Vaalingrade
Legend
"You have gained expertise in that skill you didn't want expertise in the last 6 levels"
D&D 5E What (if anything) do you find "wrong" with 5E?
Asking the DM is what makes the game great. Specificity is overrated.
Especially considering specificity of a rule you don't like means you're stuck with it even more than if the rules allowed the DM to change it.
I mean for pete's sake... we've now seen dozens upon dozens of rules that people think are wrong or bad. Do any of you think the game would be improved if the game didn't account for this by telling everyone to just change the rules they don't like and instead said "Nope, these are the rules! Use 'em or find a different game!"
Most of all of our rules changes or things we find wrong in this thread are countered and completely opposite to what other people also say are wrong. Which means you can't ALL get the game you want. It is impossible. Someone will always find fault with the rules because everyone is on opposite sides of every decision. Which means the BEST THING we can do is take the rules we have... and then change the ones we don't like into ones we do. And there is nothing wrong with that.
WotC gave us 98% of completely workable rules for playing D&D. The fact that we might choose to change the other 2% to something our particular playstyle might prefer is a GODSEND, not something to be pissed about.
Shardstone
Hero
Your percentages aren't accurate nor can they be, and only exist to make the opposition look stupid.
As for the rest of your post, there's a lot of room between Ask DM and having more specificity. You reducing it to a binary and saying that people can't agree on things so there shouldn't be any actual new rules is logically nonsensical, and requires you to jump between extremes to make sense. C'mon man. You're smart, I read your posts. Why rely on such inherently bad-faith arguments?
Specificity means people come to the game table with the same expectations about how the particular rule works. Hard to see that as overrated, honestly.
More importantly though, "Asking the DM" is still there as an option, even with specificity. It's a false dichotomy to say "Asking your DM to change something for your specific table" means we can't have clear rules about things.
Edit: Ninja'd by @Shardstone
I would love if they moved toward more natural language. But I think they won’t because 1) some people seem to get anxious when rules aren’t 100% codified (as seen in the existence of sage advice) and 2) people like the puzzle of finding particular rules interactions for the sake of optimization.
This mentality was popularized by wotc itself from 3e on and is now just an assumed part of “modern” game design. If anything, people seem to want more codification.
Vaalingrade
Legend
98% is incredibly generous.
And also, if this was the best way to design a game, every video game would be Roblox and RPG maker. Designers need to pick a lane, not shrug at every turn.
Medic
Neutral Evil
Ondath
Hero
Sadly I agree. But in that case they could at least fully commit to the bit and present the rules with the precision they're supposed to have, and keyword things so they're easier to reference. Even a 3.5-style glossary would've been helpful.
Oofta
Legend
Specificity is frequently just an illusion that makes the DM's life more difficult. Have a chart that gives you specific numbers for 10 scenarios? Guess what? If the DM thought the scenario was going to come up, they probably looked at the chart to find the difficulty they wanted so they could describe the scene correctly. What's even worse, and can bring the flow of the game to a screeching halt, is when the DM describes a scene and somebody* says "There's a chart for that!" Then you have to dig through page after page, often in different books, trying to find the correct chart.
That wall Grognard the Barbarian needs to climb to rescue the prince? By the time you look it up, you've lost momentum and flow. Not only that, but the wall is completely made up, the numbers on the chart are arbitrary. Specificity only gives the illusion of accuracy.
Edit: all the charts in the world will never cover all the options anyway.
*Usually Bob, because that's just the way Bob rolls.
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