D&D 5E (2024) This Feels Like 4E

[tetrasodium]

oh, i apologize, i might not of paid as much attention as i should've when reading it and of gotten wires crossed on the message of your post, you hilighted the phrase 'the rules are there to enable heroic fiction' in reef's message and that combined with the video made me come away with the impression that yes, having a massive arsenal you've mastered that you switch between as applicable is a fantasy that players have the desire to play out.

I wasn't as clear in 105 as it felt while typing it so no reason to fret . That bold bit is the problem in 5e's implementation. It does away with the reasons swapping from one primary to a second primary weapon for the fight were sometimes situationally optimal & changed it so swapping between them repeatedly throughout any given fight waspretty much always optimal no matter the situation.

I have no problem with the golf bag & have posted positively about it in the past

You know what's funny? After running 5e for a long time now and just "magic weapons bypass it all," I actually started re-implementing some of those old 2e/3e immunities and resistances. I wanted the players to have to think strategically about threats, to sweat if they didn't have silver against lycanthropes.

The problem I found is that if something's resistant, the players don't look for an alternative. They just hit it more, and if they lose because they were only doing half damage... well they don't think there was anything else they can do.

Once something is immune, then they start thinking about silver or non-facetank ways to deal with the threat.



As to the other point of juggling weapons mid-combat, I can see the fictional fantasy of a hero smashing a foe with a big mace to knock them over, tossing the weapon aside and leaping atop the downed enemy to stab them with twin blades. It makes me think of a Marvel movie, but I'm sure there are suitably action-ey fantasy movies that've done something like that. The idea of it definitely bothered me originally, but I guess I can see how it could seem reasonable to some when I imagine it like an action movie.

To say that it's not intentional, not by design, after folk posting proof that WotC seems to have said that it is by design.. I'm not sure what you gain by the continued denial?

That bold bit was 100% my experience whenever I tried things like that in 5e, total outrage if it mattered and resistant to the very idea as if it were calling down some flavor of cheating rugpull no matter how clear obvious or explicitly stated it was. It's easy to introduce something new & cool when it lets players do something they couldn't do before (ie 3.5 flametouched iron/byshek). That ease of introducing new things goes right out the window when it's not even relevant until the players are complaining they have been nerfed.

By contrast my 3.5 & PF players eagerly made use of special materials because losing 2/5/7/10/etc or whatever points from each swing was simply too great a hit to ignore since it multiplied with multiple hits. Half damage doesn't care if you are making one two three or six attacks.

 

[tetrasodium]

I saw a similar thing in 3e/Pathfinder. If something has damage reduction don’t try to bypass it, just hit it with a weapon that does more damage.

There was a behind the curtain side bar that talked about setting appropriate values on pg300 of the 3.5 mm. I have an old post here that copies what it said, I'd be shocked if PF didn't have a similar bit of guidance somewhere but not going to hunt. Depending on how you built encounters & what kind of gear your players had it's entirely possible that just rolling with it using default gear was still optimal or they had gear that would be good enough by design☆ weapon. A hypothetical+1 flaming longsword might not hit as often as a roughly equally valued +2 longdsword, but it would reliably apply the elemental die to pretty much everything not sporting fire resistance & even then it would be really odd to see it also sporting DR that nullifies the slashing too.

Spoiler: ☆3.5 DMG292

Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage
from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany
the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk’s stunning, and
injury type disease. Damage reduction does not negate touch
attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack (such as fire
damage from a fire elemental), or energy drains. Nor does it affect
poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact.
Attacks that deal no damage because of the target’s damage reduction do not disrupt spells.

Whilre looking for that I Also noticed this gem on 3.5 dmg 283 about the golfbag as a concept

Spoiler

BEHIND THE CURTAIN: SPECIAL WEAPONS MATERIALS
Each of the special materials described in this section has a definite
game effect. Some creatures, such as fey, have damage reduction
based on their creature type or core concept. Some are resistant to all
but a special type of damage, such as that dealt by evil-aligned
weapons or bludgeoning weapons. Others are vulnerable to weapons
of a particular material. Fey tend to be susceptible to cold iron.
Combating golems is best done with adamantine weapons.

Characters may choose to carry several different types of weapons,
depending upon the campaign and types of creatures they most
commonly encounter. Some may use silversheen, described on page
266, designed to temporarily add the property of alchemical silver to a
weapon. Its cost was carefully considered so as not to let silversheen
overshadow weapons actually containing alchemical silver. You’ll also
notice that cold ironsheen is not mentioned. This is intentional. Cold
iron’s core attribute is its resistance to magic. Making a magic item
that mimics this attribute undermines its concept.

If you were giving out lots of elemental weapons (or allowing their crafting) or not setting dr/resist high enough it's entirely plausible that your players weight the cost/benefit of swapping to another weapon that would ignore it & decided the cost of doing so was greater than eating the DR each attack

 

[Neonchameleon]

I saw a similar thing in 3e/Pathfinder. If something has damage reduction don’t try to bypass it, just hit it with a weapon that does more damage.

On the other hand they absolutely love extra damage or triggered conditions despite it mathematically working out the same.

 

[Chaltab]

His "Players" are Professional Voice Actors engaged in putting on a massively profitable made for profit presentation intended for passive viewer consumption.

Are you suggesting that is the bar players should be expected to meet after choosing not to ring out during a pre-session zero casting call/contract negotiation?

Uh... what? I was just pointing out that he does a good job of making tactical combats. I think DMs can take inspiration from some of his encounters... I have no idea what his players (what's with the scare quotes?) being professional VAs have to do with anything.

 

[Distracted DM]

On the other hand they absolutely love extra damage or triggered conditions despite it mathematically working out the same.

Yup! We're just talking psychology here.

This is probably too simple of an example, but if you have two skeletons:
A has 40hp, and is vulnerable to bludgeoning damage
B has 20hp, and is resistant to all damage except bludgeoning

smacking A with a bludgeoning weapon is going to feel better, even if it's going to realistically be doing the same as smacking B, because with A you're exploiting its weakness.
That's without considering energy damage etc, but we can see why 5e went with A for skeletons instead of B.

Now what you could do is make a skeleton resistant to piercing, and vulnerable to bludgeoning. I've tried doing that, but ofc it means that dex character might need to adjust how they encounter future skeletons. maybe let go of the dagger for the moment and pick up the rusty scimitar that all 3e skeletons carried for some reason... or focus on other enemies if possible.

edit: I forgot to mention that some players will just keep on hitting the piercing-resistant skeleton with their dagger/rapier/etc because ... that's their weapon. They picture their character with a dagger, that's what they're gonna use even if it kills them.
This relates to what I said earlier, where things may need to be literally immune to a damage type to force players to think outside of their character identity and engage with the world on its own terms. I've found that this tends to be a positive learning experience, but YMMV.

 

[tetrasodium]

Uh... what? I was just pointing out that he does a good job of making tactical combats. I think DMs can take inspiration from some of his encounters... I have no idea what his players (what's with the scare quotes?) being professional VAs have to do with anything.

I can understand that but he's not doing that in a vacuum, that's the horrendous problem in using him as an example base rules or what is a reasonable target for the average gm with an average table. The average player is not a skilled actor with a strong financial incentive to make it work while giving back relevant improv that the gm can work off with the expectation of eager collaboration.

You brought up Mercer as a GM who "does a good job of making combats in 5E feel very tactical and using terrain", but he's a useless comparison because almost zero GMs can expect to hta table of skilled professional voice actors like him.

You mentioned players doing a bunch of things in various situations and biting a bunch of hooks, that's better than most references to him that don't even mention the players and just hold him up as some kind of default gold standard.... But you didn't mention the relevant professional training his players have, their financial incentive, or the hooks they gave him back in the moment and between sessions.

 

[Horwath]

I’m pretty sure that example is why it’s not agnostic. That just sounds like a nightmare to run to me. If players could do that, I’d switch over to the side who are against Masteries (and I currently love them)…

yes, we cannot have anything interesting for martials to do every turn. That is only for casters....

 

[Neonchameleon]

yes, we cannot have anything interesting for martials to do every turn. That is only for casters....

If only weapon juggling was interesting rather than repetitive and time consuming.

 

[MichaelSomething]

yes, we cannot have anything interesting for martials to do every turn. That is only for casters....

If you strongly discourage combat via high lethality and low rewards, players will stick to the much more intresting exploration and role-playing D&D was meant for!

 

[Reef]

yes, we cannot have anything interesting for martials to do every turn. That is only for casters....

I love martials. Prefer them to casters much of the time. So I’m certainly not sad to see them get interesting things. It’s one of the reasons I was glad to see Masteries.

But what you are suggesting is having fighter stop and choose a different mastery on every single weapon swing. That would cause so much slow down, it would be horrifying. Sure, casters may have more options in their tool belt, but even they only have to make one choice a round.