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

[Ashrym]

Yes, and I’ll emphasize they’re there because they’re fun, players like their characters to have them. Fun. Not necessary. Players no longer need to stress about constantly upgrading their gear.

I think there was some confusion on the no vs low vs moderate vs high availability of such item. They are clearly part of the game. They just aren't required for balance against monsters.

It seems silly to me to make a monster that is more challenging unless x item/weapon is available and then give x item/weapon because then the challenge was removed anyway.

What I find is 5e moved more from items to characters and keeping the number of magic items low makes each feel more special for the players.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think there was some confusion on the no vs low vs moderate vs high availability of such item. They are clearly part of the game. They just aren't required for balance against monsters.

It seems silly to me to make a monster that is more challenging unless x item/weapon is available and then give x item/weapon because then the challenge was removed anyway.

What I find is 5e moved more from items to characters and keeping the number of magic items low makes each feel more special for the players.

you aren't wrong but you raise two points nonmagical b/p/s or everything & the magic item shift.

On the first point the 5e style is absurd & pointless because it doesn't change anything about how the fight plays out with those creatures rather than just making them harder/take longer when the old style of DR did change things(there were pages of discussion on how). the 5e style amounts to "must have cantrips, be a level 6 moon druid, level6 monk, or have at least +1 weapon. If those aren't true then faceroll through this creature the same way you do fighting every other creature but it's a little faster if you do"

On the second point, the intent & spirit was in the right place & all... but the implementation was flawed because magic items are too powerful and lacking enough granular dials to empower a gm to make interesting but not legendary class stuff so many magic items become completely underwhelming "meh, I already have a +1 hurtstick that does d8, maybe we can trade or sell it"

 

[fearsomepirate]

No because context matters. In a discussion about ways of bypassing dr10 having crit fishing builds much more reliable(they could get down to like 12 or 13-20 iirc) is relevant. 19-20 is just not enough to say that champion is a crit fishing build

It matters because you've gone from saying you can't crit-fish to saying the ways you can crit-fish in 5e don't count because you don't like them. You absolutely, 100% can create a build that is oriented toward massive crit-spikes. You do this by doing things in combat to get yourself Advantage, take multiclass or racial options that get you bonus damage dice to apply on a crit, and increase your number of attacks. If you have at least 3 levels of Champion, 3 attacks, and advantage, you have a 47% chance of scoring at least one critical hit.

You seem to really have no intuition for how 5e works at all. Although you really seem to be convinced that facerolling through an enemy with DR by spamming Power Attack is the height of tactical complexity.

aid another = help
bull rush = shove
charge = dash
disarm = disarm (it's an option in the DMG)
feint = feint (via battlemaster or martial adept feat)
fighting defensively = dodge
grapple = grappling
overrun = overrun (it's an option in the DMG)
sunder =
splash weapon = falls under improvised weapon
spring attack feat = mobility feat
trip = shove
turn undead = turn undead
two weapon fighting = two weapon fighting

Worth pointing out 5e also contains this blurb:

Battle often involves pitting your prowess against that of your foe. Such a challenge is represented by a contest. This section includes the most Common Contests that require an action in combat: Grappling and Shoving a Creature. The GM can use these contests as models for improvising others.

Grapple and Shove are explicitly not an exhaustive list of what you can do. Any DM who does not let players do things like try to terrify an opponent just because there's not an explicit rule in the PHB is running the game wrong.

 

[tetrasodium]

It matters because you've gone from saying you can't crit-fish to saying the ways you can crit-fish in 5e don't count because you don't like them. You absolutely, 100% can create a build that is oriented toward massive crit-spikes. You do this by doing things in combat to get yourself Advantage, take multiclass or racial options that get you bonus damage dice to apply on a crit, and increase your number of attacks. If you have at least 3 levels of Champion, 3 attacks, and advantage, you have a 47% chance of scoring at least one critical hit.

You seem to really have no intuition for how 5e works at all. Although you really seem to be convinced that facerolling through an enemy with DR by spamming Power Attack is the height of tactical complexity.



Worth pointing out 5e also contains this blurb:



Grapple and Shove are explicitly not an exhaustive list of what you can do. Any DM who does not let players do things like try to terrify an opponent just because there's not an explicit rule in the PHB is running the game wrong.

No, you don't get it. In the context of having the first 5, 10, or even more points of damage shaved off, a 5-10% chance is not high enough to count on.

Also nothing in 5e has dr, 5e uses resistance. The point of those monsters with dr was to force the party to change/shake up their tactics not create complexity. The same is true of things like wraith/trog/rust monsters/etc that would shake up the normal roles in various ways. Combined with actual choices like "do I move like so & take an AoO to do X or not" created more choices & things to consider 5e crit fish builds are not reliable enough to be a factor for 3.5 style DR & you can't simply graft it onto monsters because you lack a fleshed out functional support for ways to overcome it with so you just make gwm required.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There's also the glaring omission that some of the above disingenuous posters feel safe saying that those things I linked are easily solved perspective issues here on page 27 but didn't dare say that in the thread were they were raised.

Is this directed at me? Because I never even read that thread until you started linking it and demanding I provide fixes to problems. If you want to demand I post everything I wrote in that thread, then sure, I have no issue doing so. But, I wasn't a part of that thread and they didn't want me to answer things. You did, so I posted here.

 

[fearsomepirate]

No, you don't get it. In the context of having the first 5, 10, or even more points of damage shaved off, a 5-10% chance is not high enough to count on.

# attacks	Prob(N_crit >0)	...with Advantage
1	10%	19%
2	19%	34%
3	27%	47%
4	34%	57%
5	41%	65%
6	47%	72%

We've gone from "you can't do a crit-fishing build in 5e" to "it doesn't count because I don't want to take a subclass" to "actually it doesn't count because the odds are too small" to "well who cares anyway because 5e monsters don't have DR" to...where are the goalposts going next?

If you wanna crit-fish in 5e, grab 6 levels of Half-Orc Fighter, go with the Two-Weapon style, and then fill out the rest of your character with Vengeance Paladin.

 

[tetrasodium]

The problems are some of the same ones I've raised

# attacks	Prob(N_crit >0)	...with Advantage
1	10%	19%
2	19%	34%
3	27%	47%
4	34%	57%
5	41%	65%
6	47%	72%

Your solution is one archetype for one class & proves my point about how 5e is easy to mod unless you try. because it's too simplified & needs massive rewrites to fix. You also underestimate just how far crit fishing builds could go in the past found this 8-20 as one of the first google results& I remember 12/13-20 being fairly easy. People were off the mark by a wide margin claiming the only way to fight creatures with dr was to have a weapon that bypasses it... if crit fishing builds were a piece of the puzzle to adding them it should be easy for you to give a conservative 2-3 ways to build them without taking levels in champion.

There is also the fact that you are focusing on only one piece of the problems I raised. Monsters with DR were only one tool in a dm's toolbox to force players into shifting their strategy, you just happened to join in at a bit of discussion about them. The loss of those tools in the name of simplifying things rather than just a few variants rule to simplify things means that you can't simply make changes.

 

[Chaosmancer]

@tetrasodium I am still waiting on answers and responses to multiple posts. I read an entire separate thread to satisfy you misquoting me, and then it seems you think I was being disingenuous because I did not post my answers in that thread. Now, maybe I'm simply misreading you, but I would like a straight answer, because if you want me to copy and paste everything I wrote into that second thread, that will take me about 10 seconds to do and then we can go back to the discussion.

Also, since we seem to have moved on to critical hits, let us not forget one of the major rules to critical hits in 3.5. They needed to be confirmed. Sure, you might crit on a 12, but then you need to roll a 12 or higher again. 5e does away with that by making the critical simply count.

Also, the only dice that were doubled were the dice from the actual attack. Critical hits state "Any extra damage dice, such as from a rogue's sneak attack, are not rolled multiple times." So, if 5e made crit-fishing as easy as it was in 3.5, where a 12 crits (which by the way I do believe was both a highly specific build and a high level one) then you would end up with far more powerful blows than what 3.5 provided. (barring of course the feat that allowed you to break this rule, per 3.5 having a feat for every rule to provide exceptions)

But it was just one tool right? Same as the monsters (some of which we've shown to be stronger, and all are certainly more mobile), the negative status effects (spoken about ad nausem), the tactical combat rules that I discussed, the weapon rules I discussed... you know, it is almost like DnD 5e has quite a lot of tools as well.

You want to make a more dangerous Hobgoblin? Take the Hobgoblin captain, give him Mage Slayer and Magic Intiate for Booming Blade.

How about you give an Owlbear Rage and Frenzy?

Take an Orc war party and add an Orc Claw of Luthic who uses Spiritual Weapon, Bless and Cure Wounds to heal the Orc Blade of Ilneval who is commanding the orcs to make additional attacks on the party.

Give some Goblin's Skulker, and put them in a dark warehouse, firing arrows at the party.

Then, add in facing, new flanking rules, change the AO rules, do weapon speeds and Greyhawk Intiative.

If you want more complex challenges, more tactical combat, then just do it. This is not a question of "how many rules do I have to copy directly from 3.5". Take the rules in 5e, use them, alter them just slightly. And you can make devastating encounters.

 

[Undrave]

The point of those monsters with dr was to force the party to change/shake up their tactics not create complexity. The same is true of things like wraith/trog/rust monsters/etc that would shake up the normal roles in various ways.

By shaking up the normal roles you mean "The Casters solved the problem" right? Because most of those sound just like "You must be THIS magical to matter" to me.

 

[tetrasodium]

By shaking up the normal roles you mean "The Casters solved the problem" right? Because most of those sound just like "You must be THIS magical to matter" to me.

No. I mentioned spell resistance along with various things like interruption during casting and such that used to be a thing,. Could a caster burn slots to speed things up if you had stuff like rust monsters, not able DR trogs etc.... but you couldn't expect a caster to do that every encounter if you had many of those kind of things..

You keep pounding on this particular sad little whimper and ignoring the same answer, I'm starting to wonder if your doing it unwittingly or just in blatant in bad faith.