D&D (2024) D&D 2024 Rules Oddities (Kibbles’ Collected Complaints)

[Daztur]

I don’t seek or expect perfection. Good enough is fine by me.

I prefer the designers focus on making the game better for the 95% of players not the 5% that get a kick out of dragging a grappled person back and forth over spike stones… or using attacks of opportunity to get free buffs.

I don’t want the designers expending mental energy trying to come up with ways to hedge in the folks that try and do this stuff in a real game (rather than as a thought exercise). Mainly folks like that have always been there, they have always been looking for ways to twist the rules into a corkscrew and it’s better not to play games with them.

It’s a game. Don’t go trawling the internet for ways to break it, and it won’t be broken.

A lot of the weapon juggling stuff can be shut down by the DM with a simple "no, stop being silly." But a lot of people ARE legitimately confused about how the TWF system works when you combine WMs and feats and the line between what's an exploit and what isn't is not completely obvious, especially since weapon juggling with loaded pistols WAS a real historical tactic with early firearms.

As for dragging people through spike growth I think that was a perfectly fine tactic in 5e that was certainly used by normal players. It was good teamwork, made sense in-character, showed a bit of creativity but nothing abusive. A good fun solid tactic.

...and now it's ludicrously OPed in 5.5e.

Things that used to be fun creative tactics now being BS exploits that I'd have to ban in 5.5e is annoying. And this is REALLY something that they should have seen coming. I mean forced movement is a huge part of 5.5e. How could they not see how powerful even the most basic ways to use forced movement could be?

And how do I stop this as a DM? Ban spike growth? Ban players from ever using grappling to drag people into AoEs? No immediately obvious solution of just saying "stop that metagame naughty word" since "I'm going to drag this dude through some spikes" is something that makes perfect sense in character with zero metagaming.

This is unacceptably sloppy for the flagship product of what is by far the biggest company in the industry.

They REALLY should have hired just one hardcore charop guy waaay back in 3.*ed days and just have him vet all new content. Just one normal charop dude and all kinds of silly naughty word like this and twilight/peace clerics could be prevented.

Or hell, just listen to what the charop dudes are saying about the UAs for free. A lot of silly naughty word was published in UAs, widely pointed out as being silly, and then later published intact.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

And how do I stop this as a DM? Ban spike growth? Ban players from ever using grappling to drag people into AoEs? No immediately obvious solution of just saying "stop that metagame naughty word" since "I'm going to drag this dude through some spikes" is something that makes perfect sense in character with zero metagaming.

My homebrew rule will be that Spike Growth damage is only triggered by creatures using their movement speed (similar to the wording for Attacks of Opportunity).

Maybe also add some damage for ending a turn in Spike Growth to beef the damage up for players who are using it normally and not doing stupid cheese grater exploits

 

[KibblesTasty]

They did read the comments in UA's, as they consistently and repeatedly stated.

So there is two ways to go about this. Either they read the UA comments, where a lot of people pointed that weapon toggled worked, and they intentionally left it in, or they didn't read the UA comments. Take your pick which outcome you believe! I choose to believe they didn't read the comments pointing it out, because they seem to be unaware of how it worked in interviews and articles, but that's just situational evidence.

You will never stop optimizers from optimizing, it is literally impossible. And the harder you lock down "edge cases" so that they cannot happen, the more you restrict creative play.

Stopping optimization isn't the goal, and I never said it was or should be. Fixing exploits that are only valuable to optimizers and no one else is the goal. This is the quality we ask for from 3rd party content (I should know, people ask it from me by the hundreds, quite insistently!)

And yeah, that isn't great. I bet all of them wish they had more time. But they didn't.

We are in agreement there. But they are the one that made the deadlines. They are the one that are now going to ask us to pay for the unfinished content. I would prefer they finished the content before selling it. This is an edition refresh coming 10 years after the edition. There was no actual urgency here beyond the urgency they created because they thought the anniversary was a marketing angle, but their marketing angle isn't important to me.

Right but... is Giant Insect doing that unintentional? I don't have the book to comment on the HP, that might be an error, but the web shot stopping everything from ghosts to dragons... might be intended. You don't have to like that, but that doesn't mean it was sloppy rules writing. Because honestly, ever since I've heard of this web shot ability, I've been excited. It sounds like it will be a fun, cinematic thing to use. And as a 4th level spell, being able to recreate the effects of a 2nd level spell but with fall damage... doesn't sound terribly out of line actually.

I don't know what 2nd level spell you view it as emulating, but I'm aware of no 2nd level spell that drops speed to 0 while bypassing Legendary Resistance, and if I did, I would definitely be complaining about it too. Maybe I'm missing something. Earthbind? Web? Those both definitely have saving throws, and there's a good reason they have saving throws. Legendary Resistances entire purpose is because 1 spell shutting down a monster was deemed to be a bad thing.

Powerful? Certainly, but too powerful for a 7th level character using their most powerful ability? It isn't like reducing an enemies speed to zero is a hard effect to apply, it just normally isn't applied via range.

I actually cannot think of any other way to do it without a save. Definitely one I might be missing, but its pretty unique. Even Grapple is a save now. Just to be really clear here, my main problem is that it has no save.

The DM can counter anything, but I just don't see why spells should bypass the specific tools given to them to prevent the problem that spell would cause. Even if it had a save it would be one of the best spells in the game.

I'm not the arbiter of truth or balance, so my opinion is no more valid than yours if the spell is broken, but I would hate to inflict that on DMs if I'd written it and turned a bunch of their cool bosses encounters into anticlimactic piñatas.

So... it it unintentional? I have no idea, but I choose to believe it is, because that's a lot better than the alternative.

Though yes, the hit point formula definitely unintentional and is just written wrong (it's just missing the part where it should be 10 per level above 4th, not 10 per level), because, well, it seems they didn't edit the book all that carefully.

 

[Clint_L]

And how do I stop this as a DM? Ban spike growth? Ban players from ever using grappling to drag people into AoEs? No immediately obvious solution of just saying "stop that metagame naughty word" since "I'm going to drag this dude through some spikes" is something that makes perfect sense in character with zero metagaming.

Is it that OP, though? It's using the action economy of two players coordinating their turns to do a lot of damage...but I'm looking at those numbers and not seeing a huge spike. My level 11 monk's base damage is, off the top of my head, around 60 DPR by herself. And there's nothing stopping another mob from grabbing my monk and dragging her through those same spikes. At tier 4, 48d4 is 120DPR. My monk, with her current equipment, will have a DPR of about 100 at level 20. So...not that big a difference, and it's only using one character's action economy instead of two, without making her vulnerable.

I mean, I love it, and would probably do it just for the larfs. Especially as we have a druid in the party. But I don't think that particular example is broken. I'm more worried about some of the automatic effects that have been added.

Edit: also, depending on terrain, it's probably more fun to just grapple the target, run up a really high wall or tower with them, and jump off.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Is it that OP, though?

It can easily scale to completely out of control numbers if you combine it with haste and boots of speed. By level 11, over 500 damage per round is easily attainable with spike growth grappling

edit: The crazy high numbers come online much earlier than level 11, I just picked that number to compare to your post above

 

[Charlaquin]

A rules oddity that I'm not a fan of, is that it now makes sense for the two-handed warriors to walk around with a shield out, and then object interaction it to their back while they draw their two-hander during the attack action...

Because hey, especially if you're a low-Dex heavy armor user, that +2 AC until your turn comes around seems pretty sweet, and at no cost (provided the campaign isn't all about opening doors).

Sure would have made the Flex mastery look extra embarrassing if that had survived the playtest

 

[Daztur]

My homebrew rule will be that Spike Growth damage is only triggered by creatures using their movement speed (similar to the wording for Attacks of Opportunity).

Maybe also add some damage for ending a turn in Spike Growth to beef the damage up for players who are using it normally and not doing stupid cheese grater exploits

I see how that makes sense in game terms but the flavor of dragging people through spikes not hurting them at all is just painful to me. The ways in which 5.5e seems to be pushing back against "rulings not rules" goes against how I like my D&D and making DM rulings that further that even more is something I'd prefer to avoid if at all possible.

Is it that OP, though? It's using the action economy of two players coordinating their turns to do a lot of damage...but I'm looking at those numbers and not seeing a huge spike. My level 11 monk's base damage is, off the top of my head, around 60 DPR by herself. And there's nothing stopping another mob from grabbing my monk and dragging her through those same spikes. At tier 4, 48d4 is 120DPR. My monk, with her current equipment, will have a DPR of about 100 at level 20. So...not that big a difference, and it's only using one character's action economy instead of two, without making her vulnerable.

I mean, I love it, and would probably do it just for the larfs. Especially as we have a druid in the party. But I don't think that particular example is broken. I'm more worried about some of the automatic effects that have been added.

Edit: also, depending on terrain, it's probably more fun to just grapple the target, run up a really high wall or tower with them, and jump off.

Yeah, it is that powerful. See the number crunching upthread. The thing is cheesegrater strategies were ALREADY plenty powerful in 5e and monks have gotten a number of interlocking buffs to doing this that moves it from powerful to ludicrous. Notably:

1. Being able to grapple with Dex.

2. Being able to pick up Tavern Brawler easily through a background that's already good for monks (sailor).

3. Being able to dash as a bonus action more easily.

4. You can now move at full speed while grappling someone, which literally DOUBLES damage with this tactic all by itself.

The sheer speed a properly-buffed monk is capable of is rather ludicrous which means that the damage can scale into game-breaking territory with ease.

And I'm really surprised that this sort of thing slipped through to publication since cheesegrater builds were veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery commonly posted on places like r/3d6 so WotC had to know about them (they're sort of the 5e version of 3.5e trip or charger builds) and whole swathes of the additional material in 5.5e is about forcing movement. It's just a real headscratcher that the most basic means of forcing movement is so busted especially when "I'm gonna drag this dude through the spies" is such an obvious tactic that makes perfect sense without any metagame shenanigans.

Also even ASIDE from cheesegrater stuff the ability of monks to grap someone and zip to the other end of the map and leave the dude there is potentially VERY VERY powerful and WotC just doesn't seem to have considered the implications of that kind of very obvious even to newbies tactic at all.

 

[Lanefan]

No matter how many times you lather and repeat, 20 people won't find the errors that 50 people will. And 50 people won't find the errors that 100 people will. And when you release a product to tens of thousands of people.... A new error will always pop up.

Half the big things people complaining about either require tortured readings of RAW that are non-obvious if you are working from a reasonable RAI, or likely are not errors in the first place.

Which is possible, but it's hard to know when the RAI isn't spelled out while the RAW is.

I mean, let's be nice and assume they did find these odd/broken interactions ahead of time, and then intentionally chose to leave them in place. Would it be too much to ask for a 2-sentence explanation in a sidebar telling us the rationale for that decision and-or how they envision it working in play? (this applies to every edition ever released by the way, not just the current one)

So.... was it bad design, sloppy and ill-thought out? Or intentional design.

The first requires fixing, the second IMO requires explanation.

Somethings appear to be errors, those are unfortuanate, but it gets increasingly difficult to untangle the lingering disdain for WoTC, disagreements in play style, honest mistakes that stem from expectations, and mistakes that are actually problems.

For my part, this isn't so much disdain for WotC as annoyance they don't (or don't want to) learn from the past. TSR made the same mistakes, as did earlier WotC: every edition* has had some flat-out bad rules that, if put in the hands of some determined optimizers and envelope-pushers, would have been chewed up and spat out in no time.

* - I'll cut a lot of slack for OD&D(1974) here, though, as they were pioneering the whole thing and didn't have the benefit of hindsight.

 

[Sulicius]

-- And there's nothing stopping another mob from grabbing my monk and dragging her through those same spikes. --

Sadly, there is... A concentration spell can be dropped at any time.

 

[mellored]

But a lot of people ARE legitimately confused about how the TWF system works

It's less confusing when you read it yourself instead of second hand.

Though it's still not the most elegant system. But most if that is because they kept it the same.

As for dragging people through spike growth I think that was a perfectly fine tactic in 5e that was certainly used by normal players. It was good teamwork, made sense in-character, showed a bit of creativity but nothing abusive. A good fun solid tactic.

...and now it's ludicrously OPed in 5.5e.

It's less powerful.
In 2014 you can stack athletics to make grappling nearly inescapable.
Then hop on a horse for speed.

And how do I stop this as a DM?

Grapple and drag the PC.

Spiked growth doesn't distinguish between targets. And the druid probably doesn't have Str or Dex saves.