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

[Stalker0]

In 2014-2018 period there was a lot less name-calling and real aggression or the like, and a lot more "Oh, you're just silly for saying there's anything wrong with 5E, let's continue discussing how great 5E is!", and that just never happened with 3E or 4E, not even at their peak popularity. It was a whole other thing. No rules lawyering, not really "angry" rhetoric, just dismissiveness towards the entire concept that 5E could be flawed. I don't think it was a majority opinion, but it was large minority, which more recently has shrunk considerably.

I don't really see that myself. I don't see a lot of "5e is perfect, how dare you question it".

What I do think is that with the rise of "rulings not rules" game debate is more subjective now. In 3e we got our rules lawyer hates on and could concretely debate the system day in and day out. And boy did we! Everything was put under the microscope, because technically in 3e there was the "RAW way to do things" and the "houserule way". And if you houseruled thats fine, but when you debated the system you debated RAW.

In 5e, the system decisively puts more of the game resolution into the DMs hands. So there are many topics where people are naturally going to have different experiences based on Dm handling. Now this happened in 3e as well but there was more an expectation to "follow the rules". So a lot of times in 5e, the debate comes down to "well my dm does it this way and we love it".... which may be perfectly true but also makes it hard to have full discussions on whether the system is serving the greater goal of helping groups craft better gaming experiences.

 

[Lanefan]

Ten pages in and I've yet to see mention of something that people have been beefing about since 5e's release:

Stealth, hiding, and perception.

Just thought I'd drop that pebble in the pond...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Ten pages in and I've yet to see mention of something that people have been beefing about since 5e's release:

Stealth, hiding, and perception.

Just thought I'd drop that pebble in the pond...

Ahhhh I nearly mentioned that! I should have, but I moaned long enough. Probably add Surprise into the same broad issue, because its issues are caused largely by issues with those other elements.

I dunno if it'd be widely accepted but I think Crawford's beloved "natural language" (what a misleading euphemism!) has largely been a failure, in part because it's been so poorly used by D&D.

 

[cbwjm]

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.

I actually quite like it, but I do agree that it could do with some revision.

 

[SteveC]

I'll just add the lack of Delay as another thing to toss onto the surprise rules.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'll just add the lack of Delay as another thing to toss onto the surprise rules.

The general lack of ability to move around in initiative, combined with initiative being super-RNG compared to other rolls is not great design, I think. It doesn't follow the whole bounded accuracy model of 5E.

 

[cbwjm]

One thing I don't think is actually a problem is the "expected" 6-8 encounters because it isn't actually expected. All I've ever been able to find about this amount of encounters is in the DMG and all it is saying is that a typical party can handle around 6-8 medium or hard encounters, it never says that it's an expected or required number. People seem to have taken that as some sort of gospel to the point where some will say people are playing wrong if you don't have that number of encounters, something like "X DM doesn't run 6-8 encounters a day and complains that they can't challenge their PCs ".

 

[CreamCloud0]

One thing I don't think is actually a problem is the "expected" 6-8 encounters because it isn't actually expected. All I've ever been able to find about this amount of encounters is in the DMG and all it is saying is that a typical party can handle around 6-8 medium or hard encounters, it never says that it's an expected or required number. People seem to have taken that as some sort of gospel to the point where some will say people are playing wrong if you don't have that number of encounters, something like "X DM doesn't run 6-8 encounters a day and complains that they can't challenge their PCs ".

maybe it's because DnD is primarily at it's core a resource management game, and if your group isn't being pushed to a certain threshold of resource use then there's not exactly going to be getting to the point where your management or lack thereof starts to matter and it's consequences impact gameplay?

 

[Minigiant]

Ten pages in and I've yet to see mention of something that people have been beefing about since 5e's release:

Stealth, hiding, and perception.

Just thought I'd drop that pebble in the pond...

Another one of those "The DM is a D&D vet and knows how to run this so we won't design clear rules which might conflict with anything" issues.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Well the results speak for themselves.

Exactly my point.