around. Without access to remove curse...there is literally nothing you can do. So the PC crumbled to dust 48 hours later. Now to get the character back it will take at least a reincarnation (if they can somehow reach the Druid in 10 days and he happens to have the components for it) or resurrection spell at some indefinite point in the future when they come across a helpful high level cleric.

(The PC came back as a ghost, because that’s the kind of stuff that happens in this campaign for reasons the PCs don’t know, but they still found the unavoidable deadliness of the CR 3 critter messed up. Kids these days! )

 

[Arnwolf666]

In one of my games, I changed made shadows a lot scarier simply by changing ability damage to recover on a long rest instead of a short rest.

We also played it for a bit where you had to use HD to recover it, and that was pretty terrifying for the players.

The poor wizard would position himself in the middle of the party only to have his allies move to engage the enemy, and now suddenly he is alone at the back... shouldn't have dumped Str, brother.

Have shadows drain charisma instead of strength and see the crying. Shadows literally make you a shadow of your formal self.

 

[Shiroiken]

Note 3: I also understand that DMs can always change things, but I'm talking about out of the box

Therein lay the problem and the solution. The game was designed to be more heroic adventure, because that's what most players want (the playtest made it pretty clear). However, one of the best features of 5E is that it's very easy to fiddle with the rules to make it work for you.

The biggest change I've made is the removal of a lot of duration effects. HP loss from undead requires downtime or Greater Restoration to remove, for example, rather than just a long rest. This makes these enemies much more dangerous, bringing back a level of fear and respect that result in different tactics. Another option I've done to encourage the players to avoid unnecessary combat, is that I've halved all monster xp, but added xp for exploration and social encounters.

One big option you can institute is the longer rest times from the DMG, which will require the players to conserve their resources much more than they do now.

 

[Li Shenron]

The occasional exceptions drive my players crazy. A CR 3 sabre-tooth tiger mummy on the Isle of Dread (Goodman Games version) inflicted mummy rot on a PC last session. The party is 4th level, and there wasn’t an NPC caster for dozens of miles around. Without access to remove curse...there is literally nothing you can do. So the PC crumbled to dust 48 hours later. Now to get the character back it will take at least a reincarnation (if they can somehow reach the Druid in 10 days and he happens to have the components for it) or resurrection spell at some indefinite point in the future when they come across a helpful high level cleric.

(The PC came back as a ghost, because that’s the kind of stuff that happens in this campaign for reasons the PCs don’t know, but they still found the unavoidable deadliness of the CR 3 critter messed up. Kids these days! )

Well, that at least is a great story to tell! If it hadn't been messed up, would they have ever remembered that encounter with yet another bag-of-hp critter?

 

[Quickleaf]

The occasional exceptions drive my players crazy. A CR 3 sabre-tooth tiger mummy on the Isle of Dread (Goodman Games version) inflicted mummy rot on a PC last session. The party is 4th level, and there wasn’t an NPC caster for dozens of miles around. Without access to remove curse...there is literally nothing you can do. So the PC crumbled to dust 48 hours later. Now to get the character back it will take at least a reincarnation (if they can somehow reach the Druid in 10 days and he happens to have the components for it) or resurrection spell at some indefinite point in the future when they come across a helpful high level cleric.

(The PC came back as a ghost, because that’s the kind of stuff that happens in this campaign for reasons the PCs don’t know, but they still found the unavoidable deadliness of the CR 3 critter messed up. Kids these days! )

Absolutely 100% agree that curses aren't that interesting in D&D. Either you break them with remove curse (or similar magic) or you suffer the effect. It's very binary and doesn't require any thinking – of course they're going to break the curse if that becomes an option. That's nothing unique to 5e. Pretty much curses have always been like that in D&D.

It's possible for a DM to make an interesting curse from scratch with clever wording, but it does require some bending over backwards.

I often house rule that a curse must have an "out" clause, often phrased as "You shall be cursed with ----- , until -----" or "Every ----- , you shall be cursed with -----, until -----" or "By the light of -----, you shall be cursed with -----, until -----". Fulfilling the condition (which is rarely easy or 100% obvious) lifts the curse, causing it to stop actively affecting the character. However, curses often include clauses that cause the curse to recur or be re-cast. The sun sets. You kill another creature. You meet a one-eyed man. Whatever. To permanently end a curse requires fulfilling the condition, followed by a casting of remove curse. Another way to think about this is that I house rule a special component for remove curse – whatever clause is in the curse.

What this does is shift the binary (i.e. supremely easy to break / save or die) nature of being cursed to a save... and then die paradigm. This allows all players to applying their creative thinking to figure out how to lift a curse temporarily. Maybe you can't figure it out, and then you suffer its effects, but at least there was the feeling that you had a chance to puzzle your way out of danger. Remove curse becomes the cherry on the cake to break the curse so that you don't have to worry about repeating the condition that lifts it every day (or whatever time period the curse was cast to recur on).

This requires a bit more thinking about curses, and finding ways to tie them to the narrative so the presence of lift conditions is foreshadowed to the players, but so far we've found it more satisfying than the default treatment of curses.

Would have been great if there was a half page to a page devoted to curses in the DMG – similar to how there is for poisons & for madness – with some tables for creating playable curses.

 

[Arnwolf666]

Absolutely 100% agree that curses aren't that interesting in D&D. Either you break them with remove curse (or similar magic) or you suffer the effect. It's very binary and doesn't require any thinking – of course they're going to break the curse if that becomes an option. That's nothing unique to 5e. Pretty much curses have always been like that in D&D.

It's possible for a DM to make an interesting curse from scratch with clever wording, but it does require some bending over backwards.

I often house rule that a curse must have an "out" clause, often phrased as "You shall be cursed with ----- , until -----" or "Every ----- , you shall be cursed with -----, until -----" or "By the light of -----, you shall be cursed with -----, until -----". Fulfilling the condition (which is rarely easy or 100% obvious) lifts the curse, causing it to stop actively affecting the character. However, curses often include clauses that cause the curse to recur or be re-cast. The sun sets. You kill another creature. You meet a one-eyed man. Whatever. To permanently end a curse requires fulfilling the condition, followed by a casting of remove curse. Another way to think about this is that I house rule a special component for remove curse – whatever clause is in the curse.

What this does is shift the binary (i.e. supremely easy to break / save or die) nature of being cursed to a save... and then die paradigm. This allows all players to applying their creative thinking to figure out how to lift a curse temporarily. Maybe you can't figure it out, and then you suffer its effects, but at least there was the feeling that you had a chance to puzzle your way out of danger. Remove curse becomes the cherry on the cake to break the curse so that you don't have to worry about repeating the condition that lifts it every day (or whatever time period the curse was cast to recur on).

This requires a bit more thinking about curses, and finding ways to tie them to the narrative so the presence of lift conditions is foreshadowed to the players, but so far we've found it more satisfying than the default treatment of curses.

Would have been great if there was a half page to a page devoted to curses in the DMG – similar to how there is for poisons & for madness – with some tables for creating playable curses.

Boy do I agree about remove curse. Remove curse should require things that aren’t easy to begin the process of breaking the curse. But that is alot of work that players and DM’s don’t want to do. Players level so fast these days that ideas like this just get in the way.