D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[billd91]

I listened recently to a senior gamer who's been playing since 2nd edition rant about how he'd neve play a bard because he can't actually play an instrument or be that charismatic.

I bet he can't dodge a fireball either, expand a colony, or buy a hotel. What's this guy doing in gaming in the first place!?!1!

 

[nevin]

To be fair there were a lot of very good and very bad adventures in 2nd and 3rd edition. But neither of those editions had to be completely non offensive to anyone. It's a really high bar to make fantasy modules full of villains and scenes of monsters and death, of great quality that dont' offend anyone. I'm not sure we will ever see great modules from 5th edition simply for that reason.

 

[nevin]

I bet he can't dodge a fireball either, expand a colony, or buy a hotel. What's this guy doing in gaming in the first place!?!1!

RIGHT but i wonder how many people out there are locked in that same cage?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I bet he can't dodge a fireball either, expand a colony, or buy a hotel. What's this guy doing in gaming in the first place!?!1!

Good lord, you mean I actually have to be fifteen tons and produce pyroclastic halitosis in order to be a dragon?!

My God...my whole gaming life has been a lie....I don't know how I'm going to break it to my players...

RIGHT but i wonder how many people out there are locked in that same cage?

Sadly, too many. And it is but one cage among many. The cage of names, for example, is a particularly pernicious one.

 

[Retreater]

To be fair there were a lot of very good and very bad adventures in 2nd and 3rd edition. But neither of those editions had to be completely non offensive to anyone. It's a really high bar to make fantasy modules full of villains and scenes of monsters and death, of great quality that dont' offend anyone. I'm not sure we will ever see great modules from 5th edition simply for that reason.

As much as I criticize WotC, I can't say that they always shy away potentially offensive content.
1) you have corrupt nobles in Dragonheist ready to sacrifice their children.
2) cannibalism and human sacrifice in Frostmaiden
3) plenty of mature themes in Strahd
You have also numerous adventures regarding mental illness. Demonic possession.
It's not like this is sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows the RPG.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I did not say they were caused by character level.

I said something that would tell you a DC that would be an easy, medium, or hard check for a given character level.

A hard check is a hard check irrespective of level. High level characters have a better chance of succeeding at hard checks.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A hard check is a hard check irrespective of level. High level characters have a better chance of succeeding at hard checks.

Then "hard" does not mean "hard." Rather, you are using two completely different senses of the term.

On the one hand, there is the difficulty of a task; on the other, the likelihood of a character succeeding at it. You are, quite literally, saying that a "hard" check is somehow easy for a high-level character. What? Why on earth would you want that?

Do we then need to resort to verbal treadmill, watering down terms into meaninglessness, where what is actually difficult for a character goes from "hard" to "extreme" to "impossible"?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'd argue that the scaling environment was NOT more pronounced in earlier editions. In 1e/2e, characters got better at things like picking locks, but the locks largely remained static. I certainly didn't encounter a lot of situations where a thief's Open Locks skill was modified by a tougher lock as they rose in levels. The expectation was more that their skills would improve.
In 1e/2e, saving throw chances improved with the character making the save with only a few instances of penalties being applied to create a higher level adversary (drow poison being a notable example). Otherwise, spells of higher level casters tended to fail more often than lower level ones against an increasingly high level opponent (or PC party). The target numbers saving throws were pretty strictly bound to a 20 point range.
Even AC was typically bounded by that 20 point range in 1e/2e. There may have been a few higher level opponents where the AC got into negative territory, but usually not far. 1e red dragons topped (bottomed?) out at -1. 1e Pit fiends got to -3 (the equivalent of 23 in current terms, a bit better than its current 19). I remember that hitting for fighters really wasn't much of an issue at moderately high levels. By 10th level, with a decent strength bonus (from natural, gauntlet, or girdle), a +2 or +3 weapon, that fighter was hitting AC0 on a 5 or better, so that red dragon on a 6, the pit fiend on an 8. It was only once 3e came along that the lid was ripped off and the natural armor bonus appeared to get monster ACs growing at a similar pace as expected PC attack bonuses.
The scaling of target (AC/DC) to the character was far more characteristic of 3e and 4e as prior editions, much less of 1e/2e.

Yup. These issues are endemic to WotC's DC system (3e, 4e, 5e). Not a big problem prior to that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Then "hard" does not mean "hard."

It's an objective measure. Hard for an average person. Bending an iron bar is hard. Just because a superhero can do it does not make it any more or less hard.

The cliffs are DC 15 to climb. The cliffs do not get harder to climb when the characters are of a higher level. Otherwise they would not be getting any better.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's an objective measure. Hard for an average person.

Then, as I said, "hard" is not "hard." It is only "hard" for an average person. Which few to no PCs are--even zero to hero stories quickly cease being about merely average people.

Would you have preferred, then, that I refer to these checks as some other word? Do we really need to be thesaurus police about this?

It just...why would you want this? Why would you want a scale that is useless for actually running adventures?