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

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't know why we should settle for "works if you hit it hard when it rattles" when we could have a smooth-running game.

Words to live by, honestly.

And I don't think that it's about playstyle. There's a LOT of things that could be improved, IMO, that are playstyle-agnostic.

Agree.

I'd like a skill system that more closely examines the kinds of checks that are actually rolled in the game. Identify the checks that are made and make skills that target those checks. Give each skill more even weight. Does that make sense? I don't expect to be agreed with here, but I'm really quite unhappy with the skill system, in particular how it works in conjunction with tools, but that's another story.

Yes this is absolutely huge and it's a totally fixable problem. Like a number of issues here, it's not even a hard problem to fix. You just have to sit down and work through it, as game designers.

The big issue with skills beyond the usage that I see with 5E is that they're checked too often, and the checks are so RNG-based. It seems like Take 10/20 should be there to reduce RNG and allow people who have invested in skills to get better use out of them, because right now, if there's any way for the whole of the party to roll a skill, that is far smarter in most cases than getting the expert in. DMGs can moderate that in various ways, but it's a fundamental issue - it's absolutely not the case in most RPGs either! It's a peculiarity of the huge RNG compared to the small modifier at lower levels in D&D.

I think the majority of "skill checks" should be 10+PB if you have the skill+stat mod, and the DCs set accordingly, with rolls being reserved for high-drama or super-obscure stuff where it is plausible that because it's such random info, some oik might just have picked it up.

 

[Mallus]

Or maybe they'll save it for an expansion book. Leomund's Large Chest of Capitalism.

Bigby's Invisible Hand.

 

[Blue]

Biggest issue with 5e is the calibration of expected encounters between rests. Balance between classes is severely thrown off in T2 and higher if there aren't enough encounters per long rest and enough short rests, and the calibration point is at a place far beyond where I, and seemingly most DMs, regularly run.

 

[Oligopsony]

Compromises happen, sure. But the DM and players should, imo, be the ones making them, not the game design.

They are in any event. But my claim here is that brand name D&D has structural reasons that make “act as a good compromise game/base to compromise from” a primary design goal that don’t apply to other TTRPGs.

If I make a game that 10 people love and 10,000 people like okay and put it on itch, I move 10 copies (and hopefully those 10 people find each other lol.) If I make a game that 20 people love and 9,990 hate to their fuckin bones, I sell 20 (to the extent that selling is really something I care about at all.) The calculus is the other way around for WotC.

 

[TheSword]

I think it’s worth saying, that despite a lot of theses criticisms (my own included), 5e is still the best version D&D I’ve seen.

Some of the criticisms are just other sides of the coin of things that also really annoy me…

Lack of things to spend money on vs Xmas tree magic shops
Too simple in combat vs To much complicated maths and number crunching
Too boring to level up vs 1,500 feats to choose from

It’s all relative.

 

[mamba]

That's up to them. Making magic harder but not less powerful is more palatable than making casters weaker.

I think we had similar ideas there with making it less reliable and have side effects, not necessarily just weaker overall, but I would not mind weaker in addition

 

[SteveC]

There are many things I could write about, but to be useful and (hopefully) not just cause a fight, I'd say the oddly specific times where the rules are very specific and precise, as opposed to most of the time where they are extremely loose. The "attack with a weapon" versus "a weapon attack" for instance. If you're going to have a very specific rule where most of your game is not, there should be a good reason for it that's easy to find out. So many times it seems like the attempt is to deal with edge cases, when the game tells us it's about DM rulings.

I'll just add: the writing style in general. There's this website called the Hemingway Editor that D&D could really use a run through. Ironically, when I write professionally, my own stuff gets massacred by that site. I know that back in the past this was in response to the 4E "everything is a stat block with keywords," but finding the rules shouldn't be as difficult as it is sometimes.

Having someone go through to use consistent style and tone, along with asking "what does this specific and detailed rule bring to the game" would make me a happy camper.

 

[Mannahnin]

Oh, I remembered the other part of the rules which I feel like really needs an overhaul:

Darkness and visibility. I can see "attacker can't see target = disadvantage"; good so far. And "defender can't see attacker = advantage"; also fine. But when we add those two things together = attack normally? In the dark? Does not compute.

 

[Dausuul]

Muktickass rules are kinda a hot mess due to class design.

When was the last time they were actually good 2E?

4E hybrid classes.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

4E hybrid classes.

Yup. That and 2E (arguably 1E) are the only times D&D has had actually-good multiclassing rules.

The 3E/5E approach is functional but very limiting in both play and concept terms whilst simultaneously being incredibly poorly balanced (something BG3 really highlights - it does make a couple of changes which make certain MCs even more OP but even without those, it's obvious).