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

[Oofta]

Yeah, honestly, the part of DMing that always slows me down the most and is the most aggravating to deal with... is HP when dealing with a large group of monsters. Remembering which orc is Orc #4 and subtracting the damage is the part I mess up the most and is the hardest. Status effects are usually a bit easier. "Oh, this guy can't do this thing"

I always use a little portable whiteboard to track and and then paint my minis with unique colors sometimes just painting the base a color or two. That way I can easily distinguish between yellow + green zombie and blue + white zombie. For status, we have markers. But truly large groups of monsters? Those become mobs, even if I don't use them very often.

But everybody has to find their own groove.

 

[James Gasik]

Let's see. Warforged +1 AC, Forge Priest 6 to get Soul of the Forge.

Plate +3 (21) + Shield +3 (4) + Warforged (1) + Soul of the Forge (1) gets us to 27. From here you dip a level of say, Wizard. Wield a Staff of Power in one hand (2) to get you to 29, then you can cast Shield to get 34 on demand. From there, what, Cloak of Protection?

 

[SlyFlourish]

I saw the thread and said “oh! Someone with the same thought I had!” And then saw my video and thirteen pages of posts and thought “uh oh”.

I’ve only bee through three but let me clarify some points:

- I worry about the number of decisions each character gets per turn and how long those turns take. I don’t want a longer battle. I want options for shorter ones. I tried for years to get 4e to run faster and was unsuccessful. If they expand the options for each character (and they have), the game gets longer.

- I worry about losing control of the tension of a game when characters can control monsters more than I can. Pushing, dominating, knocking prone, poisoning, etc. They’re almost certainly limiting stunning strike to once a turn but then add topple to every hit (supposedly — I haven’t read the book yet).

It’s much harder for me to fix things on the player side than on the GM side and there are just some things I can’t fix.

So we’ll see, and lucky me, I have Level Up Advanced 5e and Tales of the Valiant if I want to try something else.

Two other points: I love the new surprise rules and I’m fine with potions as bonus actions.

Also, no matter what they put in the DMG or Monster Manual, they’re not going to help me speed up combat if they slow it down on the player side.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yeah, honestly, the part of DMing that always slows me down the most and is the most aggravating to deal with... is HP when dealing with a large group of monsters. Remembering which orc is Orc #4 and subtracting the damage is the part I mess up the most and is the hardest. Status effects are usually a bit easier. "Oh, this guy can't do this thing"

Heh... that's why all my minis that have multiples of the same type all now have little colored star-shaped stickers on their bases... so I can keep track of the hit points of 'orange star orc' and 'green star orc' and 'purple star orc' and 'yellow star orc' etc.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Only if you have martials that don't use spells. Otherwise status effects have always been there.

This.

I've run games where every character was a spellcaster in some way, so everyone had access to things that caused status effects. It wasn't notably more difficult at all.

 

[Oofta]

35 AC? Just... how? I'm picturing an Eldritch Knight with +3 plate, +3 shield, the Defensive Fighting style, a Cloak of Protection, and the Defender with all of its bonus devoted to AC and I can still only get to 31, 36 if they use shield I guess?

Wait, shields that add to your AC exist? Greater than +1? Don't tell my players!

 

[Malmuria]

So DnD is being made more unfriendly to DMs than ever before... by including rules that have been in DnD for multiple years and adding a single new subsystem?

Yes, it's called bloat. In this case whereas before rules from Tasha's were optional, now they are part of the base game, and the base game is growing bigger and more complex. Each new piece adds to the DM's stack of things to worry about, and hence to their cognitive load.

So teach them. It isn't exactly hard to explain what Prone is, and if they took the Topple Mastery then they kind of had to know what prone was. Also if your game is so casual that a player picks an ability with absolutely no idea what it does... even then they can still say "oh yeah, remember I did my thing to this guy."

Teaching also adds to the DM's stack. Now they are not just playing a game with players but have to treat those players like students. And like students, some players will 'get it' right away, whereas I've seen other players struggle with knowing what bonuses to add to their attack even after years of playing.

Now, some groups certainly want more combat complexity in their game, and can handle it. Hence the popularity of PF2 or Level Up. But a lot of people prefer a simpler game; the reason I now prefer to run OSR games when I'm GM is not so much that they are deadly, though they are, but because they are rules lite. It makes them easier to teach and easier to run, IME.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, it's called bloat. In this case whereas before rules from Tasha's were optional, now they are part of the base game, and the base game is growing bigger and more complex. Each new piece adds to the DM's stack of things to worry about, and hence to their cognitive load.


Teaching also adds to the DM's stack. Now they are not just playing a game with players but have to treat those players like students. And like students, some players will 'get it' right away, whereas I've seen other players struggle with knowing what bonuses to add to their attack even after years of playing.

Now, some groups certainly want more combat complexity in their game, and can handle it. Hence the popularity of PF2 or Level Up. But a lot of people prefer a simpler game; the reason I now prefer to run OSR games when I'm GM is not so much that they are deadly, though they are, but because they are rules lite. It makes them easier to teach and easier to run, IME.

We don't know how many things will be marked as optional in the PHB. As far as I'm concerned until I've played with the new version a bit it all is.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm not sure I'm total grokking your point, but that's on me. Just to try and clear it up... in your second sentence "games the designers [at wotc] want to play" is not a range covered by a circle it's an isolated point.", are you saying that the 5E game (whether it be 5E14 or 5E24) only gives a single focused point of itself, and doesn't cover a wider range of D&D for people? If that's the case, then yeah I can see where you are coming from, because the rules are written as just one set game. The game is the game and is only the game, so it's one thing and one thing only. I can see the metaphor in that.

But the circle to my mind would be the range of players who are fine using that one point of game-- either as-is, or taking it and making something else out of it that they are happy with. You might have 3-6 players all fine with blowing out that singular point of the D&D rules to encompass enough versions of D&D that each of them are content. Basically, all of them compromising away from their ideal D&D game so that they can play together.

Now if this was not your point and I'm still not getting it (quite possible)... feel free to clear it up for me if you'd care to.

Yes I am saying that because "the designers at wotc" designing the game to match the game "they want to play" is designing it for a single and highly specific niche rather than a range of play or an array of play styles... In this case it also makes things worse by very much seeming like the gm is assumed to be a paid staff member with no needs wants or concerns of merit.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, you do you... but I see that as nothing but a senseless waste of time, emotion and energy.

And how exactly is your "venting" (your word) any less senseless a waste of those things?