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

[James Gasik]

What supports the idea that commoners are different?

Let's start with what the rules say Commoners are like:

Right off the bat, we see that Commoners have no skill or saving throw proficiencies, and no modifiers outside of their proficiency bonus to anything other than their attack. Their ability scores are dead average, far from what a PC would have.

They likely only have proficiency in simple weapons (not explicit, but implied by the stat block). They have no special abilities*.

*An argument could be made that they should have racial abilities, and I wouldn't debate anyone who felt they ought to have them.

Compared to a commoner, PC's are mostly a step above in all respects (save for the arcane casters stuck with a d6 Hit Die for whatever reason; not sure how you can be worse off than a commoner but there it is).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

We needed something besides the r-word.

'Rest, Long'?

"Realism."

And there is an alternative to both "realism" and "verisimilitude" which is natural, simple, and fitting, without implying that something must conform to IRL Earth physics/biology/etc., while still recognizing that limits and consistency are important.

"Grounded."

A work, a world, that is grounded is one that fully earns whatever deviations from reality it offers. It gives a solid, reasonable explanation for its weirdness, or at least assures you that there is one if the reason is secret/mysterious (often, in part, by taking the consequences of such weirdness very seriously.)

It is not "realism" because there is no real world thing it is imitating. It is not "verisimilitude" because there is no "truth" for it to have similarity to. Instead, this rightly places the locus of concern where it belongs, in the evaluation of the world, not as an inherent property of that world. Two people may disagree about whether a world is well-grounded or not. That is perfectly acceptable. The concept does not claim absolute or universal truth.

there is nothing that contradicts it as far as I can tell, and the assumption that a D&D human is what we know as a human (Homo Sapiens) seems pretty reasonable too

When you are bringing in limits and denying that something can be done or allowed, the burden of proof is on you. "It isn't contradicted by the text" isn't enough. "It is reasonable" isn't enough...and, as far as I'm concerned, it isn't reasonable. A typical town guard is like level 2ish, and can survive all but the worst 20' falls with no serious injuries, and most 30' falls, since they have 11 HP. As long as there's someone at the bottom to stabilize them, they very frequently survive a full 50' fall and be right as rain the next morning.

That's objective. Baked straight into the rules. Falling is 1d6 per 10'. Town guards have 2d8+2 HP, static 11. Instant death only occurs at -100%, which would be 22 total HP. 5d6>21 only 15.2% of the time. Even a 60' fall is still more survivable than not (45.36% chance of instant death.) IRL humans, even in safety equipment, die from falls as short as six feet, and have fatality rates on the order of 30% or more from falls as short as 20'.

What supports the idea that commoners are different?

See above. We shouldn't assume either way. If you want to assert that essentially all IRL human limitations apply to human commoners, you need more. The burden of proof is on you, not on someone saying, "hey, hold your horses, we can't assume their limits are the same as ours."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

different fans….

Actually, quite commonly the same fans. I've seen the exact same people on this very forum argue, for instance, that unless dragonborn have genuinely alien thought patterns they shouldn't be a distinct species at all....and then also argue that no characters, no matter what their race, should be able to perform feats of strength more than very slightly beyond what an IRL Olympic athlete could perform.

And both positions come from a call for "realism."

 

[billd91]

I think this is spot on. And my answer is "I want my fighter to be as supernatural and effective as any other character in the game." Each player or DM has their own answer to this, and I'd like to hope that the game would reflect the ability to run those kinds of games. 4E did. I played a rogue all the way to the start of the Epic tier and never felt left out. I'm playing one in PF2 and finding the same thing. So it is possible. In 5E I play spellcasters.

Right now, I'd say that the best way to handle the lack of super human ability is to just cap classes at a certain level. If your fighter can't be super human (and they can, in terms of taking a beating, right now) then okay, just no fighters after level 8 or whatever.

I've played a wizard and a rogue in 5e (I DM a lot) and at 14th level, if my rogue is falling behind, I'm not feeling it. And it doesn't seem to be happening in the D&D games I'm running either where the monk, fighter, and rogue all seem to be as viable as the other classes at level 14. We're definitely heading up toward 20 so I'll be keeping my eyes open, but it hasn't been anything close to an issue yet.

 

[SteveC]

I've played a wizard and a rogue in 5e (I DM a lot) and at 14th level, if my rogue is falling behind, I'm not feeling it. And it doesn't seem to be happening in the D&D games I'm running either where the monk, fighter, and rogue all seem to be as viable as the other classes at level 14. We're definitely heading up toward 20 so I'll be keeping my eyes open, but it hasn't been anything close to an issue yet.

I suppose we'll have to see in the campaign I'm just starting. In terms of damage, I expect that the wizard I'm running will be very low rank. But ... Hypnotic Pattern, Fly, Greater Invisibility, Mass Suggestion, not to mention Counter Spell are things those characters can't really do, so we'll have to see. I'm hoping it works out like you're saying.

 

[Lanefan]

Also GOT barely has characters over level 3.

Which means you (and maybe D&D in general) sees levels quite differently than do I.

The GoT setting is, in my view, well stocked with what IMO should equate to mid-level (in 4e-5e, tier 2) Fighters. A few - e.g. Jaime (with two hands) or Bronn - have gone beyond that. And one can easily say that by the end Arya has become at least a tier-2 if not tier-3 Assassin, trained up by people even better at it than she.

What it doesn't have are mid-high level Clerics and Mages, other than (maybe) Melisandre. Sure the red priest with Dondarrion can raise the dead but that seems to be all he can do, which compared to a D&D Cleric makes him very much a one-trick pony. And there's that band of NPC sorcerers in (Qarth?) who seem to know their stuff, but we don't really see enough of them to get a sense of what they can do other than annoy people.

Compared to this, D&D as written has always been, at higher levels, something of a supers game; and the WotC editions have leaned into this hard. Not a fan.

 

[Lanefan]

The problem with encumbrance is that it’s just adding up numbers until you can’t add up anymore. It’s too mechanical. When you’re packing in real life do you weight everything and try to get an accurate carrying capacity for yourself? Unless you’re afraid of getting a surcharge at the airport I don’t think the precise weight matters. You try to jam everything in your bags then try to lift them and then decide if it’s too much. Encumbrance should feel more instinctive. I'm not sure what they can do but listing the exact weight is not it.

Agreed, but unfortunately we're kinda stuck with a numerical abstraction for encumbrance (which even then only ever looks at weight, not bulk) and so having precise weights for everything at least allows a player (or DM) to roughly eyeball it and realize they're carrying too much, while still allowing those who want to track it to the ounce to do so.

Water, food and torches are way too easy to obviate at level 1. I think people like they idea of worrying about food, water, etc, but they don't actually like to track it manually? Like... ticking down your ration on your character sheet isn't interesting, the rest interesting stuff is deciding what you do when you get close to 0. It's only interesting when you're running out.

Again agreed, but how do you know when you're running out if you haven't been tracking it?

The biggest food-water headaches I ever see come when PCs rescue a whole bunch of prisoners or slaves who have no resources of their own, and have to find a way to feed them for the two weeks it'll take to get back to town.

 

[Mannahnin]

Which means you (and maybe D&D in general) sees levels quite differently than do I.

The GoT setting is, in my view, well stocked with what IMO should equate to mid-level (in 4e-5e, tier 2) Fighters. A few - e.g. Jaime (with two hands) or Bronn - have gone beyond that. And one can easily say that by the end Arya has become at least a tier-2 if not tier-3 Assassin, trained up by people even better at it than she.

What it doesn't have are mid-high level Clerics and Mages, other than (maybe) Melisandre. Sure the red priest with Dondarrion can raise the dead but that seems to be all he can do, which compared to a D&D Cleric makes him very much a one-trick pony. And there's that band of NPC sorcerers in (Qarth?) who seem to know their stuff, but we don't really see enough of them to get a sense of what they can do other than annoy people.

Compared to this, D&D as written has always been, at higher levels, something of a supers game; and the WotC editions have leaned into this hard. Not a fan.

Which of these fighters in GoT do we see easily or routinely take on several ordinary soldiers or warriors at once? Or go toe to toe with a Wildling giant or similar monster?

As far as I remember (it's been a bunch of years since I read them) we never see any of them take on a whole crowd of normal (1-2 HD) soldiers, which would be an easy feat for a tier 2 or 3 D&D Fighter.

My impression is that GRRM tried to keep his fighters grounded pretty close to reality.

 

[Oofta]

I've played a wizard and a rogue in 5e (I DM a lot) and at 14th level, if my rogue is falling behind, I'm not feeling it. And it doesn't seem to be happening in the D&D games I'm running either where the monk, fighter, and rogue all seem to be as viable as the other classes at level 14. We're definitely heading up toward 20 so I'll be keeping my eyes open, but it hasn't been anything close to an issue yet.

They're still viable at 20th in my games. About the only thing I've done is made sure that they have ways of attacking (e.g. boots of flying) creatures that aren't land bound.

 

[Mannahnin]

The problem with encumbrance is that it’s just adding up numbers until you can’t add up anymore. It’s too mechanical. When you’re packing in real life do you weight everything and try to get an accurate carrying capacity for yourself? Unless you’re afraid of getting a surcharge at the airport I don’t think the precise weight matters. You try to jam everything in your bags then try to lift them and then decide if it’s too much. Encumbrance should feel more instinctive. I'm not sure what they can do but listing the exact weight is not it.

Agreed, but unfortunately we're kinda stuck with a numerical abstraction for encumbrance (which even then only ever looks at weight, not bulk) and so having precise weights for everything at least allows a player (or DM) to roughly eyeball it and realize they're carrying too much, while still allowing those who want to track it to the ounce to do so.

There are other mechanical options, though. Slot-based encumbrance systems have gotten a ton of play in the OSR space in the last fifteen years. The Usage Die from The Black Hack allows for abstracted depletion of resources and the possibility of them running out at an unexpected or inopportune time, which is the sort of thing which happens in heroic fiction and provides dramatic complications.

I don't think we're "stuck" with encumbrance by weight (which so many people find tedious) unless the designers just refuse to try something else.

Water, food and torches are way too easy to obviate at level 1. I think people like they idea of worrying about food, water, etc, but they don't actually like to track it manually? Like... ticking down your ration on your character sheet isn't interesting, the rest interesting stuff is deciding what you do when you get close to 0. It's only interesting when you're running out.

Again agreed, but how do you know when you're running out if you haven't been tracking it?

The biggest food-water headaches I ever see come when PCs rescue a whole bunch of prisoners or slaves who have no resources of their own, and have to find a way to feed them for the two weeks it'll take to get back to town.

The Usage Die is one way to change up depletion of resources. I'm sure there are other mechanical possibilities beyond just counting.