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

[jasper]

Yea. It was the design choices that made 5e the Happy Hot Bunking edition. Why? Feedback. Just look at the various responses here about death in other editions. They range from
Jasper -Death I loved and what more of it. Crowd boos.
Morrus - Death happen when you were stupid. Crowd I was never stupid.
Tony V. Death happen when the story required it. Crowd. ENCORE. Jasper small BOO.
[U]Sacrosanct[/U] Death happen only when the player wanted it. Jasper BOO! BOO! ducking large heavy objects thrown by the crowd.
I do straight Adventure league with almost 200 sessions to my name there are 66 names on the skull. About a third of them would go away if I did not have two players being active stupid, or me being behind on the learning curve on how to quickly adjust encounters down.
Sacrosanct exhaust method could make some undead encounters worst. But unless you have wandering monsters, time limits, and almost no access to spells it wouldn't change much. If people would read my write ups of the AL seasons I do, you would see death is almost a speed bump and only 4 campaign days are wasted.
If I were to do homebrew I would do just speed bump death too. Maybe once in a while it would be an actual 7 days to the destruction of the realms.

 

[Quickleaf]

@jasper Wow, that's a lot of AL sessions! Out of curiosity did you run AL season 7 (Tomb of Annihilation)? What observations did you make of how players reacted to the "no resurrection" aspect of the Death Curse?

 

[jasper]

@jasper Wow, that's a lot of AL sessions! Out of curiosity did you run AL season 7 (Tomb of Annihilation)? What observations did you make of how players reacted to the "no resurrection" aspect of the Death Curse?

One player did not play any tier 1 or 2 content and waited on Tier 3 content so the curse was not in affect. 2 players hated it and griped until I told them I didn't care if they played at my table. Most of the rest were slightly upset until they found out the xp of the sub transfer back to mostly dead pc.

 

[Krachek]

Danger sense is totally subjective in DnD.
No matter how bad he play or rolls, the player won’t die or loose any valuable item.
you may laugh seeing your character at the bottom of a pit, completely helpless.
no matter how harsh are the rules it remain a game

 

[Undrave]

I get how “well, you might impact the mission negatively.” But being permanently petrified screws the entire campaign. Forget the mission, you’re lucky if your buddies drag your heavy stone booty back to a place that even has a stone to flesh option. It’s the difference between sitting idle for a few minutes, and tearing up your character sheet to start over.

That doesn't sound fun. Being taken out of the game and just sitting like a doofus and waiting for your friends to finish, OR wasting time coming up with a new character... AND THEN waiting like a doofus while your friends still play until you get your opportunity to come in and then do the whole song and dance about WHY your character would join...augh.

 

[Count_Zero]

That doesn't sound fun. Being taken out of the game and just sitting like a doofus and waiting for your friends to finish, OR wasting time coming up with a new character... AND THEN waiting like a doofus while your friends still play until you get your opportunity to come in and then do the whole song and dance about WHY your character would join...augh.

Yeah - I've encountered people who quit RPGs entirely based on experiences like that - just walked away, never came back, and refused to entertain the idea of coming back because how very unfun that experience was for them.

 

[Sacrosanct]

That doesn't sound fun. Being taken out of the game and just sitting like a doofus and waiting for your friends to finish, OR wasting time coming up with a new character... AND THEN waiting like a doofus while your friends still play until you get your opportunity to come in and then do the whole song and dance about WHY your character would join...augh.

I think you're missing the point I (and others) are making. You're getting caught up the death part, when what we're trying to say is that because of the risk of that, it changes how players approach encounters and gameplay. None of us are saying having PCs die is fun. What we're saying is that because the risk was so much higher, you planned things more. Got more creative. Treated encounters completely differently based on what you're facing. Whereas now, with a lot of things just coming down to HP with no real risk of major long term damage, it's all "Ok, roll for initiative. Let's do the same attack routine we do for all encounters..."

When when you've survived such an encounter through wits and extra planning, it felt more heroic because you survived a challenge greater than what you face in the 5e version of the same creatures/traps.

 

[Oofta]

I think you're missing the point I (and others) are making. You're getting caught up the death part, when what we're trying to say is that because of the risk of that, it changes how players approach encounters and gameplay. None of us are saying having PCs die is fun. What we're saying is that because the risk was so much higher, you planned things more. Got more creative. Treated encounters completely differently based on what you're facing. Whereas now, with a lot of things just coming down to HP with no real risk of major long term damage, it's all "Ok, roll for initiative. Let's do the same attack routine we do for all encounters..."

When when you've survived such an encounter through wits and extra planning, it felt more heroic because you survived a challenge greater than what you face in the 5e version of the same creatures/traps.

But you are also ignoring the opinion that 5E can be just as deadly as any other version of the game if you want. It's easier to play on "Daddy don't hurt me" mode, but you can crank it up to "Bring 'em on" if you want.

It's just kind of condescending to imply that only old school grognards know what "real" danger is or "truly difficult" encounters. I have a lot of different goals and threats in my campaign, just because they aren't don't die, be turned to stone, turned to a pile of ash, lose levels or so on doesn't mean they are any less challenging or that there's a one size fits all approach to every combat.

 

[Hussar]

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.

Well, I dunno about "these days" but, the notion of having monsters/effects that essentially grind the game to a halt for significant periods of time until they get dealt with are often considered to be not a lot of fun. So, we put the adventure that we're on on hold until we figure out how to deal with X even though we came here tonight to play through that adventure and not futz about trying to figure out how to remove this curse.

It's not a totally unfair point.

 

[Undrave]

Well, I dunno about "these days" but, the notion of having monsters/effects that essentially grind the game to a halt for significant periods of time until they get dealt with are often considered to be not a lot of fun. So, we put the adventure that we're on on hold until we figure out how to deal with X even though we came here tonight to play through that adventure and not futz about trying to figure out how to remove this curse.

It's not a totally unfair point.

This reminds me of a type of mechanic I hate in boardgames, which I refer to as "paying to play": that is to say when you have to completely halt whatever you are doing to progress your game state just so you're able to continue playing. Most of the time it's not even a strategic concern (like certain game where going to an income phase early can be beneficial), you've just run out of moves to do and your turn (that you might have waited for a while because the other players are so methodical) ends up just being "I get X ressources and I'm done".

Not particularly thrilling.