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

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah remember, the end goal is to have as many people playing 5e as possible. Which is why the game is in the state that it is, where rather than trying to line up with one ideal of fantasy well, it attempts to do all of them to varying degrees of success.

Which is always what its tried to do; I don't think its ever been all that successful. Ironically, its probably better off now because a fair bit of fantasy in other media has been influence directly or indirectly by D&D.

 

[James Gasik]

yeah my full casters are often as good at melee as fighters (or close enough) the problem is they hit WAY above there weight class... a group with a Hexblade, a Bladesinger, a combat cleric or druid, and a combat bard can as a 4 person party handle most adventuring days that the average 5 person fighter rogue wizard cleirc +1 can and then some...

I often throw what the DMG says is a deadly encounter at my parties and they wipe the floor with them

Oh, well, I didn't foresee that. I mean, I know casters are good, but I didn't think they were quite that good.

 

[payn]

As I alluded to before, this is not a new criticism- and yet it doesn't matter.

If you played D&D in the 70s, you tried to emulate all sorts of fiction. Tolkien. Zelazny. Donaldson. Lieber. Moorcock. Heck- maybe you wanted to make your own Luke Skywalker. Or you wanted Daredevil (we had an MCU back then, too ... except it was called "comic books").

And you know what? D&D did a TERRIBLE job at it! Because D&D didn't "emulate" any of them very well- instead, it did a great job at being D&D.

It's always been like that. You've just listed ... what ... 13 (THIRTEEN) different fantasy genres you want D&D to emulate ... and some of them aren't even really fantasy (MCU, Street Fighter, League of Legends, POTC etc.).

D&D does D&D very well. If you are inspired to make a D&D character from another source, that's great! But D&D is not made to have perfect replicas of Hermione Granger, Zangief, Kled, Olaf the Snowman, and Galactus in the same party.

I dont have any expectations of it doing so, but I have high hopes for the Marvel TTRPG coming. I really hope something can become popular besides D&D someday.

 

[James Gasik]

Note the first two are by the same author, and commonly seen as him revisiting the same ground, and note that the only one of those that has had a book within the last decade is the Sword of Truth. (I'd also argue that the magic in Codex Alera is powerful but significantly more narrow than D&D magic, both in the case of individual mages (you almost never see someone with more than two elements) and generically (there are classes of D&D spells that have no equivalent).

I didn't think having a book in the last decade mattered, if we were calling A Song of Ice and Fire "modern fantasy", lol.

I'll give you the Eddings point (while I adore both series, and feel they are sufficiently unique enough to count as examples).

Codex Alera...there's a lot you can do with one element, and the fact that almost everyone has magic can't be denied.

Something else I didn't consider as an example, is official D&D novels- these tend to be fairly high magic in of themselves, don't they?

 

[James Gasik]

As I alluded to before, this is not a new criticism- and yet it doesn't matter.

If you played D&D in the 70s, you tried to emulate all sorts of fiction. Tolkien. Zelazny. Donaldson. Lieber. Moorcock. Heck- maybe you wanted to make your own Luke Skywalker. Or you wanted Daredevil (we had an MCU back then, too ... except it was called "comic books").

And you know what? D&D did a TERRIBLE job at it! Because D&D didn't "emulate" any of them very well- instead, it did a great job at being D&D.

It's always been like that. You've just listed ... what ... 13 (THIRTEEN) different fantasy genres you want D&D to emulate ... and some of them aren't even really fantasy (MCU, Street Fighter, League of Legends, POTC etc.).

D&D does D&D very well. If you are inspired to make a D&D character from another source, that's great! But D&D is not made to have perfect replicas of Hermione Granger, Zangief, Kled, Olaf the Snowman, and Galactus in the same party.

However, D&D has often given players the impression that they can create any kind of character their heart desires (whether or not it's actually supported), and aren't we discussing what new players expect from D&D, not what they're going to get?

 

[Zubatcarteira]

I don't see it talked much, but I greatly dislike how many monsters just auto-grapple you whenever they get a hit. They already have a mechanic for grappling, athletics vs athletics/acrobatics, and I can't even recall a monster that actually does it like that, makes being good at avoiding grapples kinda pointless.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I dont have any expectations of it doing so, but I have high hopes for the Marvel TTRPG coming. I really hope something can become popular besides D&D someday.

Maybe!

I mean.... I loved (LOVED) the Marvel FASERIP system back in the 80s. It was a great system. It was a great game. I had fun playing it. I had fun creating my own superheroes too.

....but it didn't scratch the long-term itch. Despite the serial nature of comic books, it's hard to hook players on playing the same characters with the same powers game after game after game.

There are a lot of very very good systems out there that struggle to match the "campaign" that D&D has - that sense of progression and "leveling."

I think that the IP of Marvel is powerful, but to really take on D&D, a system would have to be able to provide some zero-to-hero or advancement mechanism that keeps people coming back.

 

[Minigiant]

As I alluded to before, this is not a new criticism- and yet it doesn't matter.

If you played D&D in the 70s, you tried to emulate all sorts of fiction. Tolkien. Zelazny. Donaldson. Lieber. Moorcock. Heck- maybe you wanted to make your own Luke Skywalker. Or you wanted Daredevil (we had an MCU back then, too ... except it was called "comic books").

And you know what? D&D did a TERRIBLE job at it! Because D&D didn't "emulate" any of them very well- instead, it did a great job at being D&D.

It's always been like that. You've just listed ... what ... 13 (THIRTEEN) different fantasy genres you want D&D to emulate ... and some of them aren't even really fantasy (MCU, Street Fighter, League of Legends, POTC etc.).

D&D does D&D very well. If you are inspired to make a D&D character from another source, that's great! But D&D is not made to have perfect replicas of Hermione Granger, Zangief, Kled, Olaf the Snowman, and Galactus in the same party.

As I alluded to before, this is not a new criticism- and yet it doesn't matter.

If you played D&D in the 70s, you tried to emulate all sorts of fiction. Tolkien. Zelazny. Donaldson. Lieber. Moorcock. Heck- maybe you wanted to make your own Luke Skywalker. Or you wanted Daredevil (we had an MCU back then, too ... except it was called "comic books").

And you know what? D&D did a TERRIBLE job at it! Because D&D didn't "emulate" any of them very well- instead, it did a great job at being D&D.

It's always been like that. You've just listed ... what ... 13 (THIRTEEN) different fantasy genres you want D&D to emulate ... and some of them aren't even really fantasy (MCU, Street Fighter, League of Legends, POTC etc.).

D&D does D&D very well. If you are inspired to make a D&D character from another source, that's great! But D&D is not made to have perfect replicas of Hermione Granger, Zangief, Kled, Olaf the Snowman, and Galactus in the same party.

I don't think anyone is expecting perfect.

But D&D does hit those core elements of 70s fantasy fiction decently. It just took several editions to harden the mechanics of race and class features.

The request is to hit 90s, 00s, and 10s, and 20s fiction as well as 60s, 70s, and 80s fiction.


What it comes down to is people saying

Legolas Yes
Conan Yes
Raistlin Yes
Aang no
Captian America no
Tanjiro no

 

[Maxperson]

How do you enforce 6-8 encounters per day? Is your world that filled with enemies?

It's not actually per day. It's per "adventuring" day. Whatever that means as it's not really defined. I've just gone to long rests not happening until after the set number of encounters, so it could be 1 day if in a dungeon or 2 weeks if elsewhere. It's not perfect, but it's better than trying to cram a ton of encounters into a short period of time or having too few encounters and letting the party nova on them.

 

[James Gasik]

I don't see it talked much, but I greatly dislike how many monsters just auto-grapple you whenever they get a hit. They already have a mechanic for grappling, athletics vs athletics/acrobatics, and I can't even recall a monster that actually does it like that, makes being good at avoiding grapples kinda pointless.

Well yeah, you can't expect a monster built to grapple to not deal damage while trying to grab you! That would be something approaching fair, and if there's one rule when it comes to enemies in D&D, it's that they are not fair!

Why else would a Gladiator be a CR 5, be able to attack 3 times per round, and come with 15 Hit Dice?