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

[EzekielRaiden]

No it's not. What is meant when they say that is that they like more realism than you do, not that they want the game to be real. I'm willing to bet that none or nearly none of those people have their PCs go to the bathroom several times a day and sneeze periodically. None of them have their character pause to catch his breath or stop to rest aside from meal breaks like people do. None of them roleplay stopping briefly to take in a beautiful natural scene. None of them are asking for hit points to go away completely. None of them are asking for an accurate combat model where everything truly is happening simultaneously. None of them are asking for a true to life attack, parry, riposte system. None of them are asking to model becoming weak from blood loss.

None of them are asking for reality to be mirrored 100%. They simply enjoy more realism(though still not mirroring reality) in their game.

Okay.

Then I am calling them out for applying bizarrely self-contradictory standards of realism. Because they want some particular things to be ultrahyperreal, and other things never even get thought about.

 

[Maxperson]

I was referring to the PHB where it states (emphasis added): "A score of 10 or 11 is the normal human average, but adventurers and many monsters are a cut above average in most abilities. A score of 18 is the highest that a person usually reaches. Adventurers can have scores as high as 20"

Usually reaches is the key. It's unusual for a commoner to roll an 18 on 3d6 and get that 18. The PHB also says this, though.

"RACIAL TRAITS
The description of each race includes racial traits that are common to members of that race. The following entries appear among the traits of most races.

ABILITY SCORE INCREASE Every race increases one or more of a character's ability scores."

Every commoner gets the racial bonuses. Every commoner can roll an 18. In a village 200 there will be 1 person who rolled an 18. Then there's a 1 in 6 chance that the 18 lands in the stat that gets the +2. All you need is a village of 1200 to guarantee on average that there will be a 20 in a stat, and multiple 19's. It's unusual(since it's rare), but commoners do reach 20.

 

[Minigiant]

Almost exactly the old City of Heroes gamut of heroic origins. Didn't meant much in that game but it's a great reference point for thinking about where powers might come from.

Almost exactly the old City of Heroes gamut of heroic origins. Didn't meant much in that game but it's a great reference point for thinking about where powers might come from.

That's where I copied it from.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay.

Then I am calling them out for applying bizarrely self-contradictory standards of realism. Because they want some particular things to be ultrahyperreal, and other things never even get thought about.

It's perfectly okay for me to want more realism with X, but not Y. That's not contradictory at all. It's normal. X bugs me because it's too unrealistic, but Y does not because it's realistic enough not to set off my alarms.

 

[Cadence]

Usually reaches is the key. It's unusual for a commoner to roll an 18 on 3d6 and get that 18. The PHB also says this, though.

I'm kind of boggled that folks role dice for commoners in 5e, or that the distribution of a 3d6 is taken as representative of the population distribution. (And I"m trying to avoid searching up some old 3.5/PF threads on that because I don't totally want to avoid work today).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's perfectly okay for me to want more realism with X, but not Y. That's not contradictory at all. It's normal. X bugs me because it's too unrealistic, but Y does not because it's realistic enough not to set off my alarms.

Except that these things are blatantly unrealistic. Often by exactly the same standards as used elsewhere. Fighters cannot ever deal damage on a miss (remember how much of a fracas there was with that?), but hit points being blatantly unrealistic is something Gygax himself discussed. (I'd hoped to have a link for this, but I can't seem to find a reference, sadly.) Damage, hit points, it's all one system together--but that exact same system is perfectly acceptable in one place and utterly unacceptable in another.

Not to mention the more blatant hypocrisy of saying that magic-using classes just should be more powerful than non-magic-using classes.

 

[Cadence]

Okay.

Then I am calling them out for applying bizarrely self-contradictory standards of realism. Because they want some particular things to be ultrahyperreal, and other things never even get thought about.

It feels like this happens in what people put up with in books and movies a lot, and how genre conventions work?

In the mystery I'm reading there's a discussion of whether Desdemona getting a final word in Othello is too silly or not, for example, and part of it hinges on how realistic they want it to be versus how much they let slide for a good drama. People like different things.

 

[Maxperson]

I am mostly talking flexibility here, don’t care about combat, but out of combat I want most of the ‘I just cast a spell and that is the solution to any given problem’ to go the way of the Dodo

This statement drives me crazy and has for years. That has literally never existed. Caster spell slots are limited and many of those limited slots have to be devoted to combat. That leaves an extremely limited number for utility which are fairly specific in their use, while problems vary considerably.

Yes if the caster gets lucky and encounters a problem that one of their very limited slots will handle, it will usually be handled easily and without a roll, but the odds are good that the wizard doesn't have a spell to handle that problem. Further, every slot used to handle a utility problem is one less that the wizard gets to use in combat, so he's gimping himself there.

If that 5th level wizard solves just 4 problems in an adventuring day, he's burned nearly half of his combat ability out.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I have seen a lot said about tracking ammunition.

We just say 50% recovered. Was that combat 4 rounds? Ok. I mark off half of the arrows I shot.

If I miscount rounds of fire (shrug) close enough. The missing one subtraction is just random error.

I am not saying people should not have other means to track this but will never understand how keeping a rough count is hard to do. Especially when folks saying it is are asking for more complicated combat options.

The only explanation I have heard is “it’s not fun” to mark off arrows follow your bliss but please don’t tell me making a hash mark on a sheet is hard work

I've noticed that a few players, when asked to track arrows, will start carrying dozens of arrows all the time. Which gets silly, even if they convince me it's technically possible to have 100 arrows accessible, there's a reason no one does that in real life.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm kind of boggled that folks role dice for commoners in 5e, or that the distribution of a 3d6 is taken as representative of the population distribution. (And I"m trying to avoid searching up some old 3.5/PF threads on that because I don't totally want to avoid work today).

They don't roll the dice for the vast majority of them, which is why the average of 3d6 is used for the stat block. 10-11 is that average. 10.5 being the middle. However, the stat block is just a completely average roll and commoners will in actuality have varying stats. Some weak, some strong, some wise, some unwise, and so on. There will be commoners with a 20 in a stat. It's just only going to be 1 in 1200 on average.

Adventurers on the other hand get roll 4d6-L and then place their stats. There's an almost 9% chance that one of the rolls will be an 18. That's close to 1 in 10 adventurers being able to start with a 20. That's considerably more often and with ASIs(which commoners don't get) is virtually guaranteed if the player wants it.