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

[mamba]

I don't really understand your objection. You asked where the rules say that D&D humans are not humans as we know them. I showed you where the rules clearly state that D&D humans often show traits of other species, such as elves and orcs. Humans as we know them cannot have such traits. Therefore, these are not humans as we know them.

That says nothing about the human part being anything else than what we are familiar with.

We do not know those mixes per se, but when you see what a Half-Elf or Half-Orc is like compared to a human, and then water the difference down considerably because we are talking four generations back with everyone else in the family tree being human, then the result is back to being indistinguishable from a human.

 

[Lanefan]

Maybe..I think thats more an illustration of a fundamental difference in how we engage with the mechanics and the related settings.

My entry-level expectation for participation in the hobby is to pretend to be a fantasy hero in a fantasy setting.

Yep - fundamental difference: I expect to pretend to be a protagonistic and yet internally-realistic inhabitant of a fantasy setting. Heroism is not necessarily required or desired.

And I expect fantasy heroes in fantasy settings to be fantastic.

I don't need the game to tell me why my character can do those things. I can do that myself. In fact, the more justification the game provides, the more chance that justification will be inconsistent with the setting conditions laid out by the DM and my conception of the character.

In theory the DM will have taken those justifications into account when laying out the setting. How any of it interacts with any one player's conception of a character, however, is something the designers simply can't anticipate.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That says nothing about the human part being anything else than what we are familiar with.

We do not know those mixes per se, but when you see what a Half-Elf or Half-Orc is like compared to a human, and then water the difference down considerably because we are talking four generations back with everyone else in the family tree being human, then the result is back to being indistinguishable from a human.

Your argument has pretty clearly been, "There's no meaningful difference between these fantasy humans and IRL humans, thus they have precisely the same physical capabilities and limitations as IRL humans."

Humans having such mixed ancestry--with genuinely fantastical beings that couldn't possibly live in our universe--is a pretty clear reason for saying that they may LOOK like IRL humans, but they are not actually IRL humans. Their limitations should be different. Perhaps not radically different, but different nonetheless. We cannot simply handwave such concerns with "oh well it gets watered down so it doesn't matter." That's an assumption on your part, not actually backed up by anything but your declaration of it.

Also, you are the one who asked for where it said something in the rules.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't really understand your objection. You asked where the rules say that D&D humans are not humans as we know them. I showed you where the rules clearly state that D&D humans often show traits of other species, such as elves and orcs.

I'd like to know how they're going to square that idea with the dropping of Half-species in the new 5e.

I mean, either Humans can interbreed with Elves and Orcs or they can't, right? And if they can, Half-species are viable.

Edit to add: come to think of it, one thing that is slowly becoming an issue with 5e (maybe not to True Issue status quite yet, but give it time): the mechanical homogenization of the playable species.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd like to know how they're going to square that idea with the dropping of Half-species in the new 5e.

I mean, either Humans can interbreed with Elves and Orcs or they can't, right? And if they can, Half-species are viable.

TBH, I wasn't entirely pleased with that decision to begin with, so....yeah.

 

[teitan]

There are no issues with 5e and there are plenty of issues with it. It depends on if you want it to be 3.x-4e era, 0e-2e era or 5e.

1. As a 3.x-4e era game it fails and it was never really meant to be that game that has a rule for everything with fiddly customization options that shifted numbers slightly around and had an Ivory Tower design element nor was it meant to be a perfectly balanced ruleset to provide the same experience from level 1-30. It has a lot of issues when you come into it expecting this style of play and the assumption that the DMG is unnecessary doesn't help perceptions of a "broken game". Just because it has a similar combat grid system doesn't mean it is 3.x-4e. 1e also has rules for a grid and for hexes. 5e has rules for hexes too. That leads to my next point.

2. As an attempt at recreating OSR type experiences it does very well... when you use the DMG and the rules options that are in it that everyone clamors for and probably do not realize are the rules modules that were talked about in the playtest. The DMG has lots of advice, lots of optional rules suggestions and ideas to tweak 5e to play in that old school vein and it will absolutely excel at it. Not as well as 1e or BX/BECMI or even DCC, but it does it very well. The emphasis on making the game your own and the ease of houseruling, that surprising things are actually optional rules like race where only Human is a core rule makes 5e the most easily customizable version of D&D thanks to the simple, cohesive mechanics. You can tweak 5e's rules all day, every day and it will not break the game. You don't like the optional flanking rules as written? Make your own, import the 3.x rules for flanking. Make it a standard flat +2 to attack instead of advantage to keep it from being swingy. It won't hurt the game.

3. As 5e D&D which provides a unique experience in the same way that 3e, 3.5 (yes they both provided very different experiences), Pathfinder and 4e provided, 5e is, when you run it out of the box, very good at what it does. It is a framework on which to hang the adventuring experience. Unlike 3e and OSR it isn't a straight dungeon crawler and it does what 2e tried to do with greater success.

Where you have problems is when you try to turn the game into another game entirely. People coming in from Pathfinder expecting... Pathfinder for example because the games are the same DNA. Are there issues with the game? Only if you don't embrace them.

 

[Minigiant]

Switch out sword for bow, maybe you have some magical items that help, find terrain that helps, come up with some good plan that grounds the dragon, have the mage cast Fly on you rather than on themselves


only if you relegate everything to a die roll or the player has no ideas

A Bard might be better at Persuasion, but the Fighter at Intimidation (expressed by different DCs for the two chars). The Fighter can think of bribing them when the Bard failed to convince the stubborn orcs.

Yes, there obviously are limits to all of this, but you kinda knew this going in

My point is you and I know this due to our experience.

A new DM might know this. A 2 year DM might not either. And neither the DMG nor any WOTC content teaches you that.

 

[Zardnaar]

The gold issue is real for us and our primary DM fixed it.
The DMG stinks issue is real for us and we just ended up not using the DMG much.
The CR system is a real issue but was a fairly simple matter of still using that CR number in a different manner after getting a feel for the system.

Think we've agreed on stuff twice in one week. Doctors visits required?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No. Because not all PCs are heroes, and the game doesn't require you to be.

I mean in the ancient Greek sense, not in the goody two-shoes sense. And yes absolutely all PCs in all editions who are above level 10 are heroes in the ancient Greek sense.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

5e monsters generally have even more hit points, so it's no surprise to see +2d6 show up as a damage bonus.

I think you're missing the point though - the issue is that you can increase your damage output to a huge degree with that item, and what you seem to be saying is that they've balanced around that, but they're saying they haven't, and it's a mess.

Looking closely at 5E it looks like all they actually did was make it so the basic math doesn't break without +n magic items, but still basically required magic items in general in the underlying design, and just mislead people about it. YMMV.

Well, other than the name "human", which kinda carries a big whack of fairly basic assumptions in with it; and most (all?) of those assumptions start with the idea that a human in the game's fiction is fairly similar in many ways to the humans in the room with you.

And they are! In many ways, as you correctly say. But they're not identical. They never have been. This sudden new insistence that they are from some is quite strange and seems rather artificial. The same is true in Earthdawn, Exalted, and countless other settings - humans are similar to our humans but not identical.

IMO the most relatable humans are in Game of Thrones. Sure there's some people with magical powers, but most of the characters are down-to-earth enough to make it easy to imagine oneself in the setting. And it helps greatly that the setting doesn't have ridiculous rates of natural healing: you get hurt, you're gonna stay hurt for a while if not longer.

There's no question GoT's humans are intended to be very close to real-world humans, albeit with some having magical bloodlines (c.f. Dany being basically immune to heat/fire and inbreeding, for example), and there being a rather high incidence of unusual body shapes/sizes.

But that's not what D&D has ever been like in any edition. It's certainly not what 5E is interested in being.