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

[W'rkncacnter]

It'd be funny if it wasn't such a common collection of things people harp on.

 

[Umbran]

There were no actual insults in there. It was a bullet by bullet description of your conduct.

Mod Note:
So, you admit, then, that you are posting about the people rather than about the topic of the thread.

Please don't make the discussion personal. No matter how justified you may feel it is, confrontation of this form doesn't improve people's behavior. It turns the discussion into an ego contest about whose behavior is worse.

If you feel someone has broken the rules of the site, report the offending posts and disengage. If you feel someone has stopped short of breaking the rules, but you just find their approach to discussion irritating or obnoxious, disengage and consider using the ignore/block feature.

 

[Lanefan]

Over the past 18 months or so I've GMed around a dozen sessions of Torchbearer. This game has a strong survival element - the PC equipment lists include food, and cloaks, and woollen sweaters, and shoes - except 3 of the 4 PCs in the game don't have shoes, because they wore them out trudging through the wilds and haven't been able to afford to replace them.

Part of how the game works is that it uses slots for inventory (head, neck, 3 torso slots, hands, feet, 3 belt slots, 2 carried slots), and has simple but effective mechanics for overloading (the Labourer skill).

It also has a uniform resolution system, and it's easy for gear to factor into that (having appropriate gear adds +1D to your pool).

Its weather rules take up half-a-dozen or so pages: you roll on a season-appropriate chart, and then look up the effects of the result.

OK, this alone makes me want to take a long look at this system.

In our last session there was rain, and as per the rules for rain I required the players to roll Health checks for their PCs. One got +1D because his PC was wearing his sweater (1 torso slot).

How easily/seamlessly do you think this could port to D&D in terms of giving advantage (5e) or a +-something bonus (other e's) on the check?

Journey generate easily-calculated "toll", which has to be bought off (a little like 4e D&D Dark Sun's "survival days") - that's why three PCs have no shoes, because they sacrificed their shoes to buy off toll last time they went hiking, rather than take debilitating conditions instead. And they have not been able to replace them since (there is no cobbler in the village about the Wizard's Tower to sell them shoes, and they haven't tried to buy any direct from a peasant or villager).

Another thing that happened in our last session was that the sweater-wearing PC preserved 5 portions of fresh rations (mechanically, the player succeeded on a fairly challenging Cook test). This reduces the number of inventory slots they take up, and means they do not spoil and require discarding when the PCs return to town.

This is all good stuff. Thanks.

 

[SteveC]

I want to hammer home this idea of value. An RPG tailored to satisfy your preferences ought to value the same gameplay you do, more or less. Well and good! An RPG tailored to satisfy the various player constituencies of 5e ought to value the gameplay they value, more or less. Also well and good! What is mystifying is that you can't seem to get past conflating "gameplay you value" and "what is objectively correct design for RPGs writ large" or "what RPG gameplay, writ large, ought to look like".

What I am getting at is that what makes high-fidelity, high-resolution, highly-granular gameplay as regards in-fiction logistics so appealing to you is that it matches what you, personally, value - which is great! - but also that there is no "objective" or "universal" basis to assert that all RPGs must include that kind of gameplay: including it does not make an RPG better and excluding it does not make an RPG worse - it only makes it a better or worse fit with the kind of gameplay you value.

I can't agree with this enough. That's why I like the idea of "true" issues that the magical 70% of groups can agree on. There are very few of them. I could argue about many parts of 5E that I don't like but I also know that the number of people who care about what I think is a very small number. The thing that I am most unhappy about right from launch is that the "modular" nature of the game was largely ignored. The way to make D&D a game that more people can enjoy is to make those modules so people who want a highly tactical game can have it, and the ones who want to hand wave things can as well. We just don't really have that, and it hasn't been addressed since.

Now there are some third party alternatives that have cropped up, but I always wonder how compatible they really are with the core game, and I have to convince my DM to use them.

 

[Oofta]

This..at least..

I try to be even handed, I apologize if something I said was taken the wrong way. I made that post before I realized people were so serious about this stuff. I meant no insult but I really see no good answer to what you want. Certainly not from a game like D&D which oversimplifies virtually everything.

I did try to make light of the situation in the shovel post, hence the " ". But you really would need a ton of info to know how much you can shovel. There is no constant. So if we had something along the lines of "you can move a square foot of dirt every minute" and I'm envisioning the heavy clay soil around my house that I need a pickaxe to break up before I can shovel much at all, that's not going to work. If I'm envisioning dirt that was recently excavated and quite loose or a sandy beach a square foot a minute is low. Heck, I lived in Arizona for a while, I doubt I could have gotten more than a couple inches with just a shovel.

Along the same lines I honestly don't know what kind of information or details people would need about a tent. It keeps you out of the rain, and provides a bit of protection from the elements. It's a piece of waterproof cloth between you and the great outdoors. The last time anything like that was covered was back in the TSR days in the Wilderness Survival Guide where they dedicated a page or so to it. But even then it was just a lot of detail that gave the impression of useful info but it was still up to the DM to decide the current weather. It just added a layer of complexity for the DM when describing the weather. The book also didn't stop the arguments, especially their description of what a "superior" tent entailed in my experience.

Which is why I was trying to end the conversation. I don't think the game rules should try to cover everything and IMHO they don't need to.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes but that’s the point. Leomunds Hut could simply create a nine man canvas tent.

Ya know, that might be the best idea I've seen for how to run that spell in like, forever.

How's this:

LTH creates a wood-framed 15x15' 9-person canvas tent* the inside of which remains at a comfortable temperature unless a) the temperature outside is extreme or b) the flap is left open. Can withstand winds of up to 40 mph but will collapse if hit with a Gust of Wind spell; will also collapse if the roof load exceeds 200lb weight. Is nominally 12' high but will adjust if there isn't enough headroom, cannot be cast in areas less than 3 feet high. Damp or wet ground beneath the tent will be magically dried once, at time of casting; standing or running water (e.g. puddles, rivulets, etc.) is not affected.

* - kind of like the framed tents they live in in M*A*S*H.

Why does the spell take an entire paragraph while the tent is a sentence?

It's hard to find rules exploits with a simple tent, but a spell invites them and they need to be proactively shut down.

 

[billd91]

I try to be even handed, I apologize if something I said was taken the wrong way. I made that post before I realized people were so serious about this stuff. I meant no insult but I really see no good answer to what you want. Certainly not from a game like D&D which oversimplifies virtually everything.

I did try to make light of the situation in the shovel post, hence the " ". But you really would need a ton of info to know how much you can shovel. There is no constant. So if we had something along the lines of "you can move a square foot of dirt every minute" and I'm envisioning the heavy clay soil around my house that I need a pickaxe to break up before I can shovel much at all, that's not going to work. If I'm envisioning dirt that was recently excavated and quite loose or a sandy beach a square foot a minute is low. Heck, I lived in Arizona for a while, I doubt I could have gotten more than a couple inches with just a shovel.

I agree. This is why it's kind of hard to look at mundane gear and get too detailed with it rather than let the DM just make a ruling. That said, I'm glad the equipment exists in the PH as a reminder for the PCs to consider them when kitting themselves up for adventure. It adds a bit of reasonability and verisimilitude to the proceedings which helps to ground the character into a realized setting - at the very least, you can say you have a mess kit for sitting around the campfire even if you never declare its use and it has no mechanical expression in the rules (beyond a bit of cost and encumbrance).

Along the same lines I honestly don't know what kind of information or details people would need about a tent. It keeps you out of the rain, and provides a bit of protection from the elements. It's a piece of waterproof cloth between you and the great outdoors. The last time anything like that was covered was back in the TSR days in the Wilderness Survival Guide where they dedicated a page or so to it. But even then it was just a lot of detail that gave the impression of useful info but it was still up to the DM to decide the current weather. It just added a layer of complexity for the DM when describing the weather. The book also didn't stop the arguments, especially their description of what a "superior" tent entailed in my experience.

If anything, I think a bit more coverage of environmental hazards in the DMG wouldn't be a bad thing. It doesn't have to be nearly as detailed as the WSG. But perhaps a bit on how the environment affects long rests and how shelter, like a tent, can ameliorate the effect of heavy rain and cold. The DMG wouldn't hurt for having a bit more on wilderness survival.

 

[Lanefan]

No, because RPG characters, the world they live in, and their activities are, quite literally, figments of our imagination. They're not real at all. We have no obligation to spend time thinking about "what is real" to figments of our imagination or even "what is important" to them!

Where I think we do, in order to keep that world grounded both for the characters and for ourselves portraying those characters.

In other words, if we want to see the fiction through the eyes of our characters there has to be at least a vaguely consistent answer to the question "what do we see?", and by extension "how can we interact with it?".

What I am getting at is that what makes high-fidelity, high-resolution, highly-granular gameplay as regards in-fiction logistics so appealing to you is that it matches what you, personally, value - which is great! - but also that there is no "objective" or "universal" basis to assert that all RPGs must include that kind of gameplay:

I think they need to include clear provision for it; in that (speaking from experience!) it is far easier to kitbash something out of a system than it is to design it and add it in. Those who don't want to focus on that aspect can kitbash it out.

Thanks for your condolences; with all sincerity, they are much appreciated. (The same is on offer for your mom if she has also passed.)

Thanks. She passed decades ago - in the month before I started playing D&D, come to think of it.

As your own example of model train building and my example of abandoned painting of Blood Bowl minis shows, to my mind an enjoyable end result is not enough to sustain a person's interest in a hobby - somewhere along the line, the process itself also has to be enjoyable, or, at the very least, enjoyable enough. I am sure it is correct to say there are aspects of the process of gardening my late wife did not enjoy, but she must have enjoyed the process enough to persist with gardening as a hobby - otherwise, she would have abandoned it, just as you abandoned model trains and I abandoned miniatures painting.

OK, we're on common ground here.

The distinct thing about RPGs is that they have a whole lot more flexibility when it comes to gameplay process and when it comes to what we bother including in the explicitly-declared fiction: if we want to play a game of grand heroic adventure, we can downplay or exclude gameplay processes that force us to consider logistical questions within the fiction, and if we want to play a game of grim and gritty survival, we can include and "foreground" such gameplay processes. We can, in a very real fashion, get the most enjoyment out of the hobby for the least amount of chore.

My point is that it's very hard to include or foreground such processes if those processes aren't there to include.

 

[Lanefan]

2E made the two main sources of XP 1) defeating monsters (quantified with hard charts) and 2) achieving story goals/completing an adventure (ad hoc, but recommended at no greater points than those available for defeating monsters in that adventure). Thus marking within the rules the ascendency of Trad over Classic (using the terms from that Six Cultures of Play article) as the style supported within official D&D.

Which is odd for me, in that while this is very close to how I do xp (there'd be a minor "3) defeating non-monster challenges e.g. traps" added in there) I think in all other ways my game trends far closer to Classic than Trad.

 

[pemerton]

If it had been "using this spell you can move earth equivalent to the labor of 1 person using a shovel for 1 hour (or something similar)" would you feel that the spells' effects would have been adequately described?

And I gave you a scenario. If the spell just made reference to what someone could do with a shovel, would that work for you in the game?

Similarly if the "Tiny Hut" spell text just said "this spell provides all the benefits of a tent, 2 bedrolls and a mess kit", would that be clear enough for players to know whether they should take or use the spell?

Not sure what you're trying to solve here - defining a spell as what someone could do with a shovel doesn't tell you anything about how much you could do with a shovel.

I thought @Gammadoodler's point was quite a clear one: spells could quite easily have their effects defined by reference to familiar everyday things - so Move Earth could be defined by reference to the amount of earth-moving labour a person with STR 10 could do with an ordinary shovel in 1 hour with this particular soil and/or rock.

Tiny Hut could be defined by reference to the camping equipment on the equipment list. Etc.

There is a spell system in a RPG that actually does this: in Torchbearer, the Floating Disc spell (called Mystic Porter) has its capacity defined by reference to backpack slots; the Mage Light ability has its illumination defined by reference to candles, torches and lanterns; a number of spells and prayers that interact with resting and camping use the same explanatory categories as the rules for making camp; the teleport spell (called Shadow Gate) has its range categories defined by reference to the rules for overland journeys; etc.

If that is considered inadequate spell description, than it must follow that the rules' description of everyday things and everyday equipment is inadequate. In Torchbearer it is not, because the game has reasonably tight rules for handling slots, and light, and camping, and journeying, and so on. (As per my post not too far upthread.) The fact that, in 5e, it might be considered inadequate to define spells in this way suggests that the equipment rules could do with some tightening up or some elaboration, if they are meant to be meaningful.

But I watched the Matt Colville video that @Bacon Bits linked to upthread, and I tend to agree with Colville that the equipment list in 5e seems largely vestigial.