D&D 5E (2014) Odd things in the rules that bug you?

[CleverNickName]

Your enemies all get a free swing against you if you move too far away from them...but not if you take a moment to drink a bottle of liquid in the middle of a fistfight. And not if you take a moment to flawlessly recite a paragraph from a scroll. And not if you take a moment to reload a crossbow. And etc. But watch out if you dare to move too far away.

 

[MNblockhead]

The Banishment spell. The CHA save is weird enough, although we could probably start an entire thread on which saving throws make more sense for what, but what bugs me is the character being incapacitated. Why? They're already removed from the encounter, why can't they take any actions where they are? Buff, heal, explore, ready an action? Nope, you just lose your turn because that's fun. Sure I could come up with a narrative reason, but it just makes for boring gameplay.

Wow. You have just given me a new home rule. I don't understand why I've never thought of this. First, it gives players something to do on their turns if they are banished. Second, if you can heal while banished...that changes tactical decisions quite dramatically. I don't think allowing healing would affect use of it too much, since players and DMs tend to banish one of the big bads so they can clean up some of the squishier enemies and focus fire on the banished creature when it returns. In my games most of those who are banished are banished when they are still relatively high in hit points.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I agree. Just in general I wish all classes were a lot more MAD. But specifically regarding Str and Dex: in an ideal world any two values of Str and Dex that average N would be roughly equivalent in the general case, which (because higher scores "cost" more) would make, for example, two 14s preferable to an 18 and a 12, because it would save you points that can be invested elsewhere.

I'd worry that you end up in a place where everyone buys 14's in all ability scores regardless of class, because that's the best array for all classes. Which would be a lot of math to make everyone the same.

If; we're going to have ability scores, I'd much rather every class be as SAD as possible, while making every score useful - just unnecessary. So a finesse-weapon fighter should need Dex, but then have to think hard about wanting str, or int, or wis for the different maneuvers/features those stats allow.

 

[tetrasodium]

Because we should go back to the days of a couple dozen different types of pole arms?

Your enemies all get a free swing against you if you move too far away from them...but not if you take a moment to drink a bottle of liquid in the middle of a fistfight. And not if you take a moment to flawlessly recite a paragraph from a scroll. And not if you take a moment to reload a crossbow. And etc. But watch out if you dare to move too far away.

It's much worse You can dig that potion out of your pack & then drink it as part of the same actionas noted on phb190.

 

[Minigiant]

That's not a good example - first semester CS students are only any good at CS in semester 1 because they programmed before college. The ones that didn't, aren't.

It isn't a necessary thematic or flavor difference or even a necessary mechanical difference - they simply failed to be consistent with class design.

It would have been okay if there was a stated thematicor flavor reason for the different rates of growth to full image at level 3.
It was clear that the apprentice tier spread was to discourage single level dipping in multiclassing. That's why 5e needed 0th level or some other hard penalty for multiclassing.

That's one of my 2 main gripes with 5e. It was clearly built for variant rules options but official WOTC variants were few and slowly made.

For example, the whole "things you can do as a part of movement" thing could have come with an variant that puts costs to the "free actions" with a cost of movement at 5 foot increments.

Pull an item form your backpack or off the floor? It costs 0ft for these items, 5 ft for these items, and 10 ft for these items. Cost goes down by 5ft if the item is from a specially made belt or holder.

Boom. Now your dagger chucking figher can chuck 3 daggers by wearing a special belt and not cost a fighting style. 5f - 5ft equal 0ft cost to draw a dagger from your dagger-belt or a javelin from your javelin "pouch?".

 

[ph0rk]

It is rather weird that thrown weapons require a style to get multiple attacks.

Someone in the 5e design room really hated strength.

 

[Don Durito]

It is rather weird that thrown weapons require a style to get multiple attacks.

Someone in the 5e design room really hated strength.

I don't think so. It's overcompensation. A lot of people complained that the fighter in 4E was basically Strength only.

There was an awful lot of conscious decisions made bring back a lot of 3E elements (by which I mean things that were explicitly introduced in 3E) and weapon finesse was one of those.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that all of them were poor decisions and 5e would have been a much better game if it had skipped right over 3E.

 

[cbwjm]

Finesse Weapons: I understand the reasoning for why they work the way they work....but since they showed up in 3e they have eroded the need for some amount of STR for a melee combatant and made hight DEX combatants generally superior to high STR ones.

I'd have liked to have seen a system that combined STR and DEX for melee so that both were important, even if something so simple as DEX bonus to-hit and STR bonus to damage as a general rule much like high STR bows worked in 3e.

That's also how finesse weapons worked in 3e. The feat only allowed you to apply your dexterity modifier to attack rolls, strength was still used for damage. It was only from 4e onwards where you applied whichever ability mod was used for your attack as the damage modifier as well and 5e continued that trend.

 

[ph0rk]

Dex to hit (fo certain weapons) and strength for damage worked fine, really. There were reasons for everyone to have a little dex as it was in 3e, too.

Dex to hit and to damage without anything like a feat tax is nuts, given everything else dex does.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't think so. It's overcompensation. A lot of people complained that the fighter in 4E was basically Strength only.

There was an awful lot of conscious decisions made bring back a lot of 3E elements (by which I mean things that were explicitly introduced in 3E) and weapon finesse was one of those.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that all of them were poor decisions and 5e would have been a much better game if it had skipped right over 3E.

It's not so much that they were poor decisions as there was not enough effort put into understanding what the individual components & systems interactions did in those elements before streamlining them. Take the 27 mechanically distinct pole arms that caused decision paralysis vrs the two pole arms that are effectively identical as an example.

You see this kind of problem A being removed entirely & overly simplified to create problem B thing time & again, but the most glaring obvious example of just how little nuance went into so many of these simplifications if you compare the rare handy haversack to the objectively better in every way uncommon bag of holding & go back to see why the handysack used to be better by allowing you to get thins from it without provoking an AoO despite smaller size. Whatever order decisions were made, it's not like the bag of holding is too obscure to cross index when going through the handy haversack to remove the container interaction not provoking an AoO once everything that AoOs for various actions did to enable tactical combat were deemed bad & that phb190 list was settled on.