D&D 5E "People complain, but don't actually read the DMG!" Which sections specifically?

[Malmuria]

Use the rules for building combat encounters as a starting point for evaluating the difficulty of non-combat challenges and award the same XP you would for a combat encounter of the same difficulty. When designing adventures, designate key events and challenges as milestones and award XP equivalent to a medium encounter for reaching minor milestones and equivalent to a hard encounter for reaching a major milestone. That’s pretty damn good advice if you ask me.

Well if it works for some people that's great. For this information to be useful to me it would have to be more detailed and integrated to the other bits advice and rules. For example, if we refer back to the "creating encounters" section, we see that it is 6 pages long (pp. 81-87), and is entirely focused on combat. It gives these guidelines for easy--deadly combat encounters

Easy. An easy encounter doesn't tax the characters'
resources or put them in serious peril. They might lose a few hit points, but victory is pretty much guaranteed.
Medium. A medium encounter usually has one or two scary moments for the players, but the characters
should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them might need to use healing resources.
Hard. A hard encounter could go badly for the adventurers. Weaker characters might get taken out of the fight, and there's a slim chance that one or more characters might die.
Deadly. A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat.

It's sort of common sense that encounters could be classed as easy, medium, or hard. Aside from that, the rules on noncombat xp don't really fit with these descriptions, as they are oriented toward and presented within rules for creating combat encounters. Moreover all the suggestions for modifying encounter difficulty are combat-oriented. What I want for a dmg to be useful in this area would be at the minimum descriptions like this and examples for social and exploration challenges as well. It would be even better if they could integrate their advice on xp awards with their other suggested systems: renown (for some reason in chp1 p. 22), moral quandries (split over p..79-80, interrupted by art), influence (short paragraph on p. 78 with no system for tracking), wilderness exploration and tracking (p. 108. how much xp for navigating a hex of difficult terrain or in extreme conditions or in discovering a ruined monument? )

 

[Parmandur]

Well if it works for some people that's great. For this information to be useful to me it would have to be more detailed and integrated to the other bits advice and rules. For example, if we refer back to the "creating encounters" section, we see that it is 6 pages long (pp. 81-87), and is entirely focused on combat. It gives these guidelines for easy--deadly combat encounters


It's sort of common sense that encounters could be classed as easy, medium, or hard. Aside from that, the rules on noncombat xp don't really fit with these descriptions, as they are oriented toward and presented within rules for creating combat encounters. Moreover all the suggestions for modifying encounter difficulty are combat-oriented. What I want for a dmg to be useful in this area would be at the minimum descriptions like this and examples for social and exploration challenges as well. It would be even better if they could integrate their advice on xp awards with their other suggested systems: renown (for some reason in chp1 p. 22), moral quandries (split over p..79-80, interrupted by art), influence (short paragraph on p. 78 with no system for tracking), wilderness exploration and tracking (p. 108. how much xp for navigating a hex of difficult terrain or in extreme conditions or in discovering a ruined monument? )

What I'd do is steal the Dungeon Crawl Classics XP system: an encounter gives an experience point, whether it's exploration, social interaction, stealth or combat. Sail the middle ground between the traditional calculus and milepost, basically.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well if it works for some people that's great. For this information to be useful to me it would have to be more detailed and integrated to the other bits advice and rules. For example, if we refer back to the "creating encounters" section, we see that it is 6 pages long (pp. 81-87), and is entirely focused on combat. It gives these guidelines for easy--deadly combat encounters

Seems like good advice, and pretty applicable to non-combat encounters. I imagine most non-combat encounters would fall in the Easy to Medium range - either not taxing the PCs resources, or potentially requiring the players to expend some resources, but having no serious risk of character death. Though, some non-combat encounters might fall under Hard or Deadly depending on the stakes - if, for example, you’re parleying with the evil emperor and might be executed if the interaction goes badly, that’s probably Hard. A puzzle trap that slowly fills a sealed room up with water until you solve it could lead to a TPK and is therefore probably a Deadly encounter.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I don't see that it wasn't thought through, if it makes movement matter and makes an easy thing somewhat situationally easier.

It doesn't make movement matter, since you can just go where you want. You now run up the the enemy and start attacking, not moving until they're dead. Except now you get advantage, because you can chose to do that if you want, and there's no reason not to chose to do so. It also makes advantage signifcantly easier to get since it removes any cost to get it.

Unless there's some other, broadly available way to get advantage at no cost I'm not aware of, it's a major change for the worse, since it invalidates a lot of tactical options by being just better in every way.

 

[jgsugden]

The whole thing should be read by a DM that wants to be prepared to run a good game.

If you're not going to do that, I'd list them in order of importance as Chapters 8, 3, 2, 4, 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, Appendix A. Why start with Chapter 8? It is the first section in PART 3 - which is called MASTER OF RULES.

 

[Parmandur]

It doesn't make movement matter, since you can just go where you want. You now run up the the enemy and start attacking, not moving until they're dead. Except now you get advantage, because you can chose to do that if you want, and there's no reason not to chose to do so. It also makes advantage signifcantly easier to get since it removes any cost to get it.

Unless there's some other, broadly available way to get advantage at no cost I'm not aware of, it's a major change for the worse, since it invalidates a lot of tactical options by being just better in every way.

There are a ton of ways to get Advantage.

 

[Charlaquin]

There are a ton of ways to get Advantage.

I do think advantage and disadvantage are supposed to be very common. This might be the one place where experience running 3e might actually be helpful running 5e - if you would have given +2 or -2 for it in 3e, it’s probably worth advantage or disadvantage in 5e. I think people toss out the (very misleading) “advantage/disadvantage is worth roughly +5/-5” thing too casually without explaining the actual math, and it gives people the impression that it’s a big bonus/penalty that should be used sparingly. When in reality it’s a bonus/penalty designed specifically to play nicely with bounded accuracy, that could be used in place of all the various fiddly situational modifiers of 4e and 5e.

All that said, I also think flanking makes it too easy to get advantage. Or, rather, it makes it so that you can always get advantage on attack rolls the same way, instead of having to think about and interact with the environment to get it, which I think is an undesirable outcome.

 

[Parmandur]

I do think advantage and disadvantage are supposed to be very common. This might be the one place where experience running 3e might actually be helpful running 5e - if you would have given +2 or -2 for it in 3e, it’s probably worth advantage or disadvantage in 5e. I think people toss out the (very misleading) “advantage/disadvantage is worth roughly +5/-5” thing too casually without explaining the actual math, and it gives people the impression that it’s a big bonus/penalty that should be used sparingly. When in reality it’s a bonus/penalty designed specifically to play nicely with bounded accuracy, that could be used in place of all the various fiddly situational modifiers of 4e and 5e.

All that said, I also think flanking makes it too easy to get advantage. Or, rather, it makes it so that you can always get advantage on attack rolls the same way, instead of having to think about and interact with the environment to get it, which I think is an undesirable outcome.

I can see that: but I don't see any reason to suspect thst the game designers saw that, and put the rule in as an option knowing that.

 

[prabe]

I can see that: but I don't see any reason to suspect thst the game designers saw that, and put the rule in as an option knowing that.

The reason Flanking comes up as an optional rule that's ... inadequately thought through, is that it's not clear the designers looked at (or played with) the rule, because the effects seem so obvious.

 

[Charlaquin]

The reason Flanking comes up as an optional rule that's ... inadequately thought through, is that it's not clear the designers looked at (or played with) the rule, because the effects seem so obvious.

The designers would have had a hard time ignoring it, I think. The lack of a flanking rule in the D&DNext playtest was a major discussion point on the WotC forums at the time. Lots of players wanted such a rule, and lots pointed to the awkwardness of the conditions for Sneak Attack as reason why one was needed. The designers said they didn’t include flanking by default because they didn’t want combat on a grid to be the default, and they didn’t think flanking played well without a grid, but that DMs who did use a grid could always grant advantage based on positioning on the grid at their discretion.