D&D General Refresher Course D&D Edition Numbers. AKA Modern D&D Is a Self Inflicted Problem.

[Zardnaar]

What problem?

You’re kind of waving your hands in the air and saying “all of this” but different people have different problems.

That depends on the person.

5E encounter thing is a side effect of design decisions made around expected encounter levels, HP as primary way to resolve stuff (while leaving save or sucks in the game),

4E and 5E are both going to deal with 1-3 encounters poorly vs say pre 3E. Heck old school hex crawl plain old doesn't work with 4E and 5E.

Is that a problem? Its a ymmv situation.

 

[TiQuinn]

That depends on the person.

5E encounter thing is a side effect of design decisions made around expected encounter levels, HP as primary way to resolve stuff (while leaving save or sucks in the game),

4E and 5E are both going to deal with 1-3 encounters poorly vs say pre 3E. Heck old school hex crawl plain old doesn't work with 4E and 5E.

Is that a problem? Its a ymmv situation.

Okay, they're different systems. You have to adjust your expectations to each system. It's not that you can't do a hex crawl in 5e, it's that a hex crawl in 5e works differently there than it does in earlier editions. Is that your point?

 

[Zardnaar]

Okay, they're different systems. You have to adjust your expectations to each system. It's not that you can't do a hex crawl in 5e, it's that a hex crawl in 5e works differently there than it does in earlier editions. Is that your point?

Sort of. A 5E hexcrawl wont be very goid generally though.

ToA for example gsd to hard coded a time limit in to make it work. I think it promptly got ignored as well.

The environment isn't much threat compared to an old school one. You can't really grind the PCs down slowly and random encounters are a joke.

 

[TiQuinn]

Sort of. A 5E hexcrawl wont be very goid generally though.

ToA for example gsd to hard coded a time limit in to make it work. I think it promptly got ignored as well.

The environment isn't much threat compared to an old school one. You can't really grind the PCs down slowly and random encounters are a joke.

Okay, but good by what standard? Good by the standards of 2e or 3e? Or good by the standards of 5e?

The time limit in Tomb of Annihilation is just a story device. It's not a requirement for other 5e hex crawls.

 

[Zardnaar]

Okay, but good by what standard? Good by the standards of 2e or 3e? Or good by the standards of 5e?

The time limit in Tomb of Annihilation is just a story device. It's not a requirement for other 5e hex crawls.

You xan still gave a quality adventure.

The 5E ones suck though in terms of the environment being much of a challenge. For the most part its more getting from A tier B then do you 6-8 encounters.

Eg PotA, Dragon of Ice Spire Peak, Lost Mines.
The exploration part is minimal in comparison to X1, Quagmire, War Rafts of Kron and Kingmaker.

5E exploration mechanics usually bypass that pillar anyway. Eg Leomunds Bunker.

I ran old school level 1-3 exploration Kate 2023. The differences vs 5E very noticeable. They returned to base because they count keep up with damage from random encounters. Mostly bandits and animals.

Very different.

 

[TiQuinn]

You xan still gave a quality adventure.

The 5E ones suck though in terms of the environment being much of a challenge. For the most part its more getting from A tier B then do you 6-8 encounters.

Eg PotA, Dragon of Ice Spire Peak, Lost Mines.

None of those are really hex crawls.

Check out Odyssey of the Dragonlords for an example of a good 5e hexcrawl IMO (by Modiphius).

The exploration part is minimal in comparison to X1, Quagmire, War Rafts of Kron and Kingmaker.

5E exploration mechanics usually bypass that pillar anyway. Eg Leomunds Bunker.

I agree that exploration gets short shrift in the core 5e books, despite claims that it's a pillar.

But, I'm still at a total loss for what your original post had to do with hex crawls.

 

[Zardnaar]

None of those are really hex crawls.

Check out Odyssey of the Dragonlords for an example of a good 5e hexcrawl IMO (by Modiphius).



I agree that exploration gets short shrift in the core 5e books, despite claims that it's a pillar.

But, I'm still at a total loss for what your original post had to do with hex crawls.

OPs more pointing out a lot of things "wrong" with modern D&D is because we voted for them or expect things not thinking about the consequences.

Generally we (ENworld) probably lije a more complex D&D. A few go tge other way and like non D&D games as well.

Downside of that complexity is well complexity, slower play and power creep. It opens the door for builds.

And due to 5E design even casuals can stumbl into power builds. Longbow+sharpshooter in 5.0.

5.5 its obvious with weapon style feats. Also casuals watch YouTube as well, 20 years ago it was really only hard core on forums.

So year its like booze. People like it but there's negative side effects. The "addicts" can't even see the negatives. They either like it or are used to it. At best they want the good stuff without the negatives.

If you play 3.X you might encounter powergamers due to its design. If you like 4E good luck finding a DM due to its design. If you like 5E alot of groups tend towards nova. Are these actual problems? Depends.

 

[TiQuinn]

OPs more pointing out a lot of things "wrong" with modern D&D is because we voted for them or expect things not thinking about the consequences.

Nobody "voted" for them. They were design changes made by the game designers. Each edition continues to be played to this day. Pathfinder was created because there were enough people who wanted to continue playing 3.5e instead of moving on to 4e. Games like 13th Age, Draw Steel, and Lancer directly credit 4e as the inspiration for their game systems.

You make it sound like somehow the continued releases of these game systems is a failure in some way. They aren't. Not everyone likes every edition.

Generally we (ENworld) probably lije a more complex D&D. A few go tge other way and like non D&D games as well.

I really don't think you can make that generality about ENWorld

Downside of that complexity is well complexity, slower play and power creep. It opens the door for builds.

So? As you just said, some people like builds. Some people like complexity. Some people want that power creep and don't think that's a bad thing.

And due to 5E design even casuals can stumbl into power builds. Longbow+sharpshooter in 5.0.

Sure. It's not a bad thing necessarily.

5.5 its obvious with weapon style feats. Also casuals watch YouTube as well, 20 years ago it was really only hard core on forums.

I don't know you mean by casuals. Yes, people watch D&D YouTube videos. There are YouTube videos that cater to a variety of playstyles. That's not just casual players. Hardcore players do too.

So year its like booze. People like it but there's negative side effects. The "addicts" can't even see the negatives. They either like it or are used to it. At best they want the good stuff without the negatives.

This is where you go completely off the rails; I mean, this is just a really bad analogy. No, it's not like booze. People just have different tastes.

If you play 3.X you might encounter powergamers due to its design. If you like 4E good luck finding a DM due to its design. If you like 5E alot of groups tend towards nova. Are these actual problems? Depends.

Of course, you "might" encounter different play styles. You "might" encounter different play styles in every single edition of the game that I've ever played.

 

[Staffan]

The time limit in Tomb of Annihilation is just a story device. It's not a requirement for other 5e hex crawls.

You sort of need to have something along those lines to discourage excessive long resting (as discussed in another recent thread).

Nobody "voted" for them. They were design changes made by the game designers. Each edition continues to be played to this day. Pathfinder was created because there were enough people who wanted to continue playing 3.5e instead of moving on to 4e. Games like 13th Age, Draw Steel, and Lancer directly credit 4e as the inspiration for their game systems.

Pathfinder can really mean two things, with both being created in response to things happening at Wizards.

First, there was the Pathfinder Adventure Path. This was created because Paizo had been doing the Dragon and Dungeon magazines under a license from Wizards of the Coast, and Wizards decided to bring those in-house in preparation for 4e. But without those there pretty much wasn't a Paizo, so they decided to gamble on monthly adventures with a chunk of non-adventure material in them as well. This worked out pretty well for them, because they could use their subscription mailing list to advertise them, and because they owed people money for pre-paid subscriptions where they could ask "Do you want your money back or do you want these new adventures we're doing?" A lot of people took them up on that and then kept going because they liked the adventure path thing.

Second, there was the Pathfinder RPG. This was created because 3.5e was leaving the market, and making adventures for a system that was no longer for sale was thought not to be a good long-term idea. This left Paizo with two options: make adventures for 4e, or make their own 3.5e variant. They decided against 4e for two reasons: the first being that the original GSL was incredibly restrictive in what you could do under it, and also toxic in various ways (IIRC, one of the original terms was that you could no longer do material under the OGL), and the other being that what they had heard of 4e simply didn't appeal to the folks at Paizo. The latter was confirmed when Jason Buhlman went to a con to playtest 4e. So PFRPG wasn't created because a lot of people preferred 3.5e to 4e. It was created specifically because the people at Paizo did. It became successful because a lot of people agreed with them.

As for Draw Steel, I wouldn't call it a direct descendant of 4e (unlike 13th age which is like if 3e and 4e had a baby and then that baby grew up and went to college and came back with blue hair and a bunch of new and strange ideas). There's very little of 4e's mechanics in Draw Steel – the only thing that's sort of close is Recoveries, and that's not really a 4e innovation (it goes back at least to Earthdawn in the early 90s). Draw Steel is more like if someone who was very enthusiastic told someone else about 4e, with a focus on the good ideas rather than the wonky math, and then that person went off to build their own game that's like what they heard of 4e. It's sort of 4e-shaped, but completely different under the hood.

 

[Minigiant]

4E and 5E are both going to deal with 1-3 encounters poorly

I disagree with 4E.
4E mainly used healing surges as its adventuring day resource. Battles were assumed that every PC used their at-wills and encounter powers and some using dailies. The power of dailies are muted until high levels when each PC can use multiple Dailies.

The issue with 5e is that the LR class features are very impactful. So it is very tempting to dump them on problems and rest if the opportunity appears or is hinted.
One fix would be to have a beefier start an a duller curve for health and power. However that's not what the community originally wanted.