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

[Oofta]

You just added weight to my claim that 5e is built saying that certain playstyles are badwrongfun. Adding to that is the fact that players tend to outnumber gm's by a significant degree with most tables having around 4-6 players (give or take) per 1 gm. any survey is going to be largely people who mostly or only play and as a result will not consider things from a gm's perspective of why a wraith or something should blast through 30+ ac like wet tissue paper instead of harmlessly bouncing off like every other melee ranged & spell attack.

Simply saying add them back in ignores the fact that we aren't having this discussion because there was a second or variant version of things like the wraith, ghast/ghoul, trog, rustmonster, various scary oozes, etc that lose their scary bits or have their scary bit nullified if they are up against someone with a magic weapon/armor. We are having this discussion because not only were they replaced with defanged declawed versions but even dmg 280/281 also completely omits those kinds of scary effects. simply putting them back in fights against too many changes in the system & you quickly run into a snowballing slippery slope where you have so many house rules upon house rules that you are playing a different game.

So you want a game that will support your personal preferences instead of the feedback they got from one of the most comprehensive play tests ever done for a TTRPG. Because you know better than the thousands of people that responded to their surveys.

Good luck with that. Personally I'd like a pony that leaves behind gold bars as droppings.

No game is perfect. Personally I only need a handful of house rules to make the game my own and I'd be perfectly happy to play the game without a single house rule.

 

[slobster]

You just added weight to my claim that 5e is built saying that certain playstyles are badwrongfun.

What? No. The game was written with a certain set of baked-in assumptions and patterns in an effort to provide the most fun and accessibility to the most people. It was also built consciously to be very amenable to houseruling and modification for people so that things could work better at their table for the kind of game they like to play.

Because of those in-built assumptions, some people may very well find that D&D 5E isn't the best edition for them, or even that other systems entirely are better for what they want from a game. Totally legitimate. No game can be everything for everyone.

But if you don't like how 5E does it, it isn't because 5E is trying to tell you that your preferences are badwrongfun. Your preferences are legit, it's just that 5E (and any game) can't 100% match up to every individual's preferences, so it didn't try.

 

[tetrasodium]

So you want a game that will support your personal preferences instead of the feedback they got from one of the most comprehensive play tests ever done for a TTRPG. Because you know better than the thousands of people that responded to their surveys.

Good luck with that. Personally I'd like a pony that leaves behind gold bars as droppings.

No game is perfect. Personally I only need a handful of house rules to make the game my own and I'd be perfectly happy to play the game without a single house rule.

that's a massive misrepresentation of the discussion that took place in this thread.

 

[Chaosmancer]

various parts of 5e are designed to "encourage" the types of play that wotc wanted to encourage, playstyles that fall outside those are discouraged & problematic. The removal of nearly all save or suck/save or lose creatures & effects while severely watering down the impact of those that remain removes the need to treat them as something deserving much more than yet another combat to nova through.

The game was designed to encourages a type of playstyle?

Well, yes, and water is wet and fire is hot.

If you want a game where you can send massive armies to crush kingdoms and drop nukes on enemy cities, you don't play Diplomacy. The game was designed to provide a very different experience.

So, yes, DnD 5e was designed to promote certain ideas. That's why you can;t play a cyborg and and lose your humanity in exchange for more power. And you aren't playing a japanese schoolgirl trying to get your crush to notice you by enacting a complex social coup.

But, your style is not BadWrongFun just because 5e doesn't match it. And it isn't a direct attack against you if a lot of people don't like the same thing you like or had legitimate reasons not to like the effects you seem to adore.

And, since you ignore any challenge to the idea that you can make things challenging, difficult, threatening, or even interesting without all of those things from 3.X... I'm really not sure what else to say. You seem to be the one having the problem, a lot of us aren't.

 

[Oofta]

that's a massive misrepresentation of the discussion that took place in this thread.

I wasn't addressing the rest of the discussion, I was addressing your post.

The way 5E is structured is based on surveys and play tests. You may not agree with all the results, there are a few things I disagree with. But I accept that if this were not the game for me I'd just move on to something else or implement some simple house rules.

I chose the latter. I accept that the game wasn't written for me personally but it's also incredibly easy to tweak when and where I want. I'd rather give advice and examples of how I addressed issues that have been raised in a thread than complain about it.

You don't have to agree with all my suggestions, I wouldn't expect you or anyone else to do so. But I don't think it's constructive to continuously criticize the structure of a game that is incredibly popular and works for most people.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Isn't a major principle of 5E DM empowerment? That the DM should feel free to adjust the game to their liking? Is this not emphasized enough?

 

[slobster]

And you aren't playing a japanese schoolgirl trying to get your crush to notice you by enacting a complex social coup.

Yeah, the glaring omission of rules for that sort of thing is proof that WotC never took MY playtest data into account when making 5E....

Behold me sempai~

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

in my case it was often the party shifting roles a nbit for an odd situation or making use of the terrain/room that they needed to care about in order to get cover & circumstance bonuses among other stuff. In 5e you only see ythat kinda thing happen when the crunchy types have some life issue that causes them to miss a session leaving say a rogue & sorcerer without the usual fighter & paladin. Even then, the rogue/sorcerer quickly realize that they don't really need to bother as much as they thought they would need to.

Just a note: You may have had that experience with 5e, but it is not universal. Nor is the experience with the OSR games.

I you make it sound like I'm the only one who did.. "luckily" for those who did 5e decided that such gameplay is a badWrongFun type of gameplay eh?

I think that they're just pointing out that your personal experience with 5e, which has led to your opinion about it, is not the same as everyone elses'.
It sounds like your 5e DM is going a little easy on you if you've just been able to plow through encounters ignoring terrain or tactical maneuvering. It also sounds like they're letting you long rest quite often as well.
That is entirely acceptable if that is their preferred playstyle, but as pointed out, its not the only playstyle.

This is exacerbated by your habit of expressing your personal opinions in sweeping hyperbolic statements, and its not always obvious that they're just your opinions rather than making claims about the system as a whole.

Pretty sure no one is talking about badwrongfun in that digression: you're the first to bring it up.
That being said, it sounds like it might be worth chatting with your DM and the rest of your group to suggest that you'd prefer the challenge dialled up a little, if you're not satisfied with the way your DM is running the game.

 

[tetrasodium]

I wasn't addressing the rest of the discussion, I was addressing your post.

The way 5E is structured is based on surveys and play tests. You may not agree with all the results, there are a few things I disagree with. But I accept that if this were not the game for me I'd just move on to something else or implement some simple house rules.

I chose the latter. I accept that the game wasn't written for me personally but it's also incredibly easy to tweak when and where I want. I'd rather give advice and examples of how I addressed issues that have been raised in a thread than complain about it.

You don't have to agree with all my suggestions, I wouldn't expect you or anyone else to do so. But I don't think it's constructive to continuously criticize the structure of a game that is incredibly popular and works for most people.

Isn't a major principle of 5E DM empowerment? That the DM should feel free to adjust the game to their liking? Is this not emphasized enough?

It's really not as easy to tweak as you make it out to be. Want to change from trench warfare style body counts to something more reasonable than 6-8 encounters/day & it's a gigantic gordian knot to the point that even wotc's own variant rule to do exactly that causes massive problems far worse than it solves.

Use it & you screw the balance between long rest & short rest classes before even getting into all the spells & powers that are affected or the fact that x/day charge magic items nearly enter cantrip levels of spammability.

It's designed for gonzo demigod level powers walking the battlefield with impunity who sleep it off each night to repeat tomorrow.... don't like that?... slow natural healing & healer's kit dependency are there to do... well...

Which amounts to not really even needing to use or buy the cheap & lightweight healer's kits because everyone with a cure spell or power(ie Lay on hands) can expend any unused spellslots or charges to cap off everyone's hp before getting those same slots back.

If the hostility to making badwrongfun changes to 5e is still in question, you need only look at dmg264 & try to implement those on a ddb character.... go ahead, I'll wait while you find the boxes to track those.

Spoiler

You won't find them there. but hey, the first result is fillable y0!

Hey, maybe none of that bothers you & you like 5e as is but want to use skills with different attributes from phb175.

Better be prepared to finish building that system for wotc because those examples are the only ones you can show your players & the old style of skill checks where x skill uses y stat is reinforced on the sheet, ddb, & just about everywhere else despite how ability checks rather than skill checks being the non-variant version presented on phb174.

having GM empowerment "emphasized" is great in theory, but when the system is designed in ways that make wotc's own examples impractical meaningless badly unbalancing or needlessly difficult that emphasis rings rather hollow at best. WotC obviously felt these things had enough appeal to waste pagespace on rather than something else like the ridiculous Bishounen comparison being made, they just couldn't be bothered to make sure they work or finish them.

 

[slobster]

WotC obviously felt these things had enough appeal to waste pagespace on rather than something else like the ridiculous Bishounen comparison being made

Oh, so now my kawaii aberration campaign is apparently badwrongfun. I SEE HOW IT IS.

(There probably aren't)