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

[Charlaquin]

Because it's not as awesome if you just declare it.

Here I point to Brendan Lee Mulligain’s explanation of how the character wants to succeed in their goals as efficiently as possible, but the player wants the route there to be convoluted and full of challenges. If you simply narrated whatever you want to happen, you would necessarily have tension between the player’s desire for a compelling narrative and the character’s desire for efficient completion of their goals. The game mechanics afford the player the ability do essentially disavow their desire for complicating obstacles. They can align their interests completely with those of their characters, and let the game mechanics create the narrative twists and turns for them.

 

[Charlaquin]

But if there isn’t a meaningful consequence when they run out, what exactly are you managing?

Who said there shouldn’t be a meaningful consequence when a PC runs out of HP? Also, since when are the 5e revisions removing meaningful consequences for running out of HP?

 

[Remathilis]

And once that resource runs out the PC is dead. Not being dead is a key element of the game.

Assuming being knocked out or stabilizing with death saves are not viable outcomes. But I've never been a DM who double taps players because "that's the smart thing to do."

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

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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.

Yes, my primary issue here is WotC's attitude. That video shows them making jokey comments at the DMs expense. That gives no confidence that WotC cares much about DMs beyond pushing them towards digital tools to alleviate the paperwork.

 

[JohnSnow]

Yes, my primary issue here is WotC's attitude. That video shows them making jokey comments at the DMs expense. That gives no confidence that WotC cares much about DMs beyond pushing them towards digital tools to alleviate the paperwork.

Let’s not forget making the game complex enough to run that they can charge DMs for those digital tools needed to eliminate the paperwork.

 

[Oofta]

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.

I don't know why other people have such an issue with high level play, I can only state my experience. If you want to go into details, ask questions, start up a thread with examples, I'm more than happy to do so. Adjusting difficulty at all levels is more of an art than a science, and practice makes, if not perfect, better.

But I make no claim to being a tactical genius. Obviously I'm doing something different or players in multiple groups have. For example I restrict a handful of spells, use custom monsters now and then or beef up existing ones, have more than 2-3 fights between long rests, limit the items PCs have access to. But I really don't know what the difference is, all I ever get is "it doesn't work" and D&D is always on easy mode. It hasn't been for me.

 

[SteveC]

Definitely agree that DMing 5.5E will be more complex. The key is adapting tricks from previous editions. Yes, there will be more statuses inflicted, but that just means I get out my old tokens that I attached to mini bases, or grab some rings from 20oz soda bottles. But who am I kidding? I run via VTT, so this will be an easy upgrade.

And in writing that, it just makes me think that running via VTT is going to be baked into the cake a little bit more, isn't it?

Beyond that, it seems like "giving PCs more to do/more options" is part of what they were looking to do with 5.5, so I guess this is to be expected.

 

[mamba]

The trouble is threading the line between challenging and an undeniable execution.

yes, having a clear rule to when a fight is easy / hard / can kill a char / TPK would be great, we only have vague guidelines. There are reasons why this is next to impossible however

PCs are so durable & insulated from risk that the dividing line between those two is adjacent to the Plank Length.

that is more a result of the randomness / swinginess of combat. For a fight to be able to really challenge the chars, that same fight has the potential to go wrong and result in a char death, depending on the die rolls and decisions made. The game math is not precise enough to allow the DM to creep ever closer to the line.

There is no thin line where it switches over, but a gray area that can go either way

 

[DEFCON 1]

"scene partners" What the game are you talking about since it is clearly not d&d? I don't think I've ever seen a TTRPG game use that sort of terminology and that includes games like fate where "scene" is a mechanical term*.

*Fate Core pg240

There is no specific game I am talking about. It was an extension off of my conversation with @overgeeked when they posited a roleplaying game without defined mechanics (however many pages ago it was). Which I said was basically improv scenes at the table, and that I personally did not have any issue with that sort of thing in my RPGs. Because to me, improv scenes are "games" just as much as other standard RPGs are "games". And anyone who has studied improvisation would probably have a pretty good idea why I would say that.

If a person has never studied improvisation? Then the idea that improv scenes are "games" probably doesn't make any sense to them. But that's okay. Folks don't know what they don't know.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes, my primary issue here is WotC's attitude. That video shows them making jokey comments at the DMs expense. That gives no confidence that WotC cares much about DMs beyond pushing them towards digital tools to alleviate the paperwork.

Agreed, but I'll say why that issue concerns me. It's not like the last decade has been one where wotc has a great track record of supporting GMs. The "jokey comments at the DM's expense" scream out loud & clear to me that there is going to be more problems for the GM. Mix in the near exclusive focus on character sheet level player stuff and it very much looks like we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

yes, having a clear rule to when a fight is easy / hard / can kill a char / TPK would be great, we only have vague guidelines. There are reasons why this is next to impossible however


that is more a result of the randomness / swinginess of combat. For a fight to be able to really challenge the chars, that same fight has the potential to go wrong and result in a char death, depending on the die rolls and decisions made. The game math is not precise enough to allow the DM to creep ever closer to the line.

There is no line but a gray area that can go either way

No it is not a thing that has anything to do with randomness or swinginess. The bar that an encounter needs to meet in order to overcome the many levels of insulation granted by things like inept monsters death saves multiple forms of healing word & ways to trivialize yoyo/wackamole healing is such a high bar that possibly overcoming it leads to what comes off looking like an execution