D&D 5E Why my friends hate talking to me about 5e.

[Charlaquin]

I would bet money they would immediately run to the forums when the players start long resting after every encounter unless forced now because they need to burn off the exhaustion, heedless of the DM insulting and haranguing them to 'get over themselves'.

? Taking a long rest is generally not feasible in dangerous territory…

 

[Charlaquin]

Doesn't this directly run afoul of the conception that Fighters are supposed to be all about fighting, and dealing with other things is for other classes?

That is, this seems to be predicated on the idea that nobody--Fighters included--is supposed to fight. Fighting is a fail-state. It seems highly counter-intuitive to create a class where its focus is on the fail-state of play.

Combat is absolutely a (soft) fail-state in certain modes of play. That’s why XP used to be awarded for acquiring treasure rather than killing enemies. If you can get that treasure without having to risk your life in a fight, so much the better.

Saying it’s counter-intuitive to have fighters when fighting is a fail-state is a bit like saying it’s counter-intuitive to have clerics when HP damage and death are fail-states. They’re invaluable failsafes for when those fail-states inevitably occur.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well let's not forget that WotC wanted to make a ton of money on bringing in people new to the game. And the best way to do that is to not make it overly punishing, to drive away people who rage quit due to dying a lot in the early levels.

I mean, yeah, and they succeeded in that. But I’m not really concerned with bringing a ton of new people into my home game, so this doesn’t seem super relevant. I don’t think anyone is proposing this house rule become the standard in the 2024 revision or anything.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I strongly object that the "easiness" of character survival in 5e has anything to do with Bounded Accuracy. I see Bounded Accuracy as a good thing. The issue, IMO is with the resources available to the PCs and the envisioned encounter model.
There are two things wrong with it: First off, 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters per long rest is very difficult to obtain in practise. In my opinion it is a somewhat unnatural expectation.
Secondly, in my, what the game considers medium, hard or deadly fights and the party performance starts to diverge after level 7 or so. The action economy and action stealing capabilities on the parties side start to dominate. At that point deadly encounters are merely hard and you have to ramp it up a good bit to get a deadly encounter.

 

[James Gasik]

I strongly object that the "easiness" of character survival in 5e has anything to do with Bounded Accuracy. I see Bounded Accuracy as a good thing. The issue, IMO is with the resources available to the PCs and the envisioned encounter model.
There are two things wrong with it: First off, 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters per long rest is very difficult to obtain in practise. In my opinion it is a somewhat unnatural expectation.
Secondly, in my, what the game considers medium, hard or deadly fights and the party performance starts to diverge after level 7 or so. The action economy and action stealing capabilities on the parties side start to dominate. At that point deadly encounters are merely hard and you have to ramp it up a good bit to get a deadly encounter.

And yet, bounded accuracy does mean that threats increase at a gradual level. Like a slow climb instead of having occasional difficulty spikes. The difference between one CR and the next might be 1 more proficiency bonus, but most of the time, it just means more hit points and more damage.

Status effects and AC, things that you think you'd be able to expect to live at different Challenge Ratings, are instead kind of haphazardly placed on NPC's and monsters, as far as I can tell. Shadows, at CR 1/2 have a terrifying strength drain, and you can easily find a CR 7 that's just a brute that hits like a truck.

Since creatures with goofy special powers or annoying resistances or immunities can be found at any level, I don't really consider them as real difficulty spikes as part of progression. D&D has always been kind of bad about this; you would think, for example, you wouldn't be cursed by monsters until your casters can remove curses (as an example), but that's never been the case.

You might see a tendency towards more of such as you gain in levels, of course, but it's nothing really new to the players at that point. "Oh look, a monster that can turn us to stone. Do we have the ability to deal with it yet?"

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If you know you aren't going to die, whether it's because the DM is hung up on his story or just doesn't like to kill people then there is no reason for players not to do stupid crazy things, After all DM is going to bail them out anyway.

This is a false dichotomy.

Death is not the only serious consequence players may have to deal with. The problem is not whether there is sufficient risk, or fear, of death. The problem is that you have players who don't care about anything other than whether their characters are alive.

I don't use random, permanent, irrevocable death in my game. Period. It hasn't been an issue because my players play very, very cautiously (despite the fact that I told them about my "I won't take your character away" policy during Session 0), but if anyone's character ever DID die, that would only be the end for that character if the player wished it to be so. If not, there are all sorts of stories I can tell, all sorts of places I can go. There will be consequences. Some of those consequences may be permanent or irrevocable. The world does not stop just because one of you or one of your friends bit the dust. But you can still come back. You may have to try to fix a world that is much more broken than the world you remember before your death. You may grieve allies who were lost while you couldn't save them. You may find that your powers or equipment or knowledge have fallen into enemy hands, and something Really Bad happened as a result. But your character's story doesn't end just because some numbers on a screen put your character out of the action.

If you have players who care about your game's contents enough that survival is NOT the only thing they care about, you don't have to use death as the end of the line. There's a whole world of other things to care about out there.

I won't--ever--"bail them out anyway." The consequences of their actions belong to them. And, importantly, I won't let my good will be exploited; if it's clear the players are relying on the ability to always come back to life, yeah, I'm not gonna put up with that. That's exploitative. I don't tolerate exploitative behavior. But so long as the players engage in good faith, they can trust that I won't yank their character away from them. That trust enables them to actually do creative, interesting, dramatic things. Without that trust, half the events of our campaign could never have occurred. Most of the coolest moments would have been impossible, or at least would have been dramatically less interesting. (I say "most" because there were a few very early moments my players were super excited about that can't be attributed to this; but from about the 6-month mark on, it's been extremely significant.)

Death is not the only consequence--and most other consequences are much more interesting. Way too many people forget or deny this fact, much to the hobby's detriment.

Combat is absolutely a (soft) fail-state in certain modes of play. That’s why XP used to be awarded for acquiring treasure rather than killing enemies. If you can get that treasure without having to risk your life in a fight, so much the better.

Saying it’s counter-intuitive to have fighters when fighting is a fail-state is a bit like saying it’s counter-intuitive to have clerics when HP damage and death are fail-states. They’re invaluable failsafes for when those fail-states inevitably occur.

But healing isn't the only thing Clerics are designed for.

That's my point. Healing is one tool in the Cleric's toolbox. That toolbox is full (IMO, overstuffed) with other cool and useful things the Cleric can do. Even for Clerics who specifically choose to hyperspecialize in healing or damage, they'll always have the expansive Cleric spell list, and even Life Clerics get spells that aren't strictly about restoring HP (bless, lesser restoration, guardian of faith, raise dead) as always-prepped spells. Admittedly, some of those are still healing-adjacent (lesser restoration in particular), but overall there's stuff you can do that doesn't require the party to specifically fail first.

Fighter, explicitly by design, doesn't do that. Like, the developers were straight-up explicit to us that that's what the Fighter is designed for. It is not designed for doing anything other than fighting. Subclasses naturally make this more complicated, but even the Eldritch Knight, the Fighter specifically about nicking spells from the Wizard, has dramatically curtailed access to any spells that aren't specifically abjuration or evocation...aka the two spell schools most specifically about fighting (defense and explosions.) To be specific, you can learn a grand total of 4 non-cantrip spells that aren't abjuration or evocation.

I strongly object that the "easiness" of character survival in 5e has anything to do with Bounded Accuracy. I see Bounded Accuracy as a good thing. The issue, IMO is with the resources available to the PCs and the envisioned encounter model.

I mean, it's still pretty clearly a factor. If you limit other forms of progression (defenses and accuracy) and distance yourself from horizontal progression (multiclassing is optional and there's very minimal resources for horizontal progression), then you only really have survivability as a metric of advancement. That, plus the incredibly uninspired monster design, is what leads to so many big fat bags of HP with no other mechanics, and to player characters who become difficult to kill without throwing very powerful opponents at them.

 

[pemerton]

if everything is high stakes then that's normal and get what I call John Mccane syndrome. Nothing is scary because it never ends. But the other end is just as bad. If you know you aren't going to die, whether it's because the DM is hung up on his story or just doesn't like to kill people then there is no reason for players not to do stupid crazy things, After all DM is going to bail them out anyway.

I think 5e went too far into making it unlikely the characters will suffer or die

This is a false dichotomy.

Death is not the only serious consequence players may have to deal with.

Quite right. They must also face the grim reality of . . . getting tired.

(Sorry, I couldn't help myself.)

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I wonder sometime if a designer could try a D&D where the HP pool is smaller, damage higher but healing magic is more powerful and useful in and out of combat (maybe caped by a Healing Surge numbers or whatnot). A system where HP is really only your stamina reserve to defend yourself and once you hit 0 hp, it is because you've taken a gut shot and you are bleeding out, and then Health recovery magic of higher level is needed.

Evidently this is a system where the support/buffer role is kinda necessary, but with the number of players available now, I dont think it would lead to someone be ''forced'' to be a cleric, even more so if you give choice of many support class like cleric/bard/artificer/warlord.

Kind of a BECMI/BX design with a 4e mentality and 5e maths.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Quite right. They must also face the grim reality of . . . getting tired.

Hey, you joke, but since I'm getting older, I end each day of work with a bunch of cuts and burns that I mostly handwave. But should I dare go to bed passed 23h one night of the week....gods have mercy, I'll need that one week long rest!

 

[James Gasik]

I wonder sometime if a designer could try a D&D where the HP pool is smaller, damage higher but healing magic is more powerful and useful in and out of combat (maybe caped by a Healing Surge numbers or whatnot). A system where HP is really only your stamina reserve to defend yourself and once you hit 0 hp, it is because you've taken a gut shot and you are bleeding out, and then Health recovery magic of higher level is needed.

Evidently this is a system where the support/buffer role is kinda necessary, but with the number of players available now, I dont think it would lead to someone be ''forced'' to be a cleric, even more so if you give choice of many support class like cleric/bard/artificer/warlord.

Kind of a BECMI/BX design with a 4e mentality and 5e maths.

Sadly, someone will inevitably compare it to an MMO.