D&D 5E Is 5e "Easy Mode?"

[DND_Reborn]

I disagree.

0-1-2e were very tunable. The main difference is in which direction. 0-1-2e were very simple to tune to make them easier on the players/PCs, but difficult to tune to make them any harder without risking a TPK at any moment. The default starting point is 'difficult' for the players/PCs.

4-5e are the opposite: they're tunable to make the game harder on the players/PCs but the default starting point is 'easy' in comparison to the older editions.

Wait, wait, wait...

So, where does 3/3.5E fall into this?

 

[Lanefan]

Story is important because as a DM part of your job is being a storyteller. That is a foundational competency of DMing.

At some tables, yes, but not at all.

Sometimes the DM is more of a story-wrangler, left trying to sort out the various stories and plots her players have cooked up and somehow find common ground between them so as to tie them together a bit.

Sometimes the DM doesn't bother: the game is a series of disconnected adventures that just happen to have the same PCs continuing from one to the next with no overarching plot or reason.

I don't feel I should have to explain that but if you want you can pick up the DMG and read it; it mentions story throughout the book. As an example, "It is good to be the Dungeon Master! Not only do you tell fantastic stories about heroes, villains, monsters and magic, but you also get to create the world in which these stories live. (5E DMG pg. 4 Introduction).

Here you're conflating setting construction and backstory (which I agree are very good things for a DM to know how to do) with in-play storytelling, which if done wrong can very quickly and easily lead to the players/PCs being railroaded through the DM's pre-made story.

I'm not sure if the 5e DMG cautions against railroading or not - it's been a while since I read it - but if it doesn't, it should, strongly.

It seems not only is there a misunderstanding of foundational DM competencies but also of analogy. I used Danny Devito because that is what I picture when I think of say a 2E character whose average abilities scores (if using the default 3d6 keep in order rolled method) would be in the 9-12 range. I picture somebody with physicality of Danny Devito picking up a sword and saying I am going to fight. It is the furthest thing from heroic fantasy or sword & sorcery that I can think of BUT it is very Game of Thrones like so I guess I can see why you like it. To break it down as simple as possible not since 2E is it assumed that the PCs are just average folks (ability wise) who just decided for whatever reason to risk the adventuring life. Instead it is assumed that whatever their socio-economic/personal origins that the PCs are above the average mien (ability wise) and are marked by destiny to have an impact on their world.

Yes, and as far as I'm concerned this is a flat-out error in design.

Why?

Because the 0-1-2e model covers more ground. You can start as a nobody and work your way up OR you can start as a hero and go on from there, via the trivially-simple means of where the DM sets the starting level of the PCs: 1st or 3rd or 5th or whatever.

4e-5e don't give you that flexibility. There's no mechanics that cover the gap between commoner and 1st-level character, thus you simply can't start as a 'nobody'; and in 4e in particular that gap is immense.

In short, it assumes the DM cares what happens.

Which I take to mean you think a 0-1-2e DM doesn't care what happens?

Statements like this makes it hard to take you seriously - which is a shame, as though I disagree with almost everything you say you otherwise generally say it well.

Again, I never said that OSR game can't be intense or enjoyable (again provided the group has buy-in). I would not like that style of play nor do I think that style of play would be good for the modern game but I never said some people don't enjoy it.

Not everyone is going to enjoy anything. But I do think the OSR style as default would be good for the modern game in that it's both easier and more pleasant to relax restrictions and-or make things easier than it is to impose restrictions and-or make things harder.

As far as the nostalgia part, yes I will stand by what I said on that part: many OSR people I have meet seem to look back on the game and not realize that they enjoyed those games to a large extent because of the house rules or rules being ignored.

Nothing wrong with that either. Remember, in general (and some Gygax admonishments notwithstanding) the over-riding ethos in 0-1-2e was that the rules were largely guidelines, to be amended as an individual DM saw fit. Yes this meant that every table played differently, but it also meant that the game could be made to suit more tables.

It was 3e that brought in the idea of rules-as-law. 4e kept it*, while 5e has specifically tried to return to a more 'rulings-not-rules' ethos.

* - yes there was the legendary Page 42, but in reality how many 4e DMs put that to much use?

 

[Lanefan]

I have no idea where the conversation even is at this point, but I wanted to pull this bit out to mention.

I like the change made in 5e, why? Because Alice isn't used to wineglasses being thrown in her face while casting. She's used to being shot with arrows and stabbed with spears.

A wineglass should be easy for her to cast through.

See, this is why casters got out of hand in 3e and since.

None of those should be possible to cast through at all! ANY interruption kills the spell, otherwise casters would be almost unstoppable in any setting (not like they aren't anyway, but this at least helps!).

See, I have a logical problem with your last statement. "But the fact that poison was save or die meant that the players would often change their strategy as soon as they knew they were dealing with poison."

I remember in a few video games encountering giant centipedes. Didn't know that centipedes were poisonous, so your players are walking through a dungeon, find a room filled with centipedes, if they don't know centipedes are poisonous, when do they know they are dealing with poison? Well, that would be after they are bit, at which point a PC might be dead.

Yep. I call this learning by trial and error. And, if the first bitten PC makes her save and can alert the others to the presence of poison, the error isn't even costly.

 

[Lanefan]

Wait, wait, wait...

So, where does 3/3.5E fall into this?

It doesn't. It's difficult to tune in either direction and get useful results, thus it just is what it is.

 

[tetrasodium]

See, this is why casters got out of hand in 3e and since.

None of those should be possible to cast through at all! ANY interruption kills the spell, otherwise casters would be almost unstoppable in any setting (not like they aren't anyway, but this at least helps!).

Yep. I call this learning by trial and error. And, if the first bitten PC makes her save and can alert the others to the presence of poison, the error isn't even costly.

I think the wineglass comment may have been cribbed from here where I mentioned how 5e removed the higher dc caster level check or interrupt during casting that was present in 3.5 compared to 5e where it's much easier to make the save. The 3.5 wine glass to the face when alice started casting fireball in the middle of dinner negotiations did have a very good chance of interrupting her. Interrupts were the bane of spellcasters in any group that used them & the most important use of melfs acid arrow (trolls aside). Here are some examples of things carelessly tossed aside in 5e

Spoiler: spell resistance

This was pretty much AC for spells that needed to be met before even getting to the touch attack or save. As a caster it was one of the banes of your assistance because even moderate SR levels had a chance of nullifying the spell but not the spell slot use if you rolled poorly

Spoiler: Meaningful Concentration checks

Yea a lot of it is the same thing over & over again to include various sources, but it
combined to make casting a risk that could be easily interrupted. That doesn't get into things like ]

Spoiler: casting time

In 5e the frenemy that started the Alice/wineglass interrupt needs to (each round) ready an action to throw it in her face if she starts casting a spell while in 3.5 they just need to do it in what amounts to "before her next turn". Even if the wineglass does 1d4+2 for circumstance of alcohol in the eyes or whatever the DC to get that 3rd level fireball off is 13+1d4+2 for DC 16-19.

 

[dave2008]

And to a degree that the Cavalier is pretty much worse at everything it does in comparison to a 4e battlemaster, Multiple-marks of enemies...

I will admit, marking was one of the only things about 4e I just didn't like. It never felt right to me. I know it worked for others, but it just rubbed me the wrong way.

 

[Garthanos]

I will admit, marking was one of the only things about 4e I just didn't like. It never felt right to me. I know it worked for others, but it just rubbed me the wrong way.

It was night and day the first time I felt like a fighter could actually protect his allies and threaten his enemies flexibly and with mechanics instead of dm fiat so I resoundingly disagree.

 

[Garthanos]

Damned if you do and Damned if you don't aspect of the fighter to make it a difficult choice on the DMs side about how to deal with the fighter.

I mean how to deal with the Wizard is and always was the problem question.

 

[dave2008]

• Healer's kit dependency & Slow natural healing Back with prepared vancian spell casting/slots this would be pretty significant... in 5e though it means that I've literally seen one player scold a second player for "wasting healers kit charges & hit dice" rather than letting her burn some of the spell slots & abilities that her & the paladin are about to recover. This is an attempt to bring back some thought & gravity to recovering hp & hp attrition , but at 3 pounds for 10 charges & the overly gracious encumbrance limits removing any painful choices for carrying a few heal kits. End result was hat it's just kinda pointless once you factor in the impact of spontaneous casting heal spells/slot recovery ease. I bet it works o if you have no healers in the party or you remove/somehow limit other forms of healing to interact with it like in 4e.. but in a normal party it just cranks the dial up a few notches with 5e as written.

Not my experience. My group came from 1e, with a 4+ year detour into 4e, before we came to 5e. We found that the healing kit/slow natural healing dependency really brought back the cautious style of play we had in 1e that we had lost in 4e. But that is the beauty of D&D 10 people can play the game and have 10 different experiences.

• Gritty Realism: I talked about this earlier as did many others through various threads. Not only is it a spitball of a rule, It was never developed beyond the wet cocktail napkin happy hour scribbles. It certainly doesn't help that they called it gritty realism seemingly without understanding what that is when they made this variant rule to mimic the power scale of the upper tier greek gods unless you as the gm go through a lot of work balancing the problems I previously raised with it against each other. There was also the problematic fact that seven short rests were pretty much baked into a week. Finding a god balance between the needs of long & short rest classes was difficult since forced march and other problems stemming from the party staying up for days on end is the alternative to 7 short rests per long rest. Short/long rest classes are very much not designed for that many short rests per long rest. I did not not bring up those problems because they were trivial

• We haven't played with this variant. We have a version of our own. HP is healed normally, but bloodied hit points heal at 1 BHP per week.

• Epic heroism seems pretty contrary to doing anything but cranking the power up massively.

• We currently use a version of this. We have 5 minute short rest, but standard 8 hr long rest. This felt more realistic to us and coupled with some other house rules gives a much need boost so that my group isn't walking into a TPK in every adventure.

• Healing Surges I've given out healing potions that burn & return 2hd+2, which is less than & more limited than the up to half hd+(con*number if hit dice spent), the intention was to make the action economy cost of taking a potion in combat more attractive, the results were that players would wait until they looked pretty similar to monty python's black knight before scarfing them down & immediately push for a short/long rest after the fight because bob was beat up so badly. Healing surges would be even more generous & quick to recover than the very generous potion allotment I gave them during that campaign. It worked fine for casters & other non-frontline types who might chug them because of a stray fireball or something eating their face, but for frontline types it was a mess

• We use a version of healing surges that we call heroic surges. They can use them to fuel a lot more interesting things than healing. Of course, that leaves less HD for healing, so they have to be careful.

• Lingering Injuries: I've not used it, but there was some discussion of similar being used in another system earlier & I've used similar in the past while running into the same kind of overly maimed problems noted there. Odds are good that I will use it at some point down the line whev we all get done with self quarantining & social distancing ourselves, but more because I tend to run eberron & eberron-like settings/campaigns and had been considering looking for a rule like that to "encourage" the use of prosthetics since inflicting a limb loss on a pc after a "what.. really?... are you suuuure that you really want to do that?" followed by what was either a crit from an npc or crit fail on the PC's part a year or two back.

As I mentioned we had use this, but coupled with our other rules it just go to gruesome for my group so we dropped it.

 

[dave2008]

It was night and day the first time I felt like a fighter could actually protect his allies and threaten his enemies flexibly and with mechanics instead of dm fiat so I resoundingly disagree.

Maybe that is part of my issue: I never felt that was a core requirement of a fighter. I never thought of them as "tanks." Maybe because I don't play video games?

Anyway, when I really think about it, I don't like the execution. The penalty to hit, at no cost felt like getting something for nothing. It would make more sense to me if the fighter had to spend a reaction to invoke a penalty or get an opportunity attack. As it is written it just rubs me the wrong way.

Like I said, it didn't work for me. I don't think it is bad/wrong. It just wasn't what I like.

EDIT: I actually didn't like that fighters were "tanks" in 4e and not "strikers" which is how I have always played them.