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

[Zardnaar]

This reminds me how some on here will say that certain weapons are ultimately better in the long run and it's a form of unoptimized/badwrongfun if you don't use standards like Rapiers and what not.

It only matters in terms of exact same thing. One handed weapon d6 vs d8.

Real answer is it depends.

 

[Bae'zel]

This reminds me how some on here will say that certain weapons are ultimately better in the long run and it's a form of unoptimized/badwrongfun if you don't use standards like Rapiers and what not.

Sometimes I have to remind my players that my DM style isn’t a tournament, nor is there a prize for “most perfect min max combos”. I always prefer style over “substance” (mechanical optimization).

I have an almost allergic reaction to comments like “all Fighters have to use greatswords” or “all Warlocks have to take a dip of class X”.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Bounded accuracy is a good chunk of what led to me not enjoying 5e. I want a game where the specialists can reliably make skill checks the untrained person cannot do even on a Nat20, at level 1, and I am not a fan of "padded sumo", and prefer something closer to "rocket tag" - to bust out the old jargon. Though ideally I would prefer combat in general take less real time to resolve than it does in any D&D I've ever played. Let me finish an average of 3+ combats in an hour, and not just in a videogame.


I was entirely unimpressed with 4e. Antifan would be an accurate descriptor. First with the original release, and then after Essentials. I found it to be a whole system built out of the worst ideas of 3e, and nuking the Forgotten Realms was nuking the thing I like D&D brand fantasy gaming for.

That said, 5e did not make a single mechanical design decision I would have made*. After playing it for 2 years, I would call it a disaster gameplay-wise. Okay, it's hard for newbies to make an ineffective potato of a character, and I've seen 3e and PF players do that a few times. It has that one thing going for it I suppose.

They took a step in the direction I would on setting stuff (bringing back the half the continent and the deities they vanished for 4e), but then threw in so many yes-but caveats that it still came back with none of the appeal it had in the 3e days unless you are disregarding the 5e books and running your game from old books or the wiki - and even then it's still strictly worse a setting and a ruleset for the setting than running 3e with its better support and more fleshed out setting and setting coherency with AD&D books that are still very relevant setting-wise.

Anyways - IMNSHO the things they did to bring back people who bounced off 4e, were only a superficial coat of paint, like a videogame character alternate outfit skin. No substance.

(I'm not saying 3e was perfect. I tried 5e only out of a frustration at longstanding issues from 3e that were never fixed in PF (and held off for a few years until it had more content). But after beating my head against it trying to make myself like it - and then trying to beat it into a palatable shape, I concluded I find 5e's gameplay issues much worse than the ones in 3e).

I'm well aware that 5e is the apology edition.

 

[TiQuinn]

I have an almost allergic reaction to comments like “all Fighters have to use greatswords” or “all Warlocks have to take a dip of class X”.

There was a younger player who used to be a part of our group who would always be suggesting to me ways I could optimize my character to do even more damage or higher AC, etc and I would just say repeatedly that’s not what I’m into. He’d back off but I don’t think he ever really understood why I didn’t care about character optimization to that degree.

 

[VHawkwinter]

I'm well aware that 5e is the apology edition.

I guess that's one way to label it.

But what I'm saying is if it's an apology it's like an apology from my abusive ex. The apology was not sincere, and no they were never going to change for the better, and I feel stupid for believing them and wasting time and money on it.

My 5e stuff (except for Lost Tales of Myth Drannor and maybe an adventure or two) lives not on my overflow RPG bookcase with games I don't really like playing much but sometimes skim for inspiration (like my WoD books), but in a box at the bottom of the closet.

So, they definitely didn't make their design decisions to make me happy - as one of the people who bounced off 4e.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I guess that's one way to label it.

But what I'm saying is if it's an apology it's like an apology from my abusive ex. The apology was not sincere, and no they were never going to change for the better, and I feel stupid for believing them and wasting time and money on it.

My 5e stuff (except for Lost Tales of Myth Drannor and maybe an adventure or two) lives not on my overflow RPG bookcase with games I don't really like playing much but sometimes skim for inspiration (like my WoD books), but in a box at the bottom of the closet.

So, they definitely didn't make their design decisions to make me happy - as one of the people who bounced off 4e.

Then you are a highly unusual exception among those who professed such dislike for 4e. The vast majority of people who disliked 4e thought 5e was just the ticket.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sometimes I have to remind my players that my DM style isn’t a tournament, nor is there a prize for “most perfect min max combos”. I always prefer style over “substance” (mechanical optimization).

I have an almost allergic reaction to comments like “all Fighters have to use greatswords” or “all Warlocks have to take a dip of class X”.

"All X must Y" claims of this kind are nearly always overblown in the first place, or are a bad, lossy gloss of a much more nuanced thought.

"Greatsword is an especially strong weapon because it gets more out of its Style feat than other large weapons" is accurate. "All Fighters should use greatswords" is wildly inaccurate. "Blade Warlock benefits greatly from having their first character level be Fighter, because of style feats and mastery properties" is accurate. "Every Blade Warlock must have their first level as Fighter" is wildly inaccurate. The only gain with these inaccurate abbreviated thoughts is that they are shorter.

But in noting this, I don't want to give any support to the notion (very slightly implied by what you said here, though I doubt it was your intent to imply it) that one must choose either style or substance, and choosing one means forgoing the other. You can have both, and I always strive for both. The two can even feed into each other. You can ask an optimization question (such as "can one character learn all the skills without burning all their ASIs on it?"), which can then lead to an interesting writing exercise ("what kind of story would explain these choices?") Or the other way around, where a flavorful, intriguing character concept drives a question of how to make that idea achieve reasonable effectiveness, like when I went looking for a way to make a PrC I thought was super fun (but mechanically very weak; the Geomancer) actually an important part of the character, and developed a gestalt Druid/Wizard that could explore all the facets of both divine and arcane magic (which then itself led to a focus on runes and ley lines, things I've always enjoyed.)

Point being, while there's nothing wrong with saying "I'd rather my players make sure they have great style (=RP/backstory/flavor) over great substance (=optimization/effectiveness)", it's quite achievable to pursue both, even if one is a higher priority than the other. To make up fake numbers, you can have a 90 in Substance and a 100 in Style. You aren't working with a limited budget where every point spent on Style is a point you couldn't spend on Substance.

 

[Zardnaar]

Then you are a highly unusual exception among those who professed such dislike for 4e. The vast majority of people who disliked 4e thought 5e was just the ticket.

You treat people as absolute lol. I suspect the cast major of 5E fans didn't play 3E or 4E.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You treat people as absolute lol. I suspect the cast major of 5E fans didn't play 3E or 4E.

Would it surprise you to know I have had the same thought about your own reviews on things?

And yes, I know most people who play 5e now are like that.

Most people who play 5e were not the people who almost totally dominated the sample space when 5e was being developed.

The 5e community today is locked into design decisions made my a team that disliked one specific edition above all others, guided by victorious edition warriors who had an axe to grind and didn't care what it cost to grind that axe.

In other words, most 5e players today are beholden to decisions they have no idea why they got made, nor had any input on, and it's unlikely that they would have made the exact same decisions. I'm quite confident, for example, that the playtest Sorcerer would have been retained, if the current 5e fanbase were the people calling the shots back in D&D Next. Even though that Sorcerer was nothing like the 3e or 4e version! I'm less confident about the Warlock because it was intentionally a little off-putting, which I liked, but I know plenty of folks would not.

 

[VHawkwinter]

Then you are a highly unusual exception among those who professed such dislike for 4e.

Is that so? Noted.

The vast majority of people who disliked 4e thought 5e was just the ticket.

On the surface it certainly looked much better than 4e. After playing it though - definitely not by very much.