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

[tetrasodium]

Honestly inflicting actual conditions would be less load IMO. Effects without conditions like Sap and Slow will be the biggest increase in load

No not really. There is a reason why spellcasters who inflict conditions tend to do so at notable cost with either an area of the map that can be marked off where everything is affected or notable cost with limited numbers of affected targets. The weapon masteries & things like cunning strike however are added to at will abilities at no meaningful cost and rules have been changed to explicitly allow PCs with multiple attacks to run around the battlefield dropping conditions like oprah drops cars

defining waiting in line as the struggle is the problem here… the challenge to the players should not be a DM taking forever to decide what the monsters do


then challenging Superman should be real easy

That sounds more like ‘you do not have to worry about throwing too much at them’

The trouble is threading the line between challenging and an undeniable execution. PCs are so durable & insulated from risk that the dividing line between those two is adjacent to the Plank Length.

 

[DEFCON 1]

i would submit that just about every single one of those things is compounded by complexity.

Complex games take longer to prep for.
Complex games demand more focus on the mechanical load, limiting the time you have for being creative.
Complex games mean there are more player options you might have to say no to (looking at you 3/3.5e Prestige Classes)

Et cetera, etc.

Those are all true. But I still would disagree that the complexity would be the tipping point or cause.

If the desire to prep a game as a DM ranks 7 on a scale of 1-10 and the new 5E24 books raises that to an 8 because it's now "more complex"... the issue getting a person to DM isn't that raise of 1 point of complexity... it's getting the person to make the jump up to 7 in the first place.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The fact you attempt to "both sides" this argument and yet only quote me really lets your bias show.

I disagree more with your side than @overgeeked 's, but my opinion doesn't make the entire argument more or less "all or nothing" on both sides.

 

[JohnSnow]

Those are all true. But I still would disagree that the complexity would be the tipping point or cause.

If the desire to prep a game as a DM ranks 7 on a scale of 1-10 and the new 5E24 books raises that to an 8 because it's now "more complex"... the issue getting a person to DM isn't that raise of 1 point of complexity... it's getting the person to make the jump up to 7 in the first place.

No argument. But we can also recognize and object if we feel things are going in what we feel is the wrong direction.

If adjusting the game 1 point is what the change does, the situation might be: “I had a complexity of 7; I wanted 5, but would settle for 6. And what they gave me was 8.”

Make sense?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I was talking about the underlying principle of only caring about yourself, I was not implying that ‘society at large’ and ‘D&D DMs’ are identical groups

Okay. Well my point remains that if (general) you have solved your own problem and you wish to help other people as well... the logical thing to do is to merely state how you have solved your own problem and be an example for other people... not maintain and display a constant annoyance towards other other people who aren't going along with your solution.

@Micah Sweet does this all the time-- when someone has an issue with WotC-written material, Micah points out that Level Up has solved that issue for them and it might solve the issue for the other person. Which I think is exactly how it should be, because it allows the other person to decide whether to take Micah up on their suggestion or not.

Basically, if someone is happy with their game... it's more worthwhile to spread their happiness to others, NOT to voluntarily make themselves unhappy because they think if they just add their negativity to the "WotC sucks" pile, it will actually accomplish something worthwhile. I mean it does accomplish something... it helps maintain a festering pile of anger in each person caught in that vicious cycle... but I wouldn't say that's helpful by any stretch.

 

[DEFCON 1]

No argument. But we can also recognize and object if we feel things are going in what we feel is the wrong direction.

If adjusting the game 1 point is what the change does, the situation might be: “I had a complexity of 7; I wanted 5, but would settle for 6. And what they gave me was 8.”

Make sense?

Sure. But at that point I don't see why anyone would have even considered the possibility that a revised version of 5E that ranks a 7 in terms of people wanting to DM it would somehow drop to a 5 and see a new influx of people stepping up to the plate who wouldn't have considered it before. I didn't know what kinds of revisions WotC was originally intending... but changing things so much that people would now want to DM on rules changes alone never crossed my mind.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You apparently do not do improvisation. If you think improvisors make their scenes that easy for themselves, I can assure you, you are surely mistaken, LOL. There's nothing more enjoyable than lobbing out offers to your scene partners that make them have to scramble to keep up. And in this particular case... you think the DM will just hand things to the players on a silver platter? Heh heh... no fricking way.

DMs know when players are trying to game the system to make things simple for themselves. So even if you skip the dice and just had the DM make arbitrary decisions on whether things succeed or fail based on dramatic tension and narrative conceit... believe me the PCs would still find themselves up the creek without a paddle. And in fact... they'd probably find themselves in even more hot water if the DM could just make narrative choices and not need to rely on dice at all, rather than the other way around.

The players are not my "scene partners", and game is not Night at the Improv to me. As you yourself said earlier, this problem is a combination of a strong mismatch between what WotC thinks players want and what the complaining DMs want out of D&D, combined with what is to me a clear initiative to push DMs towards signing up for D&D Beyond and it's digital tools. If you agree with WotC on this there's simply nothing to say.

 

[Charlaquin]

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

That hasn’t been the case for a long time. The exact mechanics vary, but most editions have a “dying” state at or below zero HP before a character dies. And every edition has ways of resurrecting characters if they do die. Most of the time, running out of HP only temporarily takes a PC out of play, and many DMs choose to never take a PC out of play permanently. More importantly, even if 0 HP always led to immediate and irreversible character death, that still wouldn’t mean that it’s the DM’s job to kill PCs. It would just be more common as a potential consequence of combat.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The players are not my "scene partners", and game is not Night at the Improv to me. As you yourself said earlier, this problem is a combination of a strong mismatch between what WotC thinks players want and what the complaining DMs want out of D&D, combined with what is to me a clear initiative to push DMs towards signing up for D&D Beyond and it's digital tools. If you agree with WotC on this there's simply nothing to say.

Of course! But then again, there's nothing for ANY of us to say. It's not like everyone who has spent all these months saying "The D&D rules SHOULD have been X..." are actually accomplishing anything. There was never any concrete point to it, other than venting.

Which is fine. People vent at WotC for not giving them what they want... I vent at those people for thinking WotC should actually consider doing it.

 

[tetrasodium]

You apparently do not do improvisation. If you think improvisors make their scenes that easy for themselves, I can assure you, you are surely mistaken, LOL. There's nothing more enjoyable than lobbing out offers to your scene partners that make them have to scramble to keep up. And in this particular case... you think the DM will just hand things to the players on a silver platter? Heh heh... no fricking way.

DMs know when players are trying to game the system to make things simple for themselves. So even if you skip the dice and just had the DM make arbitrary decisions on whether things succeed or fail based on dramatic tension and narrative conceit... believe me the PCs would still find themselves up the creek without a paddle. And in fact... they'd probably find themselves in even more hot water if the DM could just make narrative choices and not need to rely on dice at all, rather than the other way around.

"scene partners" What the game are you talking about since it is clearly not d&d? I don't think I've ever seen a TTRPG game use that sort of terminology and that includes games like fate where "scene" is a mechanical term*.

*Fate Core pg240