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

[Lanefan]

It depends on what those restrictions are, and how annoying they are to deal with. For example, when I was playing AD&D, people rarely played Wizards in my experience. Curious as to why (since it sounded like a cool class), I played one. Soon I found that as if limited spell slots, almost no survivability, slow xp progression, and being the bottom tier of usefulness when I couldn't use magic wasn't enough, I had the additional issues of:

*Dependent on RNG or DM mercy for new spells.
*Scribing spells into my spellbook were expensive.
*Some spells requiring difficult to acquire and/or expensive components.
*Instantly losing a spell if I took the slightest amount of damage (on top of losing my Dexterity bonus to AC).
*Most spells being "save (neg.)" and saving throws becoming more likely as I leveled instead of less.
*The occasional case of a spell not working as advertised on an opponent.
*Magic resistance being handed out like candy to various monsters.

Other than the last one (which I'll get to shortly) I don't see a problem with most of those. The bigger issue is too few spell slots per day at very low levels, and that's pretty easy to sort with a bit of kitbashing.

As for magic resistance, while it's not perfect I can live with it, in that by the time monsters start commonly getting MR their AC is way on down in the basement meaning the martials often can't touch them, so if the creatures didn't have MR the martials would end up looking even more useless.

Despite playing for decades, my highest level AD&D Wizard is 9th, while my highest level non-Wizard has reached such a ridiculous level of power that we don't even track xp or use a character sheet anymore- there's not much point.

After 40 years at this my-as-player's highest-level MU is 11th while my highest-level character of any kind is a Cleric-12th. (for perspective, the highest-level PC any of our 1e-like games have ever seen is 14th, and I kid you not when I say the first character to get there did it just last night!)

However, the game really kind of wants someone to be playing a Wizard- there are challenges that require their spells as the game progresses. But if the only people who play Wizards are those who enjoy playing on hard mode, and no one in your group is feeling like that kind of challenge, you have no Wizards.

Which puts the onus on the DM to either adjust the challenges so the party doesn't need a Wizard, or chuckle at the foolishness of the players for not doing so when the adventure calls for Wizard magic.

Or the players show some in-character wisdom and go and recruit an NPC adventuring MU to fill the gap in their lineup.

And really, when it comes to Wizards, what has really changed?

*Scribing spells into my spellbook are expensive.
*Some spells requiring difficult to acquire and/or expensive components.
*The occasional case of a spell not working as advertised on an opponent.
*Magic resistance being handed out like candy to various monsters.

Are all still true, so it's only:

*Somewhat less Dependent on RNG or DM mercy for new spells.
*Have a chance to lose some spells when I take damage.
*Most spells being "save (neg.)" and saving throws becoming somewhat less likely to succeed as I gain levels.

You're also massively less likely to get damaged while casting as casting now doesn't take any in-game time. And sure, they kinda tried to replace this with Counterspell, but did it really work?

Another factor is that a lot of risk has been taken out of spells. Teleport can't kill you by putting you in solid rock. Lightning bolts can't rebound and fry your allies. Fireballs don't expand to fill a volume and maybe cook your party as well as your foes. Etc.

A lot of people talk about the fact that Wizards are less encumbered than their past incarnations, but no one bats an eye at a class in a similar position, the Rogue.

The modern-day Rogue almost has nothing in common with the AD&D Thief; the almost impossible to employ Backstab morphed into a slightly easier to employ Sneak Attack, which continued to become easier until today it only has token restrictions at best- heck, they can use the ability at range more easily than in melee! Incredibly low chances to perform thieving abilities with scores of caveats has become game-warping bonuses to skills.

Imagine if you replaced the Rogue in 2024 with the 1e Thief class- how many people would play it, do you think?

The 1e Thief needs help, no argument there, but the changes to sneak attack have gone way too far.

 

[Lanefan]

WotC would be much much happier if they didn’t have to change the rules.

Given how much of their revenue comes from when they do change the rules and release a new edition, I find this statement odd.

 

[James Gasik]

Given how much of their revenue comes from when they do change the rules and release a new edition, I find this statement odd.

Change rules =/= sell you new books; at the moment 2024 feels like it's going to be a very familiar product.

 

[Hussar]

Spells need to be fully defined because they are strictly inventions of the game. A two-person tent is something for which we have real world context. Do I really need a more detailed description than “two-person tent”?

Considering the variations on two person tent? A sentence or two of clarification would not be amiss.

But there’s the true problem. Anything that is magic gets fully defined while at the same time being allowed to abstract - component pouches for example- but expecting even the tiniest bit of detail of mundane is a bridge too far.

No wonder every player defaults to spells to solve everything. At least they have some idea what the spells do.

 

[Hussar]

Given how much of their revenue comes from when they do change the rules and release a new edition, I find this statement odd.

Except for currently, the only reason they released new editions is because of the commercial failure of the previous one.

 

[Lanefan]

Your post wraps up with another poor analogy about hockey. Guess what? The D&D equivalent to a hockey player sharpening their skates and tying their laces so that they can play hockey is a D&D player remembering to bring their character sheet or the DM remembering to bring their notes for tonight's game. That is, you are trying to draw a parallel between "things that are a prerequisite to physically playing the game of hockey" and "something that you decide is worthwhile explicitly making part of the "foreground" in-game fiction as part of D&D gameplay". That is a false parallel on its face.

See below...

In-Game Logistics

You insisting that "in-game logistics" are functionally or figuratively equivalent to real world logistics is factually wrong.

How so? The characters are in theory inhabitants of a world as real to them as ours is to us, right?

Hobby versus Chore
Another bottom line here is that there is a difference between a hobby and a chore.

I can, for instance, find a sense of accomplishment when I finish a load of dishes or when I catch up on laundry. But I do not, and will never, do dishes or laundry for fun. I do not draw enjoyment from the act of doing dishes or laundry: I do them because I must, and if I could get a robot to do them, I would leap at the opportunity.

By contrast, my late wife enjoyed gardening as a hobby. Gardening is not a game, so I wouldn't go so far as to say that she found it fun, but she definitely enjoyed the act of gardening in and of itself as well as the results of her gardening work.

With all due respect to your late wife (condolences, by the way), gardening is a hobby with many different moving parts and I'd be willing to bet big money there were aspects of gardening she really liked doing and other aspects she did only because she had to. I say this on the basis of having known other gardeners (my mother among them, long ago) for whom this was invariably true: some parts of gardening were fun, other parts a chore, and the sum total was an enjoyable hobby.

By the same token I quite enjoy DMing; but there's certain aspects of prep and-or follow-up that I neither like nor enjoy doing, and that I do only because I have to in order to facilitate the fun bits. Adventure writing is one such thing: yes I enjoy coming up with the ideas and basics for an adventure but getting it all down on paper (be it real or virtual) in a readable edited form complete with maps etc. is for the most part a long and bloody tedious chore; a chore I do because the payoff is that I then get to run said adventure.

For adventures that aren't my own, the chore part is (if necessary) converting them from another edition and (always) chopping out all the backstory and replacing it to fit into whatever else is going on in the campaign and-or setting.

For my part, I do not enjoy gardening as a hobby. To me, it is a chore. Because it is not obligatory the way dishes and laundry are, I do not voluntarily garden.

Same here.

What you come across as asserting is that playing D&D ought to be a chore for players who aren't you, that its rules ought to force such players to engage in gameplay they don't value and don't enjoy in order to "earn" some sort of sense of "accomplishment". Well, that's simply wrong. Instead, players should be able to engage in the gameplay they enjoy according to their own lights - players who find logistical gameplay rewarding should be able to indulge in it, and players who don't shouldn't be made to endure it. If D&D is in the awkward position of having to please player constituencies with very different views on logistical gameplay, that is on D&D, but I do think it's nominally possible and I hope WotC can continue to do a better job threading that particular needle as the years go by.

Some parts - and not the same parts for everyone - of playing D&D are or can be a chore. Other parts - again not the same for everyone - can be great fun. One example in our crew is treasury tracking and division. Some players see this as a chore and don't want to do it (and in rare cases in the past might not have been trusted to do it!), meanwhile I'm fine with doing it and thus end up as treasurer in almost any game I'm ever in. Mapping is another one: as player I see it as a chore (I do enough mapping as a DM, thanks!) but there's always another player who enjoys it, and so it gets done.

As long as the "fun" outweighs the "chore" to the point that the end result is enjoyable overall, all is good.

 

[Lanefan]

Change rules =/= sell you new books; at the moment 2024 feels like it's going to be a very familiar product.

I'll be surprised if their book sales don't take a pretty big up-jump next year, familiar or not.

 

[Hussar]

See below...
Snip.

As long as the "fun" outweighs the "chore" to the point that the end result is enjoyable overall, all is good.

And when it doesn’t? When the fun doesn’t outweigh the chore? What then?

 

[Lanefan]

And when it doesn’t? When the fun doesn’t outweigh the chore? What then?

Then there's a problem, likely soon followed by a search for another hobby.

Not every hobby is for every person. As a kid I was big into model trains, but the chore part (set-up, making the model buildings, engine maintenance, etc.) came to greatly outweigh the fun part, and so I packed it in.

 

[Incenjucar]

Interestingly, the latest Zelda games have challenges where they strip you of all of your stuff to make you deal with challenges with limited supplies. They did this once in BotW, and it was so wildly popular that they do it over and over in its sequel, TotK. However, you get all your stuff back in the end, as with most prison break scenarios in games. Your stuff was also a big deal in Dark Sun, where every ceramic piece and drop of water mattered. There is absolutely a market for these challenges in bursts or specific games, they should probably just be optional per campaign or adventure.