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

[Micah Sweet]

Still niche.

Even in most survival sims, once you get past the very beginning, you have all the tools to survival and are just stockpiling stuff and returning to normalcy.

Most survival sims devolve into a combat game, adventure game, base builder, or storyteller for a reason.

Survival simulation gameplay is niche and only liked in short bursts by most people.

Pics or it didn't happen. You can't just make a claim like that without evidence, and I don't buy it.

 

[Lanefan]

In most cases a 10' pole would be something that wouldn't be plausible to have because it's too large, so would fail the "plausible to have brought" test, so couldn't be obtained that way.

That obviates most of the rest of your concerns I note ("twisty passages" etc.). Whereas if they wanted a one-handed hammer, or a crowbar/prybar, something similar that could have been in a backpack, sure.

That said, I've never seen a D&D situation where a 10' pole was actually particularly useful (or at least - more useful than a shorter but equally wooden stick or pole or club), and I've been playing for 34 years.

As player I rarely if ever have one* on board and there's been numerous times when I've come to regret it.

* - or anything similar e.g. a polearm.

Back in 2E, the party used to have a portable hole which they spent an entire session buying stuff for and loading up to the point where they basically never needed to think about gear again (and anything exciting they found, like smokepowder barrels, went in there too). They even had a ballista in there. And yeah they had some foldable 10' poles. Did those poles ever get used? They did not. The ballista did once to fire a grapnel across a chasm.

I think I've DMed one portable hole in my life (that never really got used for much, and didn't last long), and have yet to see one as a player.

I've never seen a collapsible 10' pole but have seen many a collapsible shovel, and those do get used. Their carriers, however, tend to get shunned due to a bizarre sequence in a game long ago (that I was in, for a while). The PC owner of a collapsible shovel died in the field; another character took the shovel and then died in the next combat, then another character took the shovel and was also the next to die. This was, incredibly, repeated a couple more times - something like five characters died, each at pretty much the first opportunity after picking up that innocent non-cursed bland and boring shovel - until the shovel was ceremonially destroyed and a ban was placed on them within that party.

Since then, anyone in any party in any campaign who packs a collapsible shovel has been looked at sideways.

 

[pemerton]

I don't know anything about camping?

Should the DMG advise them to take their players on a camping trip to teach them how camping works???

100% yes.

Also a trip to some nearby hills/mountains for a bit of rock climbing practice.

Busting down doors (do this one at a friend's place!) and beating up on local hooligans are optional training modules.

 

[Lanefan]

2E also had the GP = XP rule. It's right there in the DMG. That fewer people chose to use it doesn't make it not exist.

I'll have to look again, but I always thought xp-for-gp was optional at best in 2e.

 

[Minigiant]

Pics or it didn't happen. You can't just make a claim like that without evidence, and I don't buy it.

• Don’t Starve
• Crsed: FOAD
• Minecraft
• Sons of the Forest
• This War of Mine
• Valheim
• ARK: Survival Evolved
• Scum
• DayZ
• Conan Exiles
• Rust
• Subnautica
• Astroneer
• The Long Dark
• Icarus

Some of the top survival games. Most of them devolve out of raw survival into other genre or into combat based survival if they don't start that way

 

[Micah Sweet]

• Don’t Starve
• Crsed: FOAD
• Minecraft
• Sons of the Forest
• This War of Mine
• Valheim
• ARK: Survival Evolved
• Scum
• DayZ
• Conan Exiles
• Rust
• Subnautica
• Astroneer
• The Long Dark
• Icarus

https://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-100692849-14555742?url=https://www.humblebundle.com/store/dont-starve?partner=pcgamesn
Some of the top survival games. Most of them devolve out of raw survival into other genre or into combat based survival if they don't start that way

So its not really a survival game if you ever get better at it? What is your standard?

 

[Lanefan]

Right. Which is why we need a cross reference calculation chart. Type of shovel, cross referenced with type of soil, add in current ground moisture levels, potential obstacles like roots and stones! Remember to factor in depth as well since the soil composition may well change. Double check the weight of the character if it's dense soil and the character can stand on the shovel. Don't forget to include their strength modifier.

Phew. Okay, only a page or two of complex calculations, just be sure to cross reference with the soil type and density charts and we should be good to go!

I dunno - sitting at the table doing all that calculating seems like a fine alternative to actually shovelling the snow off the driveway.

 

[Minigiant]

So its not really a survival game if you ever get better at it? What is your standard?

Once Survival is no longer the challenge.

Especially if resource Management is the basis of survival.

Most of these games move from resource management after a while.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'll have to look again, but I always thought xp-for-gp was optional at best in 2e.

I think it probably is optional - but so are the rules about XP for class actions IIRC, and that was being mentioned as a "fact" of 2E. 100% certain it's in 2E because we never owned 1E, and I remember when we found the rule in 2E and started using it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So its not really a survival game if you ever get better at it? What is your standard?

It's not a survival game if the "survival" element stops being an issue almost immediately.

It's notable that there are "real" survival games where survival remains a major element - you get better at it, but you don't just invalidate it - Green Hell for example. But they're across-the-board less popular than the ones where it goes away. Some it lasts a lot longer too, like The Long Dark - and again this seems to correlate to being less popular. Not unpopular, but none of the market leaders feature much actual survival sadly.