D&D 5E What (if anything) do you find "wrong" with 5E?

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Not really. Not in 5e anyway. If you do everything by the book, they are out of spells before the 7th fight of the day. Well before if they are doing any utility stuff. A wizard or cleric reduced to cantrips is just support.

If the shovelware combat was fun we'd run more of it. But since most things are a bag of HP, an AC of 9+1d6, and an axe, it's not particularly exciting as a player or DM. No one's going to die and we're just ticking off resource boxes until we get to the boss, who is just going to be ganked in 1-2 rounds from focus fire if the party saved enough of their resources.

I'm tired of tracking nameless mooks hit points for crap fights that don't matter. Take me back to a semi 4E stand point. Mooks, Elites, bosses.

Crib from Savage Worlds. Mooks have a HP threshold. Anything that exceeds it, kills them. Anything that doesn't leaves them bloodied with 1 HP. The orc axe beefer is either unhurt, about to die, or dead. They have minimal tactical options, and are your basic weapon/cantrip on legs. However they should deal decent damage, so when around a boss, a good tactic is to deal with them first, because that cuts down on your incoming damage the fastest.

Elites actually have HP, and are worth about 2 PC's in a fight. They need reactions, action surge that recharges on bloodied, special attacks, etc.

Bosses have legendary actions, lair actions, multiple forms, etc. They need enough HP to survive a focus fire for about 3-4 rounds. Take the lessons learned form critter design at the end of 4E.

Ideally steal PF 2's 3 action economy. That way you can have a big whammy/finisher take 2-3 actions to wind up, or have granular spells. I did the same thing or healing magic in my recent 5E game - all heals are a bonus action. If you cast them as a standard action you double the healing restored. PF 2 has them affect all allies in a 30' radius as a three action spell.

 

[tetrasodium]

It makes sense for a sorcerer to not rely on an external object for growing power. Even then I'm not a fan of blasting, I'd rather have proficiency with spears and do something fun with weapons.

Maybe but fiction is filled with characters that have an object that unlocks channels or whatever something in their bloodline. Sorcerers would need to stop being wizards with a better prime stat for that kind of thing if cantrips were dialed back for everyone else. Giving sorcerers current style cantrips while fixing it for other casters would still do nothing about basically being ejected from the treasure tables.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Which page of the DMG is that on?

5e DMG, pg 85, "Fun Combat Encounters"

 

[jtylerk]

With all the talk on feats--wasn't feat bloat one of the digs on 3.x? I like having feats as optional.

I'm undecided on the whole short/long rest thing (well, lethality overall), and esp HP recovery (the dmg addresses this). I may try the whole slower healing route, but then that makes me wonder if tweaking the as-is HP recovery is a key mechanic that will have other less desirable effects.

Rules organization is so-so (so were BX, BECMI). 2e, RC, & 3e were good. OD&D and 1e were a hot mess, so I won't complain too much about that!

 

[Nightfly]

5e DMG, pg 85, "Fun Combat Encounters"

I'm beyond impressed you actually looked that up and posted a helpful response. Thank you.

 

[Nightfly]

Going back to the subject of things that bother me about 5e: I'm always annoyed when a subclass that grants access to Fireball also grants access to Flame Strike, which is almost strictly worse. Flame Strike has the exact same damage but requires a higher level slot and only covers 1/4 of the area. Once in a blue moon the radiant damage type is a boon, or the fact that's a cylinder instead of a ball. But 99 times out of a 100, it's just an expensive, crappy Fireball.

I realize that's a very minor complaint but it really gets under my skin. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

 

[cbwjm]

Going back to the subject of things that bother me about 5e: I'm always annoyed when a subclass that grants access to Fireball also grants access to Flame Strike, which is almost strictly worse. Flame Strike has the exact same damage but requires a higher level slot and only covers 1/4 of the area. Once in a blue moon the radiant damage type is a boon, or the fact that's a cylinder instead of a ball. But 99 times out of a 100, it's just an expensive, crappy Fireball.

I realize that's a very minor complaint but it really gets under my skin. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Yeah, I feel like flamestrike might be better considered as an option if it dealt 8d8 damage, a small increase but it puts the damage on par with fireball and will actually outpace it if upcast.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't disagree. But ultimately, if people want to play fighters, and have a good time playing them, then fighters are working by definition. If some other people do not like fighters, that's also fine, but that doesn't nullify the experiences of the people who do.

I'll just note by that standard every game system works everywhere, because there are at least some people who like them. With the D&D fighter, there's always going to be an element that wants to just go out and slug away, and its not ever going to be difficult to make them happy; and another element that expects the GM to do the heavy lifting from their descriptions to make them worthwhile, and it doesn't matter much how the fighter is set up for them. That seems to set the bar awfully low for "working" though. As I've noted if you are broad enough in your definitions, a wrench is a working hammer.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Then you are unpleasable from my perspective. Officialdom is not on your side, and moving farther away.

Sometimes that's absolutely true. That doesn't make their problem illegitimate, just unfixable in practice.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Going back to the subject of things that bother me about 5e: I'm always annoyed when a subclass that grants access to Fireball also grants access to Flame Strike, which is almost strictly worse. Flame Strike has the exact same damage but requires a higher level slot and only covers 1/4 of the area. Once in a blue moon the radiant damage type is a boon, or the fact that's a cylinder instead of a ball. But 99 times out of a 100, it's just an expensive, crappy Fireball.

I realize that's a very minor complaint but it really gets under my skin. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I feel ya. It's a proud nail that just feels like sloppy design. See also the trident not dealing d8 damage.