D&D General Things That Bug You

[overgeeked]

In any case, I don't think there's a good solution, just a thing that bugs me.

Just remember that like everything else in D&D combat is an abstraction. It's not meant to simulate reality. Hit points aren't meat points. A single attack in D&D isn't a single swing of the sword. AC is a measure of how hard it is to deplete your "luck" (hit points), not how hard it is to physically connect with an attack. Etc.

 

[Charlaquin]

Speaking of things that bug me! The MMORPG descriptors of striker, tank, etc (and their variation) making their way into D&D.*

Striker actually doesn’t come from MMOs - the term there is DPS. Tank does, but 4e used “defender” rather than tank. In fact, none of the combat roles in 4e used the same terms as their typical MMO analogues.

I have no issue with describing common roles that emerge in game play, but when the roles become prescriptive instead of descriptive and playing the game without certain roles appears "impossible" instead of "how can I use what is available to me in different ways to overcome this challenge?" it strikes me as limiting, esp. to newer players who adopt that framework.

*at least that is how I remember it. It could be these roles pre-date stuff like WoW, but I never heard them until after - and certainly MMORPGs helped spread that nomenclature.

It’s pretty reciprocal. The idea of the party healer absolutely originated with D&D and was adopted by CRPGs and later MMORPGs. And while the terminology of “tank, DPS, and healer” comes from MMOs, fundamentally it’s the same concept as mixed unit tactics, which goes back to war gaming (and, you know, actual war).

4e was the only edition of D&D to really codify these roles, but that’s because it was re-thinking what “class” meant. Instead of character archetypes, 4e classes were a combination of “where your powers come from” and “what your (combat) powers do.” While there’s certainly MMO influence there, it works pretty differently than MMOs typically do. I can see how it would seem limiting in a traditional D&D framework, but you kind of have to treat it as a different game. It does the thing it’s designed to do very well, it just might not have been designed to do what you may expect it to do coming from an old school D&D background.

 

[el-remmen]

Striker actually doesn’t come from MMOs - the term there is DPS. Tank does, but 4e used “defender” rather than tank. In fact, none of the combat roles in 4e used the same terms as their typical MMO analogues.


It’s pretty reciprocal. The idea of the party healer absolutely originated with D&D and was adopted by CRPGs and later MMORPGs. And while the terminology of “tank, DPS, and healer” comes from MMOs, fundamentally it’s the same concept as mixed unit tactics, which goes back to war gaming (and, you know, actual war).

4e was the only edition of D&D to really codify these roles, but that’s because it was re-thinking what “class” meant. Instead of character archetypes, 4e classes were a combination of “where your powers come from” and “what your (combat) powers do.” While there’s certainly MMO influence there, it works pretty differently than MMOs typically do. I can see how it would seem limiting in a traditional D&D framework, but you kind of have to treat it as a different game. It does the thing it’s designed to do very well, it just might not have been designed to do what you may expect it to do coming from an old school D&D background.

Sure sure. But as someone who has played various forms of D&D starting in 1983, I didn't hear/read the use of those kinds of roles as regularly or prescriptively until after 2000. Yes, folks regularly referred to the cleric as "the healer" and people often didn't want to be stuck in that role and you'd hear someone referred to as a "support" character or "a meatshield" but these were descriptive of styles of play based on characters people chose.

Regardless of the terms' actual origins or the specificity of the terms, terms like them and viewing combat through the lens of those terms skyrocketed in the 3E era. I just never liked it.

I am much more a "My fighter wants to save the village and will do the best he can to figure out how to do that" type of player (and GM) than a "My fighter is good at sucking up damage, thus in the effort to save the town I must find the way that sucking up damage will overcome the obstacle."

If anything, I prefer trying things I am not as good at because the circumstances call for it , than things I feel like I must have an opportunity to do b/c I chose this kind of character. Though that might be another issue altogether that also bugs me.

 

[fearsomepirate]

As a first pass revision:

-Ranged weapons should have STR requirements. A high STR/DEX character should be the ultimate warrior.
-Reduce the max player ability score bonus to +3. This would have a lot of knock-on effects to adjust.
-Increase CR 20 monster AC by about 3-5 points, scale HP and lower CRs accordingly.
-Consider using ability score directly for more things, not ability mod. Maybe unarmored AC should just be DEX score, and leather armor adds +1 to that. Maybe wizards should be able to have LEVEL + INT spells in their books etc. Or INT directly reduces the days needed to copy a spell. I dunno. Figure something out; everything being mod is dumb.




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[Laurefindel]

Things that bug me:

- There are six full caster classes, if warlock had been an INT caster, we'd had had a perfect symmetry of 2 classes for each ability. This is bugging me way more than it should...

- The "dying breath" thrope is nearly impossible to pull off.

- Related to dying breath, going down from fully operational to crippled is fine with me, but going from crippled and dying to stable and fully operational with a single hp bugs me.

- Heights are not scary. Jumping 30ft on solid rock? Yeah, No thanks.

 

[dave2008]

But what it really comes down to is how to balance things out. Yeah, someone who is supernaturally dextrous (i.e. Spider-Man) should be as difficult to hit and damage as someone in full plate. But really good armor? It's should be a far higher AC than someone dodging around.

I agree, I didn't realize that was what you were trying to argue. Personally, our solution is that armor provides some damage reduction, where dodging around doesn't. That corrects the issue for us while allowing AC to remain abstract and RAW.

 

[dave2008]

As a first pass revision:

-Reduce the max player ability score bonus to +3. This would have a lot of knock-on effects to adjust.-

If you are talking about 5e I disagree about the bolded part. We have max ability score of 18 (+4) in our 5e game and we don't need to change anything else, I can't imagine changing that to a max of 16 or 17 (+3) would change anything. In fact, for that old school feel we thought about doing just that and didn't plan to change anything else.

 

[Oofta]

I agree, I didn't realize that was what you were trying to argue. Personally, our solution is that armor provides some damage reduction, where dodging around doesn't. That corrects the issue for us while allowing AC to remain abstract and RAW.

I've thought about DR for armor but then you run into issues with it being fiddley and affecting single powerful attacks vs multiple weaker attacks an so on.

I can see why you do it, I've just never bothered adding it to my house rule list.

 

[DeviousQuail]

What edition are you talking about? That certainly isn't the case in 5e. If anything, armor doesn't give you enough protection IMO (in 5e).

I'm talking 5e but that's not the only game I've played where this is an issue. Using 5e as an example, if you take off your plate mail armor you go from AC 18 to AC 10ish. My fighter's training and experience don't do anything to protect me. So when I take off my armor to attend a court function, hit the tavern, or go to sleep I'm a sitting duck. That bugs me.

Games that make use of DR for armor don't have this issue as much IMO.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I've thought about DR for armor but then you run into issues with it being fiddley and affecting single powerful attacks vs multiple weaker attacks an so on.

I can see why you do it, I've just never bothered adding it to my house rule list.

I have a player with the Heavy Armor Master feat, and it's not been much of an obstacle. Once attacks pile up, I roll all attacks together, and then all damage together. The player just reduces damage by 3 x # of attacks.

I'm talking 5e but that's not the only game I've played where this is an issue. Using 5e as an example, if you take off your plate mail armor you go from AC 18 to AC 10ish. My fighter's training and experience don't do anything to protect me. So when I take off my armor to attend a court function, hit the tavern, or go to sleep I'm a sitting duck. That bugs me.

The gigantic handwave is that your fighter's training and experience are why your hit die is a d10 instead of a d8.