In other words, steepen the power curve. That's what 3e did, and it didn't work out so well other than at very low levels.
My take is that WotC needs to admit that D&D is not - and doesn't work as - a supers game, and come at design from a much more gritty and grounded angle
I'd agree, but the base ideas of combined XP chart, ascending AC, intiutive saves, etc. would have fixed most of that. I think it would have been a much better game if they had applied that to the 2E 'math' and not created a whole new untested system with absurd bonus escalations built in*. Stats alone were much more reasonable in 2E. Strength didn't give a +4 to hit till 21 for example.
*Probably why I really bounced off of Castles a& Crusades, the kept the worst parts of 2E and 3E as far as I was concerned with the new system and making it more complicated with messed up XP charts.
In doing those things, you precipitate having to rewrite:
How attacks work, how much damage they do, and how much HP creatures have
Functionally all spells that negatively affect enemies
Any actions dependent on the above things, e.g. spell-like abilities, or special attack stuff like Bull Rush
At least to some degree the action economy
The classes which use the above elements, since they work so differently
At which point, you've functionally rebuilt the whole game, mechanically speaking. You can't replace the building's foundation while keeping the building above it perfectly the same.
Personally, what I think this means is that we need to drill down on how to demonstrate to the players that they have, in fact, "scaled up". Break the treadmill, not by removing the slope, but by making it so players can SEE that they're on a higher point now than they used to be. I don't think 5e's approach is quite right, but it has (again) a kernel of a good idea that can be teased out. Namely: We need monsters that are distinctive to tiers of play. Things that you genuinely "grow out of", and things you genuinely "grow into". Stuff that really, truly is too hard to fight when you're level 3 or 4, unless you've got some miracle--both because that's realistic (there are almost always things too strong for any given combatant!), and because that sets signposts.
Something like 2/3 of 4e's scaling, rather than half, plus progression signposts like this. Clear, identifiable, graspable things that you can say "Look! We did it! We beat <X>!" or "Wow, we just cleared out a room full of <Y> without breaking a sweat, we really have gone far." Non-combat signposts should also get attention, but they're best handled by advising GMs on how to construct them well, rather than trying to artificially create universal ones, which wouldn't fly.
Once again we see the essential conflict over what D&D is and should be. In this thread we have posters saying that D&D is a high fantasy game, so the problems come from trying to make that game appealing to fans of low fantasy, while others say that the problem comes from trying to make a dungeon crawl game into a superhero game. Both sides can support their preference with evidence going all the way back to the days of little brown books and white boxes, because D&D has always supported different play styles at different levels. The “zero to hero” dynamic may be intrinsic to levelling game designs, as opposed to skill-based systems where your character learns lots of new stuff but stays squishy and combat-averse.
I think the best way to split the difference and keep more people happy is to emphasize differences between tiers of play, not smooth them out so everything feels the same. I like the low levels where your gear is second-hand ring mail and a homemade morning star, and you definitely need to worry about what is behind that locked dungeon door. But I also like the high levels when your party soars across the sky on their pegasus steeds, ready to battle dragons, as the soundtrack blasts “Ride of the Valkyries”. Early editions acknowledged that low and high level play were different by urging PCs into semi-retirement at name level, although domain play has always been a tough sell and not really supported much by official materials.
D&D is of course the overwhelmingly dominant force in the TTRPG market, and a corporate IP owned by a toy conglomerate. There is strong pressure on the designers to make the game be all things to everyone, and as always that approach risks making something that is not much to anyone - “everybody’s second favorite RPG”. It is a tough nut to crack. I think the best solution would be to let the different tiers be different, so people who only like the gritty lower levels can just stop at level 10 or 12, but have more high power options available for those who want to start at level 3.
The BECMI bell curve ranging from -3 to +3 was very clean design, easy to learn, and did not require rolling fistfuls of dice in order to get a viable character. Whereas AD&D had this bizarre mishmash of bespoke ability scores, no two remotely alike, that did not give any bonuses except at very high scores. This created perverse incentives to get high scores at any cost, particularly since there were no ASIs and very few other ways to increase your scores at all (no, the random magic pools found in module B1 and the dungeon tables in the back of the 1979 DMG were not acceptable substitutes! ).
A BECMI PC with 13 across the board might make a great jack of all trades, whereas an AD&D character with all 13’s might as well stay in town and see if they are hiring bartenders at the Drunken Derro. When 2E came out our group switched immediately and mostly loved it, but we scoffed at the 2E PHB’s thoroughly mediocre sample character Rath the Fighter, whose best score was a 14 STR. We did not notice at the time, but that flat-out contradicts EGG’s advice that AD&D characters needed at least two high scores (and indeed they did).
In my exploration of old school dnd gaming over the past decade, I found in my groups the one fundamental thing that prevented the LFQW issue was spell interruption, and then later coupled with casting time.
Magic users play and position very differently when a stray arrow can ruin their spells. In my tables there's a felt balance between the fighter and the MU up through about 9th level so far (where our game is now).
Armor Class: 10-20 (really 13-23)
Spell DC: 12-21
To hit bonus: +4 to +12
Save bonus: -2 to +11
And many of the top level of these bounds required to be both high level to get the highest proficiency modifier of + 6 and have your preferred primary ability score of + 5. But for most of the game you're talking about a -1 to +7 for bonuses.
And again let's not talk about Armor class because that is the most narrow bounds in the game. Most PCS and creatures start at 13 or 14 and if you power game you can get to the very 20s. And you do this at level 3. THREE. unless you are a light armor user or a no armor user you can cap out on your armor at level three level four for most classes and monsters. So most characters never switch armors in their entire PC life outside of the first time they purchase armor with treasure unless the DM gives them strictly better armor which is probably the absolute worst thing any dungeon master should ever do.
I like 5e's edition but it's armor mechanic triggers me so hard sometimes.
Yes, but I'm not sure how to fix armour though unless you give monsters specific class features which boosts their AC.
Because monster AC is tied to dex mod and it's protective nature as compared to PC armour.
And then there is the to hit bonus....
You'd have to create something like a +1 bonus to AC and to hit for specific CR scores or for every X Hit Dice (similar to 4e's inherent bonus)
And again let's not talk about Armor class because that is the most narrow bounds in the game. Most PCS and creatures start at 13 or 14 and if you power game you can get to the very 20s. And you do this at level 3. THREE. unless you are a light armor user or a no armor user you can cap out on your armor at level three level four for most classes and monsters. So most characters never switch armors in their entire PC life outside of the first time they purchase armor with treasure unless the DM gives them strictly better armor which is probably the absolute worst thing any dungeon master should ever do.
Slightly off-topic, but I think armor was an issue even back in the TSR days. When I was rolling up AD&D characters we mostly did equipment by the book, and starting gold was generous enough that my warrior characters hardly ever started off with anything worse than chain and shield, plus all of their proficient weapons. For some reason we never seemed to notice banded or splint armor, and some “killer DMs” liked to gleefully punish plate mail users with hazards like narrow tunnels, tippy boats, and pit traps filled with deep water, so armor was almost a “one and done” decision even then.
I don’t remember ever going to an armorer to upgrade gear because there just wasn’t really anything to buy. The DMG expected PCs to spend most of their money on level training and hireling pay anyway. Magic item shops were rare or discouraged by the rules, which made quite a contrast with CRPGs. In 80’s game franchises like Ultima, Wizardry, and the Bard’s Tale, going to the adventurers’ guild hall or whatever in order to sell loot and trade in your old gear for better gear was practically a mini-game in itself. We just expected to kit ourselves out with magic armor looted from dungeon hoards or stripped from dead NPC enemies, and since we played lots of early TSR modules there was usually plenty of swag to choose from.
D&D has never really modelled arms and armor very well, which is a bit weird for a game that started as a rules variant for a medieval war game. Many ancient armies and barbarian hordes used lighter armors like padded armor, ring mail, or scale mail, but our AD&D groups never saw those except on bandits and goblinoids. Chain and plate mail should probably be more expensive and rare due to the labor and time involved.
Right. The problem is that this creates the contradiction that more skilled = less skilled as you will fumble much more often due to your much increased skill level. That's why my group came up with a house rule that made fumbles progressively less likely as you leveled until at the highest reaches you could not fumble any longer.
People claimed on these boards all sorts of nonsense about the 6-8 encounters NOT meaning 6-8 encounters only to have it in black and white that it DID mean 6-8 encounters by 5e deaigners.
I mean, part of why folks said that is because, all through the playtest, that was in fact the official line. That it had to be 6-8 encounters of some kind, without all of them being combat.
Anyone crunching the numbers for 5.0 can find quite simple demonstrations that it is, in fact, meant to be 6-8 Hard-to-Deadly encounters each day.
The Champion vs Battle Master presents possibly the cleanest example, because of how its damage feature works. A Battle Master gets a specific amount of extra damage dice each long-or-short rest (assuming you aren't using one of the few that don't add damage, e.g. Precision Attack). Hence, we can determine, on average, how much the BM would get for any given level, per rest.
It is maximally favorable to consider the situation at level 5, as that's a local peak for the Champion. As TWF inflicts weaker raw damage especially on crits, the more Champion-favorable choice is two attacks with a greatsword. Between 3rd (receiving subclass) and 6th level, the BM has 4d8 bonus damage per short rest. I will assume, again for maximum favorability to the Champion, that this is never increased by critical hits, even though it actually would be. 4d8 is, on average, 18 extra damage per short rest--naturally they'll all vary, as will the Champion, so consider this an averaged bonus amount across many short rests, so that we're mitigating the randomness and getting the central tendency.
Having just verified the math (tedious algebra, not super interesting), the Champ's damage bonus is nice and simple: +5% damage per attack attempted (this is, in fact, completely independent of hit chance!), but only 5% of the weapon dice, not the static modifier, since that's unaffected by crits. So the Champion needs 20 attacks to get (with GWF style) 8.333... bonus damage. That gives us an expected number of attempted attacks as being 20(18/8.333...) = 43.2 attack rolls. Allowing for a few OAs and other such things, call that about 20 rounds' worth of attacks.
So that means, every single rest, short or long, just for the Champion to keep up with the Battle Master, you should be getting about 20 rounds of combat. And this is at a point of maximum favorability to the Champion, with multiple objectively false assumptions that lower the threshold (e.g. the BM isn't saving those dice for crits).
Do any groups have an average of 20 rounds of combat per rest, consistently? I would be surprised to hear that even the most dogged, diehard groups manage an average of 15 rounds of combat for every single rest they take.
And then remember that spellcasters, other than Warlock, are mostly independent of short rests, and have much leverage to try to avoid taking more rests--despite this tilting the balance even more in their favor. 5.5e made a small gesture in the opposite direction by adding Mastery Properties and making them inaccessible without taking at least one level of a primary-martial class (Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, or Rogue).
I mean, I would argue it is also at least partially on the designers, for having repeatedly said things which, with the final rules in front of us, we can clearly see are false. That doesn't exculpate the folks who continued to repeat such things despite their falsity being demonstrable though.
Oh, several ways. One problem that cropped up very early was the lack of delta between the totally clueless rube and the absolute master. IIRC, a completely untrained commoner had something like a 25% chance to Bluff Asmodeus himself, while the most proficient master (Expertise, maxed Cha), acting solely on her own abilities without supernatural aid...still had a 25% or 20% chance to fail, something like that.
A second problem I cited before the game was even published was the rampant over-use of Advantage and Disadvantage. Because it is a benefit(/detriment) dead end, once you have even one source of Advantage, you can just...stop caring. At worst, you'll just roll normally, and usually you'll roll much better. Because there is no other way to improve your results, apart from spellcasting which has been breaking the rules of BA from the beginning, you end up with GMs lacking the tools to handle a situation where someone should have a more substantial bonus than just Advantage (or a more substantial penalty than just Disadvantage), but because the player has a feature they got three levels ago that grants them Advantage, well, you can't do anything about it.
A third way is, well, as folks have just been saying in this thread, fighting the same enemies for 6, 8, 10 levels? Where your numbers improved by a nearly-imperceptible 1-3 points? That no longer feels like being on a treadmill--it feels like standing still. At least the treadmill gave the feeling of motion! 5e, both versions, give the feeling of not really getting anywhere. And why shouldn't they feel so? Most games end before 12th level. You'll be able to increase one ability score (edit: I meant "modifier") by two points, and your Proficiency bonus will increase by...two points. Meaning, the things you're supposed to be utterly amazing at doing...you're all of +4 better at. Not even as much impact as Advantage (equiv. to +5 on average), which is handed out like candy.
5e has good ideas. I'd be an idiot to say otherwise. But it is a significant overcorrection in many ways, and now, over a decade in, folks are feeling it. I'm quite well convinced that 6e will look very similar to 13th Age--mostly because 5e is "3e with the numbers toned down", and 6e is going to end up being a synthesis of 4e and 5e, trying to pare back the overcorrections without going overboard in the process.
That folks are feeling it is part of why I say that there will not be a decade of 5.5e. I don't expect to see it last more than five years before we start hearing credible leaks about playtesting for 6e.
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