D&D 5E Is 5E Special

[Shardstone]

I'll be honest, it really isn't that hard running a good 5E combat. Most players have a low bar anyway.

 

[Shardstone]

It really isn't hard running 5E period. Legit, your kids are playing this game, a few of you talk about it. Its just a pretty easy thing to ignore rules you don't understand and grok them later, not hard to have the "intended good experience" with D&D at all.

 

[Parmandur]

It really isn't hard running 5E period. Legit, your kids are playing this game, a few of you talk about it. Its just a pretty easy thing to ignore rules you don't understand and grok them later, not hard to have the "intended good experience" with D&D at all.

QFT.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Narrative balance is all characters getting their space.to.do something. Crawford has spoken about this, anon.

Bounded Accuracy has very much to do with Skill DCs: Fighters are very well able to do cool things with their Skills.

So it's just another phrase for "spotlight balance." If so, it suffers exactly the same problems. Spotlight balance is a great idea in theory and a terrible idea in practice. Mostly because the PCs--particularly those who have access to supernatural powers--are the ones who decide where the spotlight shines. And the ones with all the magic mojo have no reason to shine it anywhere else, even if they are legit actually team players trying to help the party as much as possible. To shine the spotlight on others is, quite literally, to put them at greater risk.

Also, you left out something crucial in your second bit there.

What is the Fighter contributing that literally any other character could not? Because that's what actually matters here. 5e skills are weak (particularly in comparison to 4e, where skills were explicitly presented as extremely broad and powerful), and even if they weren't, Fighters don't get anything to help with that. Literally all characters get at least 4 starting skills, two of which don't even come from their class. Unless the class provides something more than just having skills, it's not being a Fighter that let you do it. Period.

Everyone else gets things they can contribute specifically because they are the class they are. Fighters do not. That sucks. It should not be.

 

[payn]

Oh yeah, one thing everyone can agree on, the 5E skill system is wanting.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:
Folks,

Some of you are getting a might testy. It is past time to cool it down.

Yes, even if the person you are arguing doesn't choose to back down and agree to your preferences in the face of whatever evidence you have chosen to present, you need to chill out before you say something you'll regret. If you are frustrated, taking that out on other posters is not acceptable.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Are the encounters not fixed in the adventures?
I have not once balanced an encounter for a certain party and over the course of an adventure, some encounters were easier than expected and some were harder and what encounter exactly depended on the composition of the party, but on average, all parties did fine.

Exactly this.

But hasn't that pretty much always been the case in every edition? At least that's been my experience. D&D is not a board game, no edition has been. I've needed to adjust for every group, it's just part of being a DM.

It’s a spectrum, surely. I don’t adjust for anything other than level and number of PCs in 4e or 5e, except to intentionally create a specific kind of challenge. Eg, enemies which are much more mobile than any PC can be, that the PCs have to find a way to counter in a complex geography. Sure, casters will navigate that differently than martials, but they’ll all find a way and be challenged in the process. All I need is level and number of PCs to balance the encounter.

I don't think I am explaining myself well.

All I mean is that one party composition -- let's say, melee heavy with one support caster -- versus another composition-- let's say muti caster blastiness-- are going to experience different difficulty levels from the same encounter -- let's say a bunch of shadows -- based on those compositions, and as such, the GM should keep an eye on it. The adventure designer can't know what your party composition is and so designs using some arbitrary metric with the assumption that the GM will make adjustments as necessary.

I am not sure which part of the above is controversial.

The bolded part is what is controversial, along with the idea that the game needs to change to accommodate having or not having a tank in the group.

They designed the game using the metric of a range of normal average damage per PC per level per round. Hardly arbitrary.

And it works. DMs adjust to the party because it’s more fun, not because an “Oops all rogues” party needs to face different enemies than a party with a Barbarian and a wizard and a cleric in order for the game to be balanced.

Right, so I don't understand why some folks are calling foul on that and saying 5E is perfectly balanced no matter the monsters or party composition.

Literally no one is saying that.

No. Probably it is the expectation of how much balance is needed and desired.

Kind of, sure. But also valuation of different kinds of balance, or perhaps more accurately different approaches to balance.

Who wants perfect balance? The start of this sub-conversation was that the GM is supposed to adjust encounters in published scenarios to better fit the campaign, the table, and the PCs. That's the way the game is designed.

And that is how it’s designed, yes. The thing is that this design doesn’t make it unbalanced, it just means that it doesn’t try to balance around things like whether the group has weird controls spells or stunning strike, it just is design such that the game runs fine with or without those abilities in a party.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oh yeah, one thing everyone can agree on, the 5E skill system is wanting.

If you said “minimal”, instead, perhaps.

Using “wanting”, I can’t agree.

 

[payn]

If you said “minimal”, instead, perhaps.

Using “wanting”, I can’t agree.

So, everybody but doctorbadwolf then.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So, everybody but doctorbadwolf then.

Oh I know I’m not alone in seeing the design of skills in 5e as both intentional and successful at reaching its intended design goals.