D&D 5E "The problem with 5e" is the best feature - advantage

[tetrasodium]

Did you even read the second, alternatively... part of my post?

Think some more about it. It helps a lot.

Sorry, I forgot to address: as for a meaningful cost to get into flanking position? What do you want, you use your movement. It is no different than lacking a "meaningful cost" to engage an enemy.

If Alice & bob are going to flank BaddieB 5-10 feet away after killing baddieA they are already flanking. what is the opportunity cost of bob needing to move 20 feet to Alice's 10? Neither one is going to spend that round wishing bob kept the extra15 feet he's not going to use. using an extra few feet of movement you were not going to use is not a cost. In past editions you risked an AoO for moving more than 5 feet/1 square in 3.5/4e or 2e's exposing your rear (player options combat & tactics pg11-12).... whre as in 5e you just use part f a resource that resets every round that you wouldn't have used otherwise. The opportunity cost is zero unless you were going to use that movement for something else because that movement resets at the start of your next turn.

I feel like the disconnect is so great that in order to show the problem it will take an actual battlemat example...
Fair warning, the map I happened to load had the remnants of a fight from some long precovid session& I didn't drop the golems & one pcperfectly in a 4x4 set of squares but didn't notice until I had done the screengrab & closed arkenforge.

Spoiler: Two players charge at the bbeg & his two guards.

Now running up the middle between the two golems will allow one PC to move through 15feet of space threatened by both golems to attack the bbeg but that only works for one pc so at least the guards did something right?

Spoiler: Guard problem solved

The guards literally did nothing not also provided by a large rock, tree, or even the pillars so nowthe PCs are flanking the bbeg after ignoring the two guards & because your suggestion includes a possible action cost the bbeg & guards aren't flanking the PCs unless they expend the (bonus)action after being relegated to the same level of combat impact as an inanimate object.[/spoiler][/spoiler]

 

[TwoSix]

ACs in the 20s? How high, though? I mean at tier 3 the average AC for monsters is about 17-18 and even in tier 4 you get about 19-20. The most powerful dragons are only AC 22 and AC 25 is the top IME barring magical items or something?

At tier 3 we typically have +4-5 proficiency as well as ability, so say +9 average. Notwithstanding magical weapons, another +1 or 2 maybe, or features or spells, getting a +11-13 is pretty easy. With AC averaging maybe 18, that only requires a 5-7 to hit on the d20, hence the 70% hit chance.

At tier 4, bonuses are only slightly higher in total, maybe +12-14 overall, but ACs are averaging maybe 20? So, here a roll of 6-8 is needed, which makes hitting well better than 50/50.

So, how or what are you doing to get ACs in the 20s as "not uncommon" at those levels?

Just to clarify, I'm not making any sort of RAW argument here. This is simply how I run my games. (And one of the main reasons I post here is to get exposure to the myriad ways people run games differently than I do!)

Primarily, lots of humanoid enemies with heavy armor and shields, who also have magic items. Planar enemies with enchanted armor +1 or +2 are very common, and since the players already have that, it's not like I'm propping up their AC more. Or they are NPCs with special features; one of the recurring NPCs in my last game was an ogre vampire monk with a special subclass feature that let him use 10+Str+Wis as his AC, so he ended up with a 22 AC. (24 Str, 20 Wis). Or I just homebrew enemies with high AC, like hoverdrones with enchanted metal plating.

The Monster Manual is usually a book of last resort for me, I only pull it out if I need something off-the-cuff.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Just to clarify, I'm not making any sort of RAW argument here. This is simply how I run my games. (And one of the main reasons I post here is to get exposure to the myriad ways people run games differently than I do!)

Primarily, lots of humanoid enemies with heavy armor and shields, who also have magic items. Planar enemies with enchanted armor +1 or +2 are very common, and since the players already have that, it's not like I'm propping up their AC more. Or they are NPCs with special features; one of the recurring NPCs in my last game was an ogre vampire monk with a special subclass feature that let him use 10+Str+Wis as his AC, so he ended up with a 22 AC. (24 Str, 20 Wis). Or I just homebrew enemies with high AC, like hoverdrones with enchanted metal plating.

The Monster Manual is usually a book of last resort for me, I only pull it out if I need something off-the-cuff.

Ok, just checking if you were homebrewing/customizing things or doing something different. Thanks for the discussion.

 

[DND_Reborn]

The opportunity cost is zero unless you were going to use that movement for something else because that movement resets at the start of your next turn.

Which, as I say, is exactly the same as moving to engage an enemy in the first place. You just move into position. Does it bother you that someone can move to engage a foe (flanking or not) with any other "cost" involved?

Now, your examples are a bit convoluted and hard to follow (when I have more time I'll review them again) but let me offer this suggestion to you: Guards guard. Those guards should have Readied actions that if anyone tries to move past them to the BBEG, they will attack. So, in your examples it doesn't matter if a PC moves between them (FWIW both PCs could have moved between them it seems to me) or around them. As soon as an enemy enters their reach, they use their reaction to trigger their readied actions and ATTACK that PC.

The BBEG could also have a readied action that was soon as his guards are engaging foes, he moves away (between the guards, around the guard where no PC exists, etc.).

As long as there is no surprise, you can easily play this scenarios out this way. So, the cost of moving to flank the BBEG is two-fold: you get attacked by a guard (their purpose: guarding) and the BBEG moves away, so you are not flanking him.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Recently, I saw this video about 5e being like super-heroes and how the character's power all came from their sheet and that the rewards of engaging with the world were less - you could just use your "own" power to win. Now this video wasn't quite 100% right. You still need the other PCs IMO. And it didn't quite explain why you didn't need to "engage" anymore.

I haven't seen this video, but I have heard the argument and there is a fair bit of truth to it.

The issue is that in 5e, virtually every ability is something you get from your class and level. You gain a level, you get new abilities on a nice little schedule. You take a feat, that's what the player wanted. You gain a level in a class, it's what the player wanted. If you're playing a Battlemaster Fighter who made it to level 15 in Dungeon of the Mad Mage and you compare them to a Battlemaster Fighter who made it to level 15 in Descent to Avernus, what exactly do they do differently? The answer: Basically nothing. You picked the ancestry, you picked the background, you picked the class, you picked the feats, you picked the attributes, etc.

Compare this to, say, 1e/2e AD&D. Sure, on it's face, what every character can do comes from the class and level. Indeed, at level 1 you certainly do have identical characters. However, it doesn't take very long before your character finds meaningful magic items. Not just basic items, but one PC will get a horn of blasting while another might get boots of speed and another might get a sword of sharpness. These items significantly alter the capabilities of each PC, not just because it's the only way you gain abilities, but because the items themselves are a lot more potent. In earlier editions, your character's abilities was determined not by what you could select at the beginning of the game, but by what your individual character actually accomplished. You have the ability to knock down doors easily because you found that. You have a story behind how your PC came into possession of these fantastic abilities.

As D&D has steadily removed the potency of magic items and steadily increased the potency of class abilities, it has left characters much more uniform than they used to be. This has been a problem since 3e and the emergence of "builds", but it was somewhat mitigated by the fact that prestige classes added so many options that it kind of concealed it. Still, the very idea that you could have a character "build" before you even begin playing the game and you would have a reasonable expectation of having those exact abilities when you reached high level and nothing else of consequence is almost anathema to 20th century D&D.

In other words, it's a way to backdoor complain that in-game rewards in 5e are godawful. That magic items have been so deprecated and depowered in the name of not giving out too much power that they can feel like they're barely worth carrying with you. Like finding that +0 longsword really does feel kind of like finding a silver dagger used to. The fact that everything actually interesting is attuned means that you just don't get that many valuable items and finding new items suffers from diminishing returns. Magic item abilities, by and large, feel like bad versions of class abilities when they really ought to feel like character-defining major rewards of gameplay.

Even worse, there's no clear purpose for all this gold you're finding. You might find 10,000 gp, but once you've got full plate armor what exactly is it good for? You're not bringing hirelings. You can't buy items. There's no benefit to hoarding gold. Most PCs should retire by level 5 or 6.

Treasure rewards have kind of become the absolute worst thing imaginable: boring at best and worthless at worst.

But that video made me realize what the issue is - it's advantage! Once you have advantage, getting more help doesn't matter. (I know that there are other bonuses you can get, but they are rare).

You don't need to find the higher grounds. You don't need to flank the giant. Just get advantage by doing one thing and you're good. And a lot of classes have ways to easily give themselves or others advantage. So you don't need to engage with the world as much! Just show up, and get ready to rumble!

So... how do we fix this?

First, Advantage is not a 2nd d20 roll. It's a +1d6 bonus. This is roughly the same as advantage (advantage is equivalent to +5 if you have 50% chance of hitting. If your chances are very low or very high, the impact is less. So +1d6 is roughly equivalent).

Second advantages stack - you could get more than a d6. But for things not to get completely crazy, (good or bad: disadvantage stacks too!), the extra D6 don't add, it's a "take the highest roll". So if you have advantage from 3 sources, one source of disadvantage, roll the 1d6 twice, take the best, and add this to your 1d20 roll. So if you have a lot of advantages, the bonus will approach +6 - so engaging with the world to make a fight go easier on you and harder on the enemy is worth doing.

Am I on to something?

No, I don't think so.

I think the bonus-hunting minigame was not a useful way to spend time. I think getting rid of stacking circumstantial bonuses was 100% the best addition to D&D that 5e brought. I think it's fine if certain tables want to re-introduce stacking bonuses and penalties. If that's how they want to play that's fine. However, I'm not interested in doing that anymore. All it adds is accounting, and that's not really a fun way to spend time.

Advantage/disadvantage as written is the perfect example of a "good enough" rule. Because unless you're going to allow bonuses to stack so high that bounded accuracy breaks, that's exactly what it is: good enough. It does exactly what you need: it keeps die rolls having a meaningful chance for success and meaningful chance for failure. And like 85% of the time, it's exactly what you'd get if you still used fixed bonuses.

Part of the issue is that, outside of combat, if you're getting double or triple or higher advantage your DM should stop asking you to roll. You roll dice when the outcome of an event cannot be determined otherwise. If you've got that much advantage, it's not really hard to determine anymore. Adding more die rolls to the game doesn't make it more fair. It just makes it more random, and stories aren't random. Don't ask dice to perfectly model reality because they cannot and will not. You're not only playing D&D when you're rolling dice. Put the dice down and just move on.

I'm perfectly okay with the mechanics not being perfect. I want the game to be fast to play and simple to resolve. I love that once I find one source of advantage I can stop hunting through the rules looking for more. I love that once I find one source of disadvantage I can stop hunting through the rules looking for more. That's perfect. No more, "Oh, wait, I forgot prayer. Oh, wait, I forgot I'm a dwarf. Oh wait, I forgot...." You can take that away when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

 

[TwoSix]

The issue is that in 5e, virtually every ability is something you get from your class and level. You gain a level, you get new abilities on a nice little schedule. You take a feat, that's what the player wanted. You gain a level in a class, it's what the player wanted. If you're playing a Battlemaster Fighter who made it to level 15 in Dungeon of the Mad Mage and you compare them to a Battlemaster Fighter who made it to level 15 in Descent to Avernus, what exactly do they do differently? The answer: Basically nothing. You picked the ancestry, you picked the background, you picked the class, you picked the feats, you picked the attributes, etc.

Compare this to, say, 1e/2e AD&D. Sure, on it's face, what every character can do comes from the class and level. Indeed, at level 1 you certainly do have identical characters. However, it doesn't take very long before your character finds meaningful magic items. Not just basic items, but one PC will get a horn of blasting while another might get boots of speed and another might get a sword of sharpness. These items significantly alter the capabilities of each PC, not just because it's the only way you gain abilities, but because the items themselves are a lot more potent. In earlier editions, your character's abilities was determined not by what you could select at the beginning of the game, but by what your individual character actually accomplished. You have the ability to knock down doors easily because you found that. You have a story behind how your PC came into possession of these fantastic abilities.

So much this. The number one thing I want to attempt in my next D&D style game is a focus on growth through acquisition during play, rather than growth into a pre-designed template of abilities.

 

[tetrasodium]

Which, as I say, is exactly the same as moving to engage an enemy in the first place. You just move into position. Does it bother you that someone can move to engage a foe (flanking or not) with any other "cost" involved?

Now, your examples are a bit convoluted and hard to follow (when I have more time I'll review them again) but let me offer this suggestion to you: Guards guard. Those guards should have Readied actions that if anyone tries to move past them to the BBEG, they will attack. So, in your examples it doesn't matter if a PC moves between them (FWIW both PCs could have moved between them it seems to me) or around them. As soon as an enemy enters their reach, they use their reaction to trigger their readied actions and ATTACK that PC.

The BBEG could also have a readied action that was soon as his guards are engaging foes, he moves away (between the guards, around the guard where no PC exists, etc.).

As long as there is no surprise, you can easily play this scenarios out this way. So, the cost of moving to flank the BBEG is two-fold: you get attacked by a guard (their purpose: guarding) and the BBEG moves away, so you are not flanking him.

Both PCs can't move between & attack the bbeg without one pc provoking an AoO from at least one guard because the PCs can't share the same square & there's no reason to assume reach or complicate the example with a tiny handful of ways to get it.

It's absurd to require that guards burn their action every round on the hope of maybe being useful if the PCs try to bypass them. If your till confused there, put two PCs called Alice & Bob in place of the golems trying to protect their squishy caster friend from a wave of a few goblins. Goblins rush up & travel across almost every square one of those two melee types are touching so they can beat down Chuck the squishy caster. If chuck misty steps to the other side so Alice & Bob are once more between him & the goblins thy just repeat the process.

You feel like a bbeg (big bad evil guy) with two guards and two players moving in to attack the bbeg while ignoring the guards as much as possible is "convoluted" and "hard to follow"?... I'm not sure there is a level of simplicity I could reduce that to and grant you enough understanding for a meaningful discussion if you are lost already & feel like you need time to review.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Both PCs can't move between & attack the bbeg without one pc provoking an AoO from at least one guard because the PCs can't share the same square & there's no reason to assume reach or complicate the example with a tiny handful of ways to get it.

Fair enough. I thought that might be the case but it wasn't exactly clear from the example.

It's absurd to require that guards burn their action every round on the hope of maybe being useful if the PCs try to bypass them.

No, it isn't. Guards guard, why is that so hard for you to understand? They are standing their, WAITING for an enemy to approach their boss.

So, they aren't burning their action hoping to be useful. They are being useful because if an attack comes within range, smack!!! If the PCs don't approach, the boss can order the guards forward to attack, but that's different of course.

put two PCs called Alice & Bob in place of the golems trying to protect their squishy caster friend from a wave of a few goblins. Goblins rush up & travel across almost every square one of those two melee types are touching so they can beat down Chuck the squishy caster. If chuck misty steps to the other side so Alice & Bob are once more between him & the goblins thy just repeat the process.

Yeah, two PCs guarding their friend are going to have an impossible time trying to stop more than two goblins (assuming each PC can stop one goblin, the third and any more will get through). After the goblins have moved, (assuming you don't want the PCs using readied actions) the PCs attack and their ally can misty step, disengage, or whatever to move away from danger.

Again, there is nothing wrong with the scenarios you present or flanking if you know how to handle it well. IME this is an issue with the DM, not the rules.

I'm not sure there is a level of simplicity I could reduce that to and grant you enough understanding for a meaningful discussion if you are lost already & feel like you need time to review.

No, your convoluted writing style:

If Alice & bob are going to flank BaddieB 5-10 feet away after killing baddieA they are already flanking. what is the opportunity cost of bob needing to move 20 feet to Alice's 10? Neither one is going to spend that round wishing bob kept the extra15 feet he's not going to use. using an extra few feet of movement you were not going to use is not a cost. In past editions you risked an AoO for moving more than 5 feet/1 square in 3.5/4e or 2e's exposing your rear (player options combat & tactics pg11-12).... whre as in 5e you just use part f a resource that resets every round that you wouldn't have used otherwise. The opportunity cost is zero unless you were going to use that movement for something else because that movement resets at the start of your next turn.

Is what is hard to follow. Try breaking up your text a bit.

 

[billd91]

I'm generally OK with advantage and disadvantage as they are but there are a few edge cases that I find problematic.

Fighting in darkness/situations where neither can see - attackers get disadvantage to hit, but also get advantage on enemies that can't see them. They might as well be fighting in broad daylight. This also means that they can sneak attack each other (assuming another ally is sufficiently nearby) even though they can't see to target each other. In a case like this, disadvantage really should win out as applied to the attacker.

 

[tetrasodium]

Fair enough. I thought that might be the case but it wasn't exactly clear from the example.


No, it isn't. Guards guard, why is that so hard for you to understand? They are standing their, WAITING for an enemy to approach their boss.

So, they aren't burning their action hoping to be useful. They are being useful because if an attack comes within range, smack!!! If the PCs don't approach, the boss can order the guards forward to attack, but that's different of course.


Yeah, two PCs guarding their friend are going to have an impossible time trying to stop more than two goblins (assuming each PC can stop one goblin, the third and any more will get through). After the goblins have moved, (assuming you don't want the PCs using readied actions) the PCs attack and their ally can misty step, disengage, or whatever to move away from danger.

Again, there is nothing wrong with the scenarios you present or flanking if you know how to handle it well. IME this is an issue with the DM, not the rules.


No, your convoluted writing style:

Is what is hard to follow. Try breaking up your text a bit.

In other words, your position depends on your inability to understand and nothing can change that. As I said there does not appear to be a level of simplification that would allow the two of us to have a discussion on this matter when you need to be explicitly told that two characters can not occupy the same square & that moving out of reach of a hostile opponent provokes an AoO before you can understand how those key concepts affect combat on a grid map... You know like the rules say....