D&D 5E Tired of doing WotC's job

[toucanbuzz]

Well, it has been a while since I've posted on Enworld. After 18 months of 5E, I think I am soon to be done with it. Honestly, I am sick and tired of doing the game designers' work for them.

Ah man, every DM has those days. Been having them for decades. There's nothing wrong with a breather from the game.

Otherwise, I'm sure you know there's never going to be a "one size fits all" D&D Handbook, and I'm hoping there's some secret satisfaction when you make the game yours, and the players say "hey, that was fun. Thanks." Having enjoyed reading your posts, you've seemed to have done that. And on the flipside, when a prior edition was suffocating me with rules bloat, a modifier for everything, my secret desire was to take a giant axe to it all and chop it all down so I could get back to enjoying the adventure. So if I want lycanthropy to be cured by Dr. Van Richten with a quest to retrieve belladonna that only grows in these lands in the Night Hag's personal garden and that must be picked at midnight, all before the next full moon, then I'll do that (and I did). Boom, lack of a rule = more fun.

I owe a lot to RPG's and D&D specifically. So I'll end this with a heart-felt and general cosmic THANK YOU to all those who made my experiences possible. Cheers.

We do have a great community here.

 

[bedir than]

Remember, if you need a holocaust cloak the goliath already has one

 

[nevin]

Either way, more and more people seem to think the Game designers should be telling them everything. That's silly. Best games I ever ran were shaped by things like that. I had a 2nd level fighter get bit by a werewolf they were supposed to run from. 2nd level cleric tried everything he could think of player prayed and prayed. I really didn't want a werewolf the party so his god intervened and the curse changed ever so slightly. Robert the were Wolfhound was born, for 5 levels the cleric helped him hide his curse every full moon, as he turned into a very sane dog that ran wild and free. I thought he'd be upset. The player's ate up every minute of it. If you don't know what the answer is, they don't know what the answer is and then it's exciting , scary or downright novel. If the rules spell it all out then your playing world of warcraft and your players can prepare for everything. Just let go and wing it sometimes.

 

[Blue]

@dnd4vr I hope you find a game to match your tastes. There are so many good ones out there catering to lots of tastes and flavors. And let us know what you find so those who enjoy your tastes can give it a try as well.

Good luck!

 

[Charlaquin]

In AD&D Detect Shapechanger is a different spell from Detect Magic, and higher level. And a sword that gets bonuses against magic-using and enchanted creatures is different from a sword that gets bonuses against lycanthropes and shape-changers. So my own view would be that Detect Magic does not detect lycanthropes.

That’s nice for AD&D, but 5e is not AD&D.

 

[Reynard]

That’s all stuff you make a rule on in the moment. Boom done.

We should be careful not to imply that our preferences are "correct" while others' are not. Some people lots of room to maneuver to be freeing. others find it paralyzing.


Here's the thing about detail though: the GMs that like to improvise and make stuff up on the fly (I am one of them btw) can much more easily ignore the detail and play in their preferred style than the GM that thrives on that detail can succeed without it. Therefore, it makes sense to err on the side of providing it.

 

[Reynard]

That’s nice for AD&D, but 5e is not AD&D.

I think what @pemerton was saying that in the absence of information, referring back to the history of the game is a valid way to come up with an answer.

 

[Charlaquin]

There is not a single rule for lycanthropy in the PHB or DMG for 5E that I have found anyway.

The rules for lycanthropy are in the monster manual, page 207.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think what @pemerton was saying that in the absence of information, referring back to the history of the game is a valid way to come up with an answer.

I don’t disagree with that in principle, but when doing so one should consider the different rules context. 5e does not have a detect shapechanger spell or differentiate between damage bonuses against magical creatures and damage bonuses against shapechangers, so the existence of such a delineation in AD&D doesn’t seem like a strong foundation on which to base a ruling for 5e.

 

[Stormonu]

If one out of ten Player's Handbooks were infested with radioactive wasps, at least half of this forum would call them a feature.

Oh cool, they reprinted Gamma World!

Seriously though, I still use Aurora's Whole Realms for gear, and sometimes Arms & Equipment. I actually have a document I made where I'd compiled all the prices into one master list back in 2E and still consult it for my current games.

I do wish though that 5E had retained some form of 4E's disease track, especially for handling things like Lycanthropy (or just plain ol' rabies/redache from rat bites). Overall though, I generally prefer this edition's ability for me to come up with my own solution instead of foisting a solution upon me that doesn't work for my table.