D&D 5E What are the "True Issues" with 5e?

[Oligopsony]

I think most of the rules and design decisions are Pareto optimal. Which doesn't mean that it's precisely to my taste, just that it would be difficult to make most parts better for me without making them worse for others, or for riding rough on the baseline of familiarity that the game also depends on. The Current Edition of Official Dungeons and Dragons operates under different design constraints than any other TTRPG; the success of every other one is basically "how can we make this really exciting to run for the GMs who will most appreciate and pitch it?" or just "how well does this express the vision of the designer?" whereas CEoODnD has the success criteron "how many people is this a pretty good experience for?"

That said, I think a lot of the most common issues that come up are:

1. Experience. The default system of XP by monster involves a lot of bookkeeping and isn't particularly apt for any of the major playstyles. From what I can tell, milestone leveling is vastly more common; what you need is probably a second system that relies less on GM fiat. (Because of familiarity constraints, you'd probably have to keep a vestigial encounter XP system in there, like alignment.) A gold for XP chart would work (and solves the gold issue people have mentioned - go blow it on carousing or charity or a pretty princess castle, either way it helps you level up) but has the bookkeeping issue; I like to have checklists. You could even have a few different checklists for different campaign styles - that would be a very useful GM tool.
2. Lack of mechanical support for exploration. I like to port in dungeon/wilderness exploration mechanics (a turn system with the hazard die) from OSR systems and it works well. The DMG should at least offer that and maybe some tools for a GM/narrative driven approach (like the Journeys system by C7.) So many people hate dungeon crawls because they just see it as a sequence of combat encounters and haven't experienced it as a real exploration game with time constraints.
3. Combat doesn't have enough interesting decisions or consequences per unit of real world time. I think this is one of the hardest things to fix without removing familiarity. But I think combat tends to be unsatisfying as a tactical game and overburdensome if you're just using it to support play based around exploration or social interaction. The minimum thing the DMG can provide for newer GMs is to offer less insane pacing advice (I can't imagine anyone here throws 6-8 pushover encounters at a party per adventuring day and plays through them, but one has to wonder how many groups went and tried that and said "this game sucks"), maybe some advice about where to turn a combat into a montage, reaction and morale rolls as optional tools (with support in the MM), and maybe a bunch of example battlemaps with interesting tactical elements.
4. A tight link between character concept and character complexity. Each class should probably have a simple subclass and a more mechanically complex one. When I'm a player I'll often go Champion Fighter not because I'm especially interested in the concept but because I'm mostly completely uninterested in the player mechanics-facing side of the game.

Of course, even here I'm probably violating some Pareto optimality.

 

[Oligopsony]

And yeah. Layout! I'm not going to spend $150 on minor revisions of rules I already have but if {game my IRL friends will play} was layed out with the functionality of OSE or Monster Overhaul, I'd sell my kidneys.

(Actually, wait, someone could do that with the 5.1 SRD already. Hmm...)

 

[Stalker0]

So how are we doing so far?

Ever issue I’ve read so far is not a true issue, as either I disagree it’s a problem, or I know there is active division on the topic from even just enworld threads. My gold OP has also gotten shot down as well.

The only thing floating to the top far is the index, I cannot recall a single person that has ever liked 5es index, it’s at best barely tolerable. So perhaps that is it, annyone actually want to claim they think 5es index is decent?

 

[Umbran]

Any true issues people bring up in this thread will be shouted down, so I'm not really sure how productive it will be. Will be curious to see if any serious criticism passes the gauntlet.

What counts as "passes the gauntlet"?

Like, if "passing the gauntlet," means, "receives universal agreement is an issue," or at least, "nobody voices objection," then that would be an unrealistic, and probably unfair, expectation.
There is a frequent thing seen online - that folks want to give criticism, but don't want their critiques themselves open for discussion. That isn't supportable in an open forum like a messageboard, though. The feedback comes with the audience.

Preemptively dismissing disagreement as "shouting down" is not really cool.

 

[Eubani]

Tradition has been and probably will always be D&D's greatest shackle. The fastest and easiest way for me to lose any respect for a point, argument or position is for your main point to be from a position of tradition.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The Four Elements Monk is pretty bad? Like, not ''I'd be better off with no subclass'' bad, but at least ''worst than all the other printed archetypes'' bad?

I think everyone would agree.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Tradition has been and probably will always be D&D's greatest shackle. The fastest and easiest way for me to lose any respect for a point, argument or position is for your main point to be from a position of tradition.

There are plenty of other games out there that do things differently. Why must D&D constantly change it's rules to accommodate the whims of the designers, or the public? Make a new game, branch out! D&D is not so special that it needs to be everything to everyone.

 

[mamba]

Agreed. Put the impediments back!

I lean the other way, tone down the spells. Almost no one will bother with the impediments anyway

 

[Eubani]

There are plenty of other games out there that do things differently. Why must D&D constantly change it's rules to accommodate the whims of the designers, or the public? Make a new game, branch out! D&D is not so special that it needs to be everything to everyone.

There is a difference between being shackled by tradition and maintaining identity and/or flavour.

 

[TheSword]

One big issue for me that has several components. The homogenization of harm into a big pile of hp for each creature.

Ability score damage is largely gone, and through it, interesting diseases, poisons, curses and monster abilities. Combat consists on wailing on the other side until their piñata of hp drops to zero at which point they die. Suffering no loss of effectiveness up to this point, and regaining 100% fighting effectiveness as soon as they are restored to 1hp. High level combat (anything over level 9) becomes deadly tedious. Exhaustion rules are very sparse and have very little impact on the regular game without serious modification.

- There is no meaningful risk in combat because usually characters either all make it or all die. There is no half way measures. The nature of whackamole healing means players are more likely to take risks to stay in the fight. Everyone is completely restored of hp in short order anyway and hp is the only resource relevant to a persons health as mentioned.

All together it makes combat pretty boring at high levels - a low levels it’s not such a problem as other elements of the game are more relevant and the hp totals are generally lower making it much less of a slog.