D&D (2024) 2024 needs to end 2014's passive aggressive efforts to remove magic items & other elements from d&d

[DEFCON 1]

So when the game tells you "magic items and feats are optional, play the characters you want", it never comes out and says "but there's a price to be paid there, and the DM has to be very careful to tailor challenges to the players". Experienced DM's know this and have their own approaches to the problems. New players and DM's will have to learn the hard way, when that could have been avoided by warning them up front.

Well, I happen to be one of those people that believe DMs learning "the hard way" should be standard operating procedure and which having to do so is not bad in and of itself. But I also believe that when experienced players say "X is too hard for new players, the game needs to give them help!"... their experience is coloring what is truly needed for new players, and that new players aren't necessarily the delicate flowers that these experienced players make them out to be when they want designers to make games "easier" to run. But admittedly, that's probably just my biases talking.

I will note that 4E was a game that always gave me the impression that it was designed to be potentially run with barely any DM input because its balance was so easy and even that the game was "bad DM-proof". It literally didn't matter who the DM was... the game could almost be run on its own and worked fine. But to me... that always struck me as not such a great idea. Because new DMs got everything handed to them and it all worked wonderfully, it never taught them how to improvise when they eventually found themselves in a situation that didn't. They never learned the hard parts of being a DM. Which I don't think is a good thing personally.

So I don't begrudge people wanting what they want... I just will push back a bit when they make it seem like it is an imperative that it be done.

 

[CapnZapp]

A wizard doesn't need saving throw bonuses if you baby them. But they need them at least as much as any other class.

The wizards saving throw proficiencies are INT and WIS which are not the most common amongst spells cast and effects applied by monsters. If targeted by spellslingers, poisoners, and afficters, the HP of mental focused casters drop fast and they find themselves in more vulnerable positions in a game where in combat healing is rarely done.

No, I don't need to "baby" anyone in order to say "you don't need saving throw bonuses".

Wizards don't need them. Fighters don't need them. Noone needs them.

Thus magic items (that give saving throw bonuses or otherwise) aren't needed.

---

Of course, if you throw Tarrasques at your level 7 heroes, you might feel they "need" magic items.

And if you feel it is to "baby" your players to... play the game as it was intended, you're free to add magic items.

The real shame is that you can't just give them a big bag of gold, since the existing pricing guidelines amount to little more than "just make up random numbers".

But in 5E, magic items are not needed. A party can complete every official adventure with absolutely no magic items.

Am I saying you should play like that? Heck no. I love magic items. But they're not needed, in the sense that they aren't strictly necessary. Necessary to make the game fun? Yes, probably. Necessary to avoid derailing a campaign and bringing the game to a halt? No.

What's missing is instead rational item pricing.

 

[CapnZapp]

It's not a competition.
It's that most classes only have proficiency with 2 of their 6 saves and one of them is almost always their prime score*

Feats and magic items that boost saves are near mandatory after level 9.

No you're supposed to have glaring weaknesses, like not even making a DC 20 Int save even if you roll 20 on the die (because you dumped Int). The game was designed this way, and even if you try you can only shore up your weaknesses by completely abandoning any hope of being actually good at the things you're supposed to be good at. (Spending multiple feats just to bring your poor saves from abysmal to still extremely poor just isn't an attractive option)

I'm not saying the game is fun for you or me in this regard. I am saying it is functional. You should still be able to win fights, and frankly, you most often do without much trouble.

The assumption a hero should feel competent in all adventuring areas just isn't what D&D offers.

Again, if you routinely up the difficulty to triple deadly or more in order to not "baby" your players, I can understand that from your perspective you do need magic items to give saving throw bonuses. But again, that does not mean the claim "5E doesn't need magic items" becomes false. It just means you should hand out these items to compensate for the (likely vast) increase in difficulty.

 

[CapnZapp]

Imagine an all-martial party. WotC likes to tell us that you aren't required to have any particular party composition to play the game. So we have, let's say, a Fighter, a Barbarian, a Rogue, and...I don't know, Monks are supposedly martials, right? Good enough.

Let's assume that neither Feats nor magic items are allowed- after all, these are optional elements, the game runs just fine without them!

Let's assume that each of these characters has a 10 stat somewhere. By the time the players are 9th level, the difference between their best save and their worst could be as much as 9 points (+9 vs. +0).

The party encounters, oh, say, a CR 10 Guardian Naga. It has three spells that target Wisdom (Hold Person, Bestow Curse, Geas) and one that targets Charisma (Banishment).

It's not a stretch to say that the worst Wisdom save in the party is +1, and the worst Charisma save is +0. The Naga's save DC is 16. So that's a success rate of 75-80% that one of the characters can instantly be removed from the fight (or mostly removed, in the case of that Wis save or do nothing on Bestow Curse). And while the party will likely kill the Naga quickly, as it's just one enemy, a few levels later, when you can fight the same Naga with other foes, nothing has changed about it's effectiveness against them!

This is a problem that simply gets worse as the game goes on, as enemy save DC's continue to scale, but your ability to save doesn't. And the game offers three potential solutions to this issue.

1) have an NPC spellcaster for things like Heroes' Feast, Bless, Resistance, what have you.
2) allow Resilient as a Feat so everyone can have a third proficient save.
3) add magic items to bolster bad saves.
4) have someone retire their character and reroll as a Cleric or something.

And given that 2-4 are not supposed to be required to play the game at all, this seems like there's a flaw in the game's design.

I would say the main flaw in this argument is that, if I understand you correctly, you want to paint a picture where 5E is "too hard".

But nobody thinks that. If anything, 5E at default settings is laughably easy, and most GMs with veteran players enjoy upping almost every parameter.

So that undermines your example a bit, I think.

That, and the basic fact that it's trivial to construct an example that appears to be reasonable but is in fact cherrypicked to make a point.

I just don't think that this is a problem in practice. I agree saving throws feel like bad/wonky/undercooked design in 5E, but I can't say it is broken design.

I would love a more flexible build system like in 3E where you could actually make meaningful decisions to focus on attack or defense; relevant to this example was the strategy to tap one level of several prestige classes to boost your saves. But I can't argue we need this because the current system doesn't work. I can argue we need it because it would make it more fun to plan and build and minmax characters, but that's something else.

 

[James Gasik]

I would say the main flaw in this argument is that, if I understand you correctly, you want to paint a picture where 5E is "too hard".

But nobody thinks that. If anything, 5E at default settings is laughably easy, and most GMs with veteran players enjoy upping almost every parameter.

So that undermines your example a bit, I think.

That, and the basic fact that it's trivial to construct an example that appears to be reasonable but is in fact cherrypicked to make a point.

I just don't think that this is a problem in practice. I agree saving throws feel like bad/wonky/undercooked design in 5E, but I can't say it is broken design.

I would love a more flexible build system like in 3E where you could actually make meaningful decisions to focus on attack or defense; relevant to this example was the strategy to tap one level of several prestige classes to boost your saves. But I can't argue we need this because the current system doesn't work. I can argue we need it because it would make it more fun to plan and build and minmax characters, but that's something else.

Is 5e too hard? Eh. It depends. It can be very difficult, but in general it isn't. I will say, when playing Storm King's Thunder, we encountered a powerful blue dragon, and finding out that my Halfling needed to roll a 19 on the die (even with advantage) to save against it's fear aura was an eye opening experience. That a natural 20 doesn't automatically succeed on a saving throw means you can and will encounter a save you cannot make in due time (Paladins and high-level Monks notwithstanding).

There are ways to mitigate this, but again, it requires having optional features toggled on, or having the right guy with the right ability in your party. Which is the point I'm trying to make here.

 

[Vaalingrade]

That, and the basic fact that it's trivial to construct an example that appears to be reasonable but is in fact cherrypicked to make a point.

Like when the people who want to paint the game as 'too easy' do it too, conveniently forgetting the existence of crap like ghouls and how terrible in combat healing is to the point that it itself contributes to the fallacy of 'pop up healing'?

 

[James Gasik]

Like when the people who want to paint the game as 'too easy' do it too, conveniently forgetting the existence of crap like ghouls and how terrible in combat healing is to the point that it itself contributes to the fallacy of 'pop up healing'?

Shadows. CR 1/2, resistant to darned near everything, and armed with a debilitating effect that can kill you beyond just hit point damage.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Well, I happen to be one of those people that believe DMs learning "the hard way" should be standard operating procedure and which having to do so is not bad in and of itself.

DMs 'learning the hard way' end up making for a bad play experience that lead to them and their players leaving D&D or the hobby itself altogether.

Learning the hard way is something any game designer should be striving to avoid at all cost.

 

[DEFCON 1]

DMs 'learning the hard way' end up making for a bad play experience that lead to them and their players leaving D&D or the hobby itself altogether.

Learning the hard way is something any game designer should be striving to avoid at all cost.

See, I don't agree. I don't think foundational D&D (ANY of the various editions) are so difficult to parse or run in their baseline form that it can make for a bad play experience in and of itself that would sending someone running away from D&D or the hobby on the whole. If that was to occur, in my opinion it would come out of the personality of the DM who was trying to run it. I do not believe any game of this type is so bad that it make someone swear off of the hobby altogether from the game itself... only the persons they are playing with that would ever be able to accomplish that. The social part of the hobby has WAY more import to the overall experience than any of the rules do.

A bad RPG run by a good DM will be able to mask any issues and make the experience a positive one-- at least positive enough to not send the new playere scrambling for the hills. However, even the BEST game out there WILL drive someone away from the hobby if it is being run by someone who just royally F-things up because they just don't know how to handle the social situation of the game between themselves and the players.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Now that being said... better games obviously will make for better experiences overall, because better games can help mask the skills of the DM using it, even if they are just okay or meh. I won't disagree with that. A better game is just better. Can't argue with that.

But the point that was made to me was about driving a new player completely away from D&D and/or the hobby. And I do not believe it is the game rules that could ever do that... it would be the person that was running it that would ruin the experience for a new player such that they would never bother trying again.

(And let me be clear... I know I'm using "absolutes" in my statements here, but that's purely to save time than having to say "In MOST cases" or "Almost all times". I know it's statistically possible for it to go the other way one time. I'm sure someone will be able to pull out that one lone time in their experience that it actually was the game and not the DM, as though that proves the entire point moot. So let me just addend my posts by saying to just substitute "99% of the time" instead of "when", if that cuts that rebuttal off at the pass.)