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

[Cadence]

Heh. I currently have no less than seven different ship combat systems sitting on my hard drive right now. Might saunter down for an eighth.

Did you ever use Mongoose's "Seas fo Blood" for d20/3.5? If so, how was it? (I've had it and the supplement for goblinoids on my shelf for ever and never tried it out.)

 

[mamba]

Heh. I currently have no less than seven different ship combat systems sitting on my hard drive right now. Might saunter down for an eighth.

feel free to

Sold better? Spelljammer is like the best selling 5e product after the core right now. How much better do you think it could sell?

to be fair, it is selling good right now because of the price drop, it was not selling that great for a while, the total is not 'best after the core'

And no one is providing the middle? Again, I point you to DM's Guild. There are half a dozen good ship combat systems there from purely narrative to nice and crunchy.

I do not really like buying five to find out which one I would have liked in the first place. Any tips?

This gets back to my point about the biggest problem in 5e - the complete lack of interest by fans in anything that doesn't have the WotC seal of approval. For example:

Do you have any idea how many arms and equipment guides there are on DM's Guild for 5e? Lessee, I added 5e, equipment, and searched for mundane. Out of the list of hundreds of entries, I spy this one:

there are plenty, the below sounds like it should cover all your 'I have gold and nothing to do with it' issues

- | Dungeon Masters Guild

-

www.dmsguild.com

 

[Hussar]

Did you ever use Mongoose's "Seas fo Blood" for d20/3.5? If so, how was it? (I've had it and the supplement for goblinoids on my shelf for ever and never tried it out.)

I have it. I don't think I ever actually used it. Like I said, players are pretty allergic to anything that smacks of a tabletop wargame. At least mine are. For my current SPelljammer game, I just simply changed the rules a bit - no effects can pass outside of a gravity plane. Which means all ship combat is boarding actions. Solved the problem nicely.

to be fair, it is selling good right now because of the price drop, it was not selling that great for a while, the total is not 'best after the core'

The point being, 5e Spelljammer is quite popular. I'm not sure that adding fifteen pages of ship combat would help it at all.

I do not really like buying five to find out which one I would have liked in the first place. Any tips?

As I said, I've gone and pretty much just rejected ship combat as something I just can'T get my players to go for. But, I would recommend these two:

Spelljammer Combat Expanded - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Spelljammer Combat Expanded - Overview: Looking for alternative spelljammer combat rules that add additional depth add more engaging ship to ship tact

www.dmsguild.com

or if you want a more cinematic approach:

Spelljammer 5E "Theater of the Mind" Ship Combat Rules - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Spelljammer 5E "Theater of the Mind" Ship Combat Rules - Perhaps you’ve read the Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons version of Spelljammer, or even played it, but you’ve fou

www.dmsguild.com

honorable mention to

Limithon's Guide to Naval Combat | Limithron

Ship combat rules for 5e: Crew up a nimble sloop and tack into the wind. Load a Man of War with enough cannons to scare ever captain in these water. Wage all out war with the largest fleet to ever set sail. Capture a magical ship with legendary abilities. Do all this & more with Limithron's Guid

www.limithron.com

just for looking like it would be so damn fun. Sigh.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And this doesn't apply to mealtimes and bathroom breaks and clothes-washing and all the other bazillion tedious chores of everyday existence because...?

It can. It certainly applies to mealtimes. The other stuff can easily take place while setting up and/or breaking down camp, or on various rest periods. I never said those things didn't happen.

Nice try though.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fair enough. But, there's a difference between "I don't like these rules and wish they had more complex ones" and "This product is unplayable because it lacks key mechanics". The Spelljammer ship rules are essentially exactly the same as the Ghosts of Saltmarsh ones. Since nobody every claims that GoS lacks key mechanics, I don't think it's particularly fair or useful to claim that Spelljammer does lack them.

Again, as someone who has stuggled to do ship combat in D&D for three or four editions now, I can see the appeal of the Spelljammer rules. Players have absolutely zero interest in the level of detail that I want. It really is a problem.

THAT is a sentiment I totally understand.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Let's go to the 3E Rules, then. What exactly do you think was in the PHB and DMG that gave PCs something to do with their gold?

In all editions you can buy items - there were just fairly arbitrary specific prices in 4E tand earlier editions hat resulted in very powerful items being cheaper than much less powerful items. You could, for example, in 3E buy a ring that allows you to 100% of the time counterspell a specific spell (which you can change) for 4K gold ... or buy a pair of rings that can, essentially warding bond for 50K GP. You had certain items every PC was buying because tghey were undercosted ... but the DMG did specify a price and a lot of DMs didn't feel right ignoring it.

But what else did they have rules for in terms of spending money in the DMG and PHB for 3E that high level adventurers would utilize?

And what about 3E prevented the rest-nova? We lacked the short rest mechanic, the concentration mechanic, and metamagic was not restricted to sorcerers. As a result, you often saw higher level spellcasters casting a dozen spells before combat, multiple spells per round during combat, and burning up all their spells early and often. They also had less spells per level until about 6th to 8th level. So what was giving them more endurance to avoid the rest-nova we see in 5E?

Or did we want to focus on 4E? Where in the 4E rules do you find things to do other than buy magic items? They had rituals which you could pay money to master (if you had the feature/feat). That was something for PCs to contribute to - but is it that different than hiring a spellcaster that can cast the spells in other editions?

4E also had the rest nova issue as EVERY PC had their strongest abilities recharge on a full rest. A common discussion in 4E, in many games, was, "When do we rest so that we can have our dailies for the big bad?" The entire edition was built to feel more like a video game than all the other editions ... and that mentality pushed people to treat it like a video game and less like a storytelling game. Thus, more "I think we need to go somewhere and camp because I just used my daily."

A lot of this "earlier editions had X" are a result of rose colored glasses. AD&D had a lot of interesting stuff that turned adventurers into Lords, but most of that was gone by 3E.

When I say early editions, I always mean pre-3e unless I say otherwise.

 

[James Gasik]

Heh. I currently have no less than seven different ship combat systems sitting on my hard drive right now. Might saunter down for an eighth.


Sold better? Spelljammer is like the best selling 5e product after the core right now. How much better do you think it could sell?

And no one is providing the middle? Again, I point you to DM's Guild. There are half a dozen good ship combat systems there from purely narrative to nice and crunchy. WotC provided the system that players wanted (note, players, not DM's) because it's quick, fun and lets them get to play their characters rather than turn their session into a tabletop wargame.

This gets back to my point about the biggest problem in 5e - the complete lack of interest by fans in anything that doesn't have the WotC seal of approval. For example:


Do you have any idea how many arms and equipment guides there are on DM's Guild for 5e? Lessee, I added 5e, equipment, and searched for mundane. Out of the list of hundreds of entries, I spy this one:

Xanathar's Extraordinary Vault - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Xanathar's Extraordinary Vault - More magic... More gear... More treasure... More Xanathar! Xanathar has spent centuries accumulating loot beneath the st

www.dmsguild.com

500 items, professional quality, nice art. Ten bucks.

Why on earth do you need WotC to do this?

Why? Well for one, it would show that the company actually cares about doing more than the bare minimum; I mean, this is an area of the game overripe for expansion.

For two, unless I'm the DM, most of the people I've played with seem to be allergic to 3PP; I can somewhat understand the sentiment, having endured the "d20 plague" when everyone and their cousin was cranking out products under the OGL of often dubious quality (granted, WotC wasn't immune to cranking out stinkers either, but at least their products got some use, unlike the stack of dusty books I have in storage).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why? Well for one, it would show that the company actually cares about doing more than the bare minimum; I mean, this is an area of the game overripe for expansion.

For two, unless I'm the DM, most of the people I've played with seem to be allergic to 3PP; I can somewhat understand the sentiment, having endured the "d20 plague" when everyone and their cousin was cranking out products under the OGL of often dubious quality (granted, WotC wasn't immune to cranking out stinkers either, but at least their products got some use, unlike the stack of dusty books I have in storage).

Its been a while since WotC had any interest in expanding 5e, it seems to me.

 

[Lanefan]

Gotcha. I think I get what you are saying now. And I agree with it to an extent. I'm not sure how you would solve it, though. Players tend to choose the best person for the job to make the attempt, and quite often there's only one go at it.

As an aside, one of the things I really dislike about lots of people trying with skills is that if the person with the double proficiency +10 rolls and fails, it really doesn't make sense for the +2 unproficient whoever to succeed. Yet that's what often happens when you have multiple or everyone at the table trying to solve the issue.

To me this just replicates the thing we've all seen many times in the kitchen, where the strong person tries and fails to open the jar then the weaker person picks up the jar and opens it just like that.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm quite amazed that this is a line of reasoning people follow..

"If I can have sex with it, it must not be any more or less capable than I am"

"Ability to have sex with" does not equate to "similarity in capabilities". I'm not even sure how you're arriving at this conclusion.