D&D 5E Is 5e the Least-Challenging Edition of D&D?

[tetrasodium]

Rust monsters... various oozes, trog stench, everything with level drain, stuff with nasty poisons, & probably lots more I'm overlooking that did ability damage & other save or suck/save and suck/suc/save or lose abilities, etc all got similar defang'ing treatment in 5e

This also affected magic item capabilities. You can't have things like ghost touch, a glass club,different acp/asf/crit range/crit mod equipment, a bonus you already have but on a different slot allowing some other item to be used for lateral advancement, etc. Now magic items are either objectively better in silo'd advancement than what people have now or "maybe we can sell it" with almost no subjective qualities left That purely simulationist logic feeds into the adam west batman feel to combat onramp too.

 

[DragonBelow]

Yes, next question

 

[Undrave]

Agree completely.

The problem is, recent editions have taken out the other things that often put the fear of god into players, those being a) level drain and b) catastrophic magic item loss via failing a save vs AoE damage.

Thus, death - and TPK - are about all you've got left.

Level drain and ability drain are just a really REALLY obnoxious mechanic filled with fiddly bits. And most often they're just rendered moot by having the right spell. Like the Clay Golem's max HP drain. You either have Greater Restoration or you go back into town and spend money on it... it's not really challenging, just punishing the tank for taking hits, thus doing its job...

The 4e Disease track system is another thing they shouldn't have left behind and instead use it for curses and stuff.

The problem with stuff like level drain, and incorporeal being too strong and rust monsters and needing buff spells to evade save or die effect... it really just punished the mundanes.

It's AGAIN more stuff that makes Magic the be-all end-all of DnD Problem Solving. Most of the 'challenges' end up being simply a way to say 'you must be THIS magical to win'. You either ABSOLUTELY need a full caster or deck out characters in golf-bags worth of magical loot.

It honestly irks me. The game is already 80% casters...

 

[tetrasodium]

The Life Drain ability of course. In an edition where most most effects do Hit Point damage and some status effect that usually translates to Disadvantage, reducing maximum hit points is a large impact to survivability.

The 3e Wraith played the same role, CON ability score damage in combination with damage ‘twas very potent. Many a PC and monster succumbed to the combo in my experience.

In either edition the Wraith was something that typically hit above it’s CR, due to sucking the life out of a PC.

Now If you feel the 5e Wraith is weak compared to the 3e Wraith in reference to their place in their respective systems, I would be interested in your thoughts.

Not even close, from your reply I'm thinking you underestimate either what it took to remove in 3.5 or massively overestimate what it takes to remove in 3.5

Level drain and ability drain are just a really REALLY obnoxious mechanic filled with fiddly bits. And most often they're just rendered moot by having the right spell. Like the Clay Golem's max HP drain. You either have Greater Restauration or you spend money on it... it's not really challenging, just punishing the tank for taking hits, thus doing its job...

The problem with stuff like that, and incorporeal being too strong and rust monsters and needing buff spells to evade save or die effect... it really just punished the mundanes.

It's AGAIN more stuff that makes Magic the be-all end-all of DnD Problem Solving. Most of the 'challenges' end up being simply a way to say 'you must be THIS magical to win'. You either ABSOLUTELY need a full caster or deck out characters in golf-bags worth of magical loot.

greater restoration is a 5th level spell & because of differences in spell prep if you devoted N slots to it but needed N+1 or N-1 too bad because that's all you devoted and you devoted those slots explicitly to it.
However... They also got rid of stuff like this as to the "it targets mundanes" argument, everything targets someone. It was really mostly a gentlemens agreement that monsters wouldn't just automatically target the squishies from the get go & just ignore those mundanes until they were alone & helpless

Or this

no doubt other stuff too.

 

[Undrave]

greater restoration is a 5th level spell & because of differences in spell prep if you devoted N slots to it but needed N+1 or N-1 too bad because that's all you devoted and you devoted those slots explicitly to it.

That's not a challenge. That's like saying a locked door in a video game is a challenge. You either have the key or not, GETTING the key is the challenging part, not opening the door. Using Greater Restoration is using the key. What's the difficulty in GETTING that key again?

It was really mostly a gentlemens agreement that monsters wouldn't just automatically target the squishies

Yeah it was. There was no mechanical teeth whatsoever to the role of tank until 4e's marking mechanics... which they decided wasn't good enough for 5e. Even on the magical Paladin and Swordmage...

 

[tetrasodium]

That's not a challenge. That's like saying a locked door in a video game is a challenge. You either have the key or not, GETTING the key is the challenging part, not opening the door. Using Greater Restoration is using the key. What's the difficulty in GETTING that key again?



Yeah it was. There was no mechanical teeth whatsoever to the role of tank until 4e's marking mechanics... which they decided wasn't good enough for 5e. Even on the magical Paladin and Swordmage...

I'm not saying that the need to devote a spell slot to that key was a challenge, just that removing the fangs and making it trivial to have the right amount of the key at far lower cost (one prep slot vrs N spell slots you hope are enough & hope not wasted slots) goes a long way to making the already dialed back thing means that the opportunity cost of those keys are so much lower that an already minor thing you just need a long rest for is even further reduced to being meaninglessly trivial st those levels.

 

[Lanefan]

A level 2 PC can take 2 stabs, 1 chop, 2 zaps, or 1 bang before dying.
A level 6 PC can take 6 stabs, 3 chops 2 zaps, or 1 bang before dying.

For some reason this makes me laugh.

Is this the version of fancystats for Fantasy D&D (a la Fantasy Football)? "Yeah, this character does well on the stab matrix but he's in the lowest 10% on chops - don't draft him..."

 

[Todd Roybark]

Tetra...I largely agree with the substance of your points, yet as you know about 5e, one can add all of those features back in if you want.

The monster stats in 5e, to me are base templates, that I customize.

I’ve had wraiths with Incorporeal Touch in 5e, Con Damage abilities etc.

The nice thing, from my perspective as a DM, now, I have complete control over the effects, which allows for “A balanced Adventuring day”.

3e had loads of “micro- transactions” required. The fully charged Wand of Lesser Restoration, wasn’t so much a ‘reward’, and more the necessary cost to keep the game moving at a reasonable clip.

Flat Footed AC, Touch AC, Armor AC....all very different...the 3e Wraith would terrify the Cleric and Paladin, Armor AC characters, Touch AC characters not so much, and the consequence was buffing became mandatory as failure to do so resulted in ability damage that could take one or more weeks to recover from, without magic.

I’m not criticizing 3e, base 5e monsters are bland, but I don’t miss having to give out Wands of Restoration to maintain any degree of story flow or flexibility.

That gaming room full off ‘Type A personalities’, the super goal oriented group of D&D players, that are my friends despised that bad rolls in 3e while being under resourced, meant delays, massive hang waving of rules, or evil won.

Try defeating Kyuss or Dragotha with a 5 Constitution score. Not fun for either the player nor the DM.

 

[Weiley31]

You have to "tweak" 5E if your worried about it being "Baby's First DND" and stuff.

Give monsters class levels.
Give Boss Monsters/Encounters two or three uses of Second Wind to represent the health bars.

Tweak the Battle Environment to NOT be a flat space with no obstacles.

Have your rival characters/Anti-Party/bosses with unique custom NPC only feats.

Create Unique conditions/win conditions for specific fights.(Enemy Wizard casts a NPC only spell that causes the gravity in the encounter to become heavy, which causes all Physical Range projectiles to suffer auto-disadvantage, but the force resistance of the gravity field causes said physical projectiles to do double the damage if some how they hit.
Said Wizard has with him a small retinue of wand slingers to avoid the auto disadvantage from their boss's spell as their attacks are magical.

Jazz it up!

 

[Lanefan]

And now for a more serious response...

Most of that is on how the systems differed.

In 0e-2e, a PC dies if they take ~1 normal hits per level. Half as many big hits. And 2 damage spells and 1 kill spell remained constant for killing. More for fighter and high CON PCs. Less for mages and low CON PCs.
A level 2 PC can take 2 stabs, 1 chop, 2 zaps, or 1 bang before dying.
A level 6 PC can take 6 stabs, 3 chops 2 zaps, or 1 bang before dying.
So it was easy to gauge.

In 3e, big hits grew in damage. Especially if your monsters used feat. But it was easier increase base HP.
So your hits and big hits per level before dying doubled but the magic stayed the same.

Everything changed in 4e. Everything got adjusted. A hit did little damage at took out less that a surge-worth of damage. A big hit was a surge of damage. And an a resource using "spell" took out more than a surge. And the swing save or die/suck effects were removed. How every fight played out in difficulty per level remained the same regardless of level..

But in 5e, nothing is standardized. You can't gauge a hit or spell's damage according to level. The "1 fail and you're half dead or full dead" are gone. So DMs tend to play nicer.

This all makes sense until the very last sentence: DMs play nicer? Or is it that the system tends to want to make them play nicer and to do otherwise requires some arguing with it?

And this only looks at death. In 0-1-2e, and to a lesser extent in 3e, there were all kinds of other things that could ruin a character's day without killing it (some have been listed in earlier posts); most of which have now been either removed outright or nerfed into unrecognizability.