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

[Snarf Zagyg]

Yes, but 3.0 to 3.5 had some notable rules changes (Pathfinder even more so). The rules of 4e didn't change for Essentials, it was just a different philosophy for how to use those rules to create new versions of classes.

I mean ... really, it's all just been a different philosophy for how to use the rules to make new classes since the LBBs of OD&D.

So, you know, game, set, match ....

ALL UR EDITIONS R BELONG TO OD&D.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

No. Next question?

To expand slightly: Essentials is 4e. It is fully compatible withe 4e products that came before it, and the 4e products that came after it (and they with it). Not a new edition by any reasonable definition.

_
glass.

in my mind there is no reprinting with change... so in 3.0 the ranger, the haste spell and all the other little things changed to 3.5... you could use a book they gave away for free at Gencon to change 3.0 to 3.5

with essentials I take an essential class (lets say slayer fighter) and put it next to a PHB 1 fighter, a PHB 2 druid, and PHB3 (I think) Invocer and the game ran the exact same no change

 

[James Gasik]

I mean ... really, it's all just been a different philosophy for how to use the rules to make new classes since the LBBs of OD&D.

So, you know, game, set, match ....

ALL UR EDITIONS R BELONG TO OD&D.

But the rules themselves have changed quite a bit since then, wouldn't you agree? I mean, unless I slipped into an alternate timeline and we're back to using attack matrices and classes require different xp totals to level up and...oh no, don't tell me alignment languages are back?

 

[DND_Reborn]

Hey, if anyone is interested, can we please take the edition wars and monk issues to other threads?

(Actually, it is best to just let the edition wars drop completely IMO....)

Thanks.

 

[delericho]

Those are the estimates I was able to find. Is the 5E DMG available in pdf? Someone with the right Adobe product could verify that.

The 5e DMG isn't available as a PDF (at least legally).

I've taken a look, picking a page at random, and I made it a little over 800 words on a 'typical' page of the 5e DMG versus a little over 1,300 in the 1st ed version. So the text density is lower, and of course there is more artwork. However, the 5e DMG is also a good bit longer - 320ish pages versus 240ish.

A very rough multiplication gave me ~240k words for the 5e DMG, and ~320k for 1st Ed (though both are very rough estimates) - so the 1st Ed one is indeed longer, but not by as extreme a factor as perhaps was initially stated.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

But the rules themselves have changed quite a bit since then, wouldn't you agree? I mean, unless I slipped into an alternate timeline and we're back to using attack matrices and classes require different xp totals to level up and...oh no, don't tell me alignment languages are back?

Back? They never left!

Don't make me 'splain things to you in CHAOTIC.

To quote the 1e PHB looking at the Red Cover of Moldvay ... "YA BASIC!"

 

[Minigiant]

Also, double the monk's ki points. Seriously. They don't provide that much to be as limited and in-demand as they are by various class features.

The problem isn't the number of ki points.

The issue is that everything uses KI points.

The Fantasy Mystical Martial Artist doesn't use its resources to do everything. Part of the FMMA training is that your base abilities are always on, spammable, and amazing. Ryu trained to do Hadoken without spending meter. Naruto ninjas aren't allowed on missions until they develop chakra control. Benders spam elements. Action movie brawlers combo everybody.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If that is the criterion, then every edition except 5e has been a failure. Every edition of D&D other than the current one has been "dumped" as you put it, and 5e will retroactively become a failure when the anniversary edition comes out. Rather suggests that your methodology is flawed, no?

Notice the important words "and distance themselves from it." Earlier versions of D&D did not try to ignore their predecessors. In most cases they tried to claim they'd taken the best of the earlier editions and improved on them.

Designers for 5e actively went out of their way to avoid design elements from 4e (something 4e, notably, did not do with 3e, nor 3e with 2e). If you don't think that's telling of their views, I don't know what to say.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Hey, if anyone is interested, can we please take the edition wars and monk issues to other threads?

(Actually, it is best to just let the edition wars drop completely IMO....)

Thanks.

I'm not edition warring (other than to the degree I think the design for 4e was sounder than either 3e or 5e, even though I personally didn't like it much, but that reflects my general attitude toward certain structural things in D&D that I think 4e reified); I'm just noting there's pretty solid evidence of how 4e was viewed by the company. The fact it had nothing to do with the soundness of the design, and everything to do with how they felt the ongoing fanbase was taking it was the entire point.

Edit: I also have to note that to some degree, at least some critiques of a given edition are inevitably going to border on edition-warring, because at least some of the design decisions people have issues with will likely have worked differently (and in a way they liked better) in prior editions. The only way its not going to come across as that is if someone is, well, critiquing the game system in general (which I could absolutely do, but I try to at least be civil about D&D when posting in a D&D focused thread).

 

[Hussar]

Yeah I mean that's the issue. If the flavour was on, rather than seriously off, Monk would be drastically more popular, I would confidently suggest. Especially if it wasn't called Monk.

How could it be "drastically" more popular than it is though? It's already dead in the middle of the pack. None of the core classes are massively more or less popular than others. They are all within a pretty narrow band - IIRC, about 13% for fighters and 6 or 7% for druids. That's pretty much exactly where it should be.

This isn't a reasonable argument, and the last lines show bad faith on your part, frankly. I've never suggested either.

You may not have, but, more than a few here certainly have suggested exactly that... Hang on, a memory surfaces. Are you saying you never said this?

This is easily demonstrated with MMORPGs. Very often classes that are poor performers on metrics and have serious design flaws are actually extremely popular with people playing more casually (which is typically "the majority". That doesn't mean that the design flaws don't exist or don't matter though - just that they don't seriously and immediately impact play. What is notable is that if they do get improved, their numbers do go up - but only a little bit.

So who's showing bad faith now?