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

[Lanefan]

At my table....
No weapon vs armor adjustments.
No weapon speed adjustment.
No monster morale checks.
No hirelings in combat. Never followers or strongholds.
No pre-stating your intentions in combat then parsing the results in a batch.

While I can see the rationale behind the first, second and fifth of these, might I ask the reasoning behind dropping morale checks for monsters, and for no hirelings-followers-strongholds?

 

[Gadget]

This was lost in the shuffle, but stone to flesh isn't a spell in 5e. Flesh to stone is, however; but it does not exist on the poor sorcerer spell list. Flesh to stone is a warlock or wizard spell.

Concentration is appropriate to the spell. The first save creates the restrained condition and subsequent saves against becoming petrified do not change that until the 3 save requirement is met. Not being able to break restrained for pretty much the rest of the encounter is decent enough that it should not be spam-capable or stacked with effects in the battlefield, hence concentration.

Yes, you're quite right, it is Flesh to Stone. However, I submit that even if it is deemed necessary to have concentration here, you surely don't need to concentrate past the target failing their final save. By this point, they are done for the encounter anyway.

 

[5ekyu]

When I have long travel sessions (before I switched rest options) I had a few options. I still use them now and then while mixing things up a bit.

Encounters while traveling are just narrated. If there's no real risk of death and resources are recovered the next day, why bother?

The group stumbles across or is ambushed by something truly dangerous. It's a deadly encounter, frequently coming in multiple waves. Sometimes triggered because precautions were not successful. If the group is going through enemy territory they have to figure out how, I may even play out a minor skirmish or two if I think there's a possibility of an enemy getting away triggering a bigger fight unless they can figure out how to avoid it.

A mini dungeon. Depending on the locale, if I can come up with a flavorful mini dungeon that will take an entire days worth of adventuring I'll use it. Going through they haunted forest? Well maybe they get attacked and lose the trail for a bit. Crossing a land plagued by goblins? A child was kidnapped in a hamlet where they're spending the night. I always try to integrate it into the bigger story though.

Or some combination, frequently combined with some kind of out-of-combat challenge.

Tend to agree.

Most of my travel encounters are spotted by scouts then either avoided or followed. Many are social and explore not combat.

A small number are more direct engagements that are over quick but lead to something or provide opportunity for info.

A few are combat and heavy. Often these too are from waves as one conflict draws other worse threats.

The latter two frequently follow some form of failure.

The most likely outcome of these all is information.

 

[Ashrym]

Yes, you're quite right, it is Flesh to Stone. However, I submit that even if it is deemed necessary to have concentration here, you surely don't need to concentrate past the target failing their final save. By this point, they are done for the encounter anyway.

At that point I think it's just generic flavor tying it to a standard time frame. The fight's usually over before 3 saves are failed or close enough no one would want to spend another high level spell slot.

Restrained is rather effective against many types of opponents in any case.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

While I can see the rationale behind the first, second and fifth of these, might I ask the reasoning behind dropping morale checks for monsters, and for no hirelings-followers-strongholds?

Morale checks: Monsters fleeing (or whatever reaction to combat) was always adjudicated by GM choice, not a die roll.

Hirelings: We prefer to keep the spotlight focused on the PCs. There were NPCs that accompanied the party, some even paid, but it was a GM driven as opposed to a player driven addition. There wasnt a hard NO to having a lackey or squire but they were always "off camera" and didn't take up game time.

 

[Hussar]

Really? In an 8 player game every last person had an unmodified 16 in wisdom, charisma or intelligence? Which by the way gave a 1% chance of being psionic. Having all 3 stats at an unmodified 18 allows an 11% chance and 18, 18, 17 is 9%(you drop fractions), so for all 8 players to have around a 10% chance is pretty far fetched I think.

IIRC, @Maxperson, you have never actually played 1e. You started with 2e AIR.

So, sure, ok, it wasn't 10%, probably closer to 5%, but, again, with 8 PC's, there's still a pretty decent chance. And, we sometimes had groups up to 13 players. Or groups that played multiple PC's.

My point is, a psionic character wasn't a rarity in our groups. Pretty much every group had at least one. And, yeah, we probably fudged lots of rolls to get there as well.

My point is, everyone's experience is SO different when it comes to playing 1e.

 

[Hussar]

Same as out table. Roll your 4d6, assign to stats. If you need to bump them from that point to be the class you want then just ask the GM and you are good to go.

I'd guess in our 1e and 2e games we varied from using 50% to 75% of the rules in any given session.

At my table....
No weapon vs armor adjustments.
No weapon speed adjustment.
No monster morale checks.
No hirelings in combat. Never followers or strongholds.
No pre-stating your intentions in combat then parsing the results in a batch.

Hrrrmmm... Remembering back:

No weapon vs armor adjustments
No Space/reach requirements
No Shield adjustments for number of attacks
Rarely tracked components, or, only tracked expensive ones.
Certainly never followed the 1e initiative rules as written.

Probably a whole host of other rules that we either borrowed from Basic/Expert rules or just never bothered learning.

 

[Maxperson]

IIRC, @Maxperson, you have never actually played 1e. You started with 2e AIR.

I started playing in 1983 with 1e and used the real rules for psionics, not these rules you invented.

So, sure, ok, it wasn't 10%, probably closer to 5%, but, again, with 8 PC's, there's still a pretty decent chance. And, we sometimes had groups up to 13 players. Or groups that played multiple PC's.

To get 1%, you needed to have a rolled 16 in int, wis or cha. Each rolled point of int above 16 gave 2.5%, so to get a 5% chance you have to have an 18 int and 16 or less in wis and cha. OR since each rolled point of wis and cha added 1.5%, you could have an int of 16 or less, and a rolled 18 wis(+3%) and an 17/18 cha(+1.5%/+3%) giving you 4% or 5%) or a rolled 17 int(2.5%) and a 18 wis or cha, etc.

Basically, to even get 5% you needed a natural 18 for int or multiple stats at 17+. If you were getting that reliably for 13 people, you were cheating or playing with house rules that were so generous that they were indeed in the Monty Haul category. You weren't playing by the RAW, though.

My point is, a psionic character wasn't a rarity in our groups. Pretty much every group had at least one. And, yeah, we probably fudged lots of rolls to get there as well.

Here's the actual rule.

"Characters with one or more unmodified intelligence, wisdom or charisma ability scores of 16 or higher might have psionic ability. Whether or not this ability is possessed is then determined by a dice roll using percentile dice. Any score of 00 (1000/0) indicates the ability exists. For each 1 point of intelligence above 16 add 2 1/2 to the dice roll, for each 1 point of wisdom above 16 add 1 1/2 to the dice roll, and for each 1 point of charisma above 16 add 1 1/2 to the dice roll (drop all fractions)."

 

[Yardiff]

In 1e wasn't this also restricted to only humans and halflings?

 

[Maxperson]

In 1e wasn't this also restricted to only humans and halflings?

It was for humans, and POSSIBLY dwarves or halflings. So it was a DM call as to whether non-humans could get it.