D&D General 5.5 and making the game easier for players and harder for DMs

[Charlaquin]

Then why do PCs have hit points?

Because resource management is an intrinsic element of gameplay…?

 

[KYRON45]

It is not 8 wolves. It is 8 wolfes on top of the orcs with status effects and zones and so on. You compare apples to oranges.

Really. That whole topic is clickbait at best. Fearmongering probably describes it better.

Because resource management is an intrinsic element of gameplay…?

And once that resource runs out the PC is dead. Not being dead is a key element of the game.

 

[TwoSix]

I wonder why it's anything more detailed than "Describe To Me How Awesome You Are As You Win" the RPG.

Because it's not as awesome if you just declare it.

 

[JohnSnow]

Because resource management is an intrinsic element of gameplay…?

But if there isn’t a meaningful consequence when they run out, what exactly are you managing?

 

[O-Castitatis-Lilium]

I'm not sure why they focused on Player's Handbook so much, to be perfectly fair. I'm not saying you can't draw a conclusion, what' I'm saying is that to only read part one of a three part book series and assuming you know how it all ends in the final chapter of the third book just doesn't feel genuine to me. Could it be as this thread puts it, sure maybe, but can we say for certain, not really. We still have two other books to go through. The Player's Handbook from what I watched and read about on the internet, is the vast majority of it is just Xanathar's and Tasha's all shoved into one book now, with some tweaking here and there; on top of some new features that seem rather out of place all things considered. Look, I made the same conclusion at first, I said it in my last post; that they were focused more on how powerful they wanted to make players, and not how much work the DM is going to need to put in to balance encounters and the like for those players. Taking a moment though to understand that of course they are only going to talk about the Players Handbook stuff in these videos, because the videos are about the Player's Handbook; as well as remembering that they have two other books coming out, I have set my assumptions aside to see how this goes, for now anyways.

 

[Oofta]

The new DMG is out in what, November? It only makes sense that they're pushing the book that will be out first. Even then only 1 in 5 people on average need to purchase it. Why would they not focus on the PHB that literally everyone at the table focus on?

As far as previews and whatnot, the structure and style of play is largely decided by player classes and abilities. The other books can have a much smaller subset of play testers, there's no reason to go to the expense of a public play test for those books.

 

[CapnZapp]

It's not contempt, its actual fact.

OSR games are not written for the purpose of the DM/adventure/world trying to kill the PCs.

The point isn't to kill the PCs, but to challenge them.

Please understand the difference.

 

[JohnSnow]

I'm not sure why they focused on Player's Handbook so much, to be perfectly fair. I'm not saying you can't draw a conclusion, what' I'm saying is that to only read part one of a three part book series and assuming you know how it all ends in the final chapter of the third book just doesn't feel genuine to me. Could it be as this thread puts it, sure maybe, but can we say for certain, not really. We still have two other books to go through. The Player's Handbook from what I watched and read about on the internet, is the vast majority of it is just Xanathar's and Tasha's all shoved into one book now, with some tweaking here and there; on top of some new features that seem rather out of place all things considered. Look, I made the same conclusion at first, I said it in my last post; that they were focused more on how powerful they wanted to make players, and not how much work the DM is going to need to put in to balance encounters and the like for those players. Taking a moment though to understand that of course they are only going to talk about the Players Handbook stuff in these videos, because the videos are about the Player's Handbook; as well as remembering that they have two other books coming out, I have set my assumptions aside to see how this goes, for now anyways.

That’s fair, but part of the problem here is WotC’s track record when it comes to the phrase “Trust us.”

What was the useful material solving these cognitive load issues for DMs in the 2014 books? It’s not like the game was brand-new, so much as the more directly-connected follow-up edition to 3.5e. More interesting monsters are great: add in 1 or 2 iconic abilities, but for the love of Mystra, don’t over-design them.

And yet, so much of the status effect cognitive load at the table stuff that we ALL knew about did not get addressed. That means either they didn’t try to fix it, or they couldn’t.

That hardly breeds confidence.

 

[Minigiant]

It is not 8 wolves. It is 8 wolfes on top of the orcs with status effects and zones and so on. You compare apples to oranges.

Really. That whole topic is clickbait at best. Fearmongering probably describes it better.

It's overworrying.

Even Sly Flourish says he could be wrong about all of it.

But it's just DMs worrying about the martial turns being as long as the casters.

But at a certain point, either every class gets to be interesting or they all must be boring.

It's only fair and DMs must choose.

Bored Players or Long turns?

 

[Oofta]

That’s fair, but part of the problem here is WotC’s track record when it comes to the phrase “Trust us.”

What was the useful material solving these cognitive load issues for DMs in the 2014 books? It’s not like the game was brand-new, so much as the more directly-connected follow-up edition to 3.5e. More interesting monsters are great: add in 1 or 2 iconic abilities, but for the love of Mystra, don’t over-design them.

And yet, so much of the status effect cognitive load at the table stuff that we ALL knew about did not get addressed. That means either they didn’t try to fix it, or they couldn’t.

That hardly breeds confidence.

We don't have to rely on decade old monster design to know what direction WotC is taking. Meanwhile it seems like pretty much everyone agrees that many of the 2014 monsters were underpowered including WotC. We need to look at things like the glory of giants book to see where they're headed.

That and we just don't know what February will bring. But if monsters are too easy, there's plenty of ways to beef them up. That's another thread though.