Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Level Up fixed just about everything I had a problem with in 5e that doesn't directly relate to WotC-only IP. For my issues there, see my published works on this site.
D&D 5E What (if anything) do you find "wrong" with 5E?
- Thread starter DND_Reborn
- Start date
DND_Reborn
The High Aldwin
The Vecna battles would suggest otherwise.
(I'm not saying Vecna is "great", but I wouldn't say it was a "joke", either.)
W'rkncacnter
Hero
pbft, well, uh...
saving throws. their distribution is absolutely terrible and the reasoning behind why something requires a particular saving throw seems inconsistent at best.
feats being an optional rule that requires you to give up an ASI and just generally being completely unbalanced.
MULTICLASSING being an optional rule and thus seemingly not even being considered at all in class design.
ASIs being tied to class instead of character level.
overly simple weapons.
magic items, both crafting them and assigning costs to them.
the majority of the capstones. like, the only good ones i can think of are the artificer, druid, and paladin. the barbarian and fighter are functional but boring, and then every other capstone sucks. well, maybe not the rogue one. it seems really limited for a capstone but it might be fine.
short rests should be 10 minutes. i have no clue why they made it an hour.
sorcerers being the metamagic class. actually, no, metamagic being a class gimmick at all. why is this a class gimmick? why not just let it be a thing casters can get access to, whether through feats or some other mea--OH, RIGHT, BECAUSE YOU MADE THOSE OPTIONAL.
i don't even know if the exploration or social pillars actually exist. on the social side that doesn't matter much because we're all human beings and we know how to talk to each other presumably, but on the exploration side...uh, yeah, have fun with that, ranger.
a personal issue more then anything - i don't care for artificers as casters. i'd prefer artificers as semi-martials (e.g. rogue) with better magic item prowess. a less personal issue - magic item crafting basically not existing forces artificers into a really weird design space where they're almost a warlock that can give their invocations to other people, which just feels...strange.
skills. the line between some of them is far too thin (PERCEPTION AND INVESTIGATION. there is no cough.), and also the optional rule divorcing ability scores from skills should honestly just be base.
what is the point of tools? does XANATHAR even know?
no tags to determine if something is magical or not. this was in 3e. why did we ditch this?
in short, the game's just not done. also short rests are too long, and make metamagic class-agnostic again.
saving throws. their distribution is absolutely terrible and the reasoning behind why something requires a particular saving throw seems inconsistent at best.
feats being an optional rule that requires you to give up an ASI and just generally being completely unbalanced.
MULTICLASSING being an optional rule and thus seemingly not even being considered at all in class design.
ASIs being tied to class instead of character level.
overly simple weapons.
magic items, both crafting them and assigning costs to them.
the majority of the capstones. like, the only good ones i can think of are the artificer, druid, and paladin. the barbarian and fighter are functional but boring, and then every other capstone sucks. well, maybe not the rogue one. it seems really limited for a capstone but it might be fine.
short rests should be 10 minutes. i have no clue why they made it an hour.
sorcerers being the metamagic class. actually, no, metamagic being a class gimmick at all. why is this a class gimmick? why not just let it be a thing casters can get access to, whether through feats or some other mea--OH, RIGHT, BECAUSE YOU MADE THOSE OPTIONAL.
i don't even know if the exploration or social pillars actually exist. on the social side that doesn't matter much because we're all human beings and we know how to talk to each other presumably, but on the exploration side...uh, yeah, have fun with that, ranger.
a personal issue more then anything - i don't care for artificers as casters. i'd prefer artificers as semi-martials (e.g. rogue) with better magic item prowess. a less personal issue - magic item crafting basically not existing forces artificers into a really weird design space where they're almost a warlock that can give their invocations to other people, which just feels...strange.
skills. the line between some of them is far too thin (PERCEPTION AND INVESTIGATION. there is no cough.), and also the optional rule divorcing ability scores from skills should honestly just be base.
what is the point of tools? does XANATHAR even know?
no tags to determine if something is magical or not. this was in 3e. why did we ditch this?
in short, the game's just not done. also short rests are too long, and make metamagic class-agnostic again.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
Exploration is a joke. Everything "challenging" about it is easily obviated by basic class abilities, backgrounds, and cantrips. To say nothing of various low-level spells and easily obtainable magic items. Fixing this requires a few pages of house rules. I should know, I wrote some.
Social skills are terribly handled. They're often used as mind control and telepathy. Social interactions are the most mechanically supported they've ever been...yet the specific mechanics are still lackluster at best. Could be fixed with more robust social interaction and encounter rules.
Too many races with darkvision. Easy fix. Bring back low-light vision and give that to the races who don't live underground. Keep darkvision for races who mostly or exclusively live underground.
The monsters are undertuned. The CR system is laughably broken. The medium encounter is a joke. Combat doesn't start getting even marginally challenging until somewhere past deadly. The best fix is to use higher CR monsters than suggested, ignore the CR system, and/or use deadly as the new medium.
PCs have way too much power way too early in the game. Short of forcing everyone to start as a survivor or a sidekick, the best solution is to slow down leveling and use the monster, CR, and encounter fix above.
Death is wildly too easy to avoid. High hit points, easy recovery, clerics and others dirty with healing, death saves, easy access to resurrection magic. Too many potential fixes to consider. Cap hit points at 9th level or lower. Use gritty realism as the standard rest mechanics. Remove death saves. Characters at zero hp are dying and the referee rolls 1d4. They die after that many rounds. The players don't know how many rounds that will be. Remove several of the more potent and healbot healing spells.
Resting recovers too much and they're far too easy to come by. Especially with ridiculous spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut. There's no meaningful single encounter in an adventuring day unless a character dies because all their stuff regenerates after an 8-hour nap. The best fix is gritty realism and banning Leomund's Tiny Hut.
Social skills are terribly handled. They're often used as mind control and telepathy. Social interactions are the most mechanically supported they've ever been...yet the specific mechanics are still lackluster at best. Could be fixed with more robust social interaction and encounter rules.
Too many races with darkvision. Easy fix. Bring back low-light vision and give that to the races who don't live underground. Keep darkvision for races who mostly or exclusively live underground.
The monsters are undertuned. The CR system is laughably broken. The medium encounter is a joke. Combat doesn't start getting even marginally challenging until somewhere past deadly. The best fix is to use higher CR monsters than suggested, ignore the CR system, and/or use deadly as the new medium.
PCs have way too much power way too early in the game. Short of forcing everyone to start as a survivor or a sidekick, the best solution is to slow down leveling and use the monster, CR, and encounter fix above.
Death is wildly too easy to avoid. High hit points, easy recovery, clerics and others dirty with healing, death saves, easy access to resurrection magic. Too many potential fixes to consider. Cap hit points at 9th level or lower. Use gritty realism as the standard rest mechanics. Remove death saves. Characters at zero hp are dying and the referee rolls 1d4. They die after that many rounds. The players don't know how many rounds that will be. Remove several of the more potent and healbot healing spells.
Resting recovers too much and they're far too easy to come by. Especially with ridiculous spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut. There's no meaningful single encounter in an adventuring day unless a character dies because all their stuff regenerates after an 8-hour nap. The best fix is gritty realism and banning Leomund's Tiny Hut.
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d24454_modern
Explorer
I’ve noticed that players don’t like changing up their equipment much let alone general item management. That’s why they wouldn’t bother.
theCourier
Adventurer
Giant, terribly written adventures that can't be run at the table without reading the damn tome a few times and making a bunch of notes and quite possibly having to rely on a remix written by someone on the internet. Kind of makes DMing a cool book feel like a waste of time for me, and was the last straw.
Yeah. All pre written adventures need tweaking, but when they are massive entire campaign affairs, the workload gets out of hand.
On the Player side, 5e is Weenie Hut Junior.
On the DM side, 5e is the Salty Spitoon as you have to be a tough, experienced badass with either a lot of time or money to DM 5e as so much is missing and a lot of resources either never come or aren't printed for years.
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