D&D General 5.5 and making the game easier for players and harder for DMs

[mamba]

I'm not terribly impressed by the assertion that "struggle makes the victory sweeter" when it comes to leisure time activities. Waiting for an hour in the line at the roller coaster doesn't make it more fun and enjoyable when you finally get on it.

defining waiting in line as the struggle is the problem here… the challenge to the players should not be a DM taking forever to decide what the monsters do

If anything I'm more inclined to agree with DMs posting here saying that more robust and harder-to-kill PCs are easier to challenge in combat, precisely because you can run things more no-holds-barred.

then challenging Superman should be real easy

That sounds more like ‘you do not have to worry about throwing too much at them’

 

[JohnSnow]

they did that because it is not fun for anyone, not because it was hard on the DM.

If one player summons wight critters, everyone waits around for that turn to complete, that is not limited to the DM

Correction: it’s not fun for anyone but that one player.

That’s the problem we’ve got right now. Many things that make the game “more fun” for one player take away the fun from everyone else.

 

[Oofta]

Yep... and this entire time we've had all manner of 3PPs making monster books for just that purpose. And yet do any of the people here who constantly complain about WotC's monster books actually use those products to solve their own problems? If they do, that's great! But at that point why the heck do they still complain about WotC?

If people actually want solutions, I'm more than happy to help. For example, if official monsters aren't tough enough, take a look at the Tome of Beasts 1. They're pretty brutal, in a fun way.

If you have solved your own problem, what's the point of getting annoyed on behalf of other people? Especially when those people don't NEED your defense on their behalf? If I'm happy with how my game is going, why on earth would I purposefully make myself upset FOR other people? People whom I don't know, have never met, and who probably don't want me speaking on behalf of them anyways?

I'm just expressing my opinion that if you really want to, you can challenge players of any level. If people really wanted solutions instead of just complaining, we can start up other threads on, say, what cool customized versions of monsters have you made and how you used them.

High level play isn't for everyone, and that's fine. But to say it never works? It's simply not true. Why does it bother you that I state my opinion and experience?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I do find the lack of people willing to run games equates to game complexity. I can’t tell you how many people back in the 3/3.5e days said, “Oh, I’ll happily play this game, but I won’t DM (or “prep”) it.”

I would probably disagree that complexity is the defining factor in whether someone wants to DM.

I would lean more towards people not wanting to be in charge...
Not wanting the responsibility of other people's happiness...
Fearing they are not creative enough to do a good job...
Not wanting to be unable to take a night off...
Not want to be the one having to tell all their friends 'No' a lot of the time...
Not wanting to play dozens of different characters rather than just one...
Not wanting to feel like they need to learn more of the rules...

So on and so forth. All those are perfectly legitimate reasons why someone chooses not to DM, and proportion-wise... any of those combined would be more than just because the game is "harder to run than before". Because the one thing we probably aren't going to see almost ever are those people who did DM 5E14 happily, but now find 5E24 to be a bridge too far and they're giving up the seat. If you were good with DMing 5E14, still DMing 5E24 is not going to be much of an issue for most DMs (if I had to make a prediction.)

 

[DarkCrisis]

I’m trying to, but I’m constantly told there is no challenge without PC death.

Possibility of death. There is a difference.

I would hope most players would want to actually overcome a challenge instead of just having the win condition predetermined for them.

Then again, some people just want to tell a story which revolves back around to: do you even need dice at that point? Wouldn't the game go faster if you just told me what awesome thing your character does and then move onto the next player to tell me what awesome thing they do?

Would certainly free up the DM from a lot of unnecessary bookkeeping.

 

[JohnSnow]

High level play isn't for everyone, and that's fine. But to say it never works? It's simply not true. Why does it bother you that I state my opinion and experience?

Not the person you were responding to, but I’d say it’s because there’s usually more than a hint of arrogance tied to someone saying “High level play isn’t for everyone, but if you’d like to be competent enough to handle it, I’ll tell you how.”

Shockingly, that can rub people the wrong way.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I do find the lack of people willing to run games equates to game complexity. I can’t tell you how many people back in the 3/3.5e days said, “Oh, I’ll happily play this game, but I won’t DM (or “prep”) it.”

This is me. I would love to play 3.5/PF1 again but fudge no to being the DM. I cracked open my PF1 book and got PTSD. No thank you.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yeah they said they are adjusting monsters to match their CR most accurately so I 100% expect monsters to hit harder and at will.

Players will need dem bonus action potion chugs.

They said a lot of stuff, but we are exclusively seeing things like the Lead Rules Designer excited to share with us how a warlock subclass is going to be a thing that "[The DM] will hate" and that really cranks the clarity of focus overall of the excitement shown so far for things like

Spoiler: Weapons Mastery

2014 emptied so much of the GM's toolbox to strip away memeworthy complaints about golfbags with weapons that took into account the GMN's needs & such... yet here we are woth wotc themselves making jokes about it while still vcontinuing the exclusive laser like focus on the character sheet in both the hype videos/articles and every page across all nine of the UA's.

Despite all of that wotc have not so much as hinted about mechanical hooks & levers or anything more concrete than vaguely hollow terms like "better" & "improved" without so much as a few seconds of discussion about how they plan to accomplish that.

Players will need dem bonus action potion chugs.

That remains to be seen because simply giving players the option of drinking a potion with a bonus action does not cause them to rise above the black hole of yoyo/wackamole healing's extreme incentive event horizon as long. If it were anything but a way to grant players even more power & survivability and there was an interest in including any sort of dm advocate in the hype train we should have heard about the changes to death saves or whatever that the bonus action was meant to bookend.

I started using bonus action potions as a house rule awhile ago. Something I've noticed is that players are still loathe to use potions, because the bonus action has been so overused by the designers that it's critically important to some characters. And if anything, this is worse in the 2024 books, where giving up a bonus action to heal can be woefully inefficient for some characters.

I have a two-weapon Fighter in my current game who can rarely be bothered to Second Wind, because he has to give up an attack to do so!

This is 100% my experience. Worried that perhaps it might be a concern over availability I gave them all one of:

Spoiler: these potions

with a d8 for the die and the group doubled down to the point of even dismissing the idea of risk when I would point out how bob is actually down or whatever

 

[DEFCON 1]

If people actually want solutions, I'm more than happy to help. For example, if official monsters aren't tough enough, take a look at the Tome of Beasts 1. They're pretty brutal, in a fun way.


I'm just expressing my opinion that if you really want to, you can challenge players of any level. If people really wanted solutions instead of just complaining, we can start up other threads on, say, what cool customized versions of monsters have you made and how you used them.

High level play isn't for everyone, and that's fine. But to say it never works? It's simply not true. Why does it bother you that I state my opinion and experience?

Heh heh... actually I meant to refer to all the people who know about those books you mention and yet still complain about WotC's books. Not someone like you who is just reiterating that the solution is out there for those that want it.

It's the people for whom they have their own solution and use it, but still get annoyed that WotC hasn't also followed followed suit. As thought WotC should be following the lead of other 3PP monster book designers out there.

In other words, I forgot to add the (general) tag to my sentence that should have said "If (general) you have solved your own problem..." That's my bad!

 

[Minigiant]

Players get bored with long turns.

I still find it funny when people say older editons were more complicated. 5E is just as complicated in a different way.

I would think simplicity would be more desired over convoluted but I don’t make those choices when designing D&D.

Players are more bored when they're turns are short but others turns are long.


To me it's about fairness. If everyone has interesting turns and those turns aren't extremely long, it's fine.

It's only a problem when Joe takes 10 minutes and Jim takes 2.