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

[SteveC]

Who'd have thought that giving players everything they want without limits, risk, or real challenge could possibly be bad for a game?

"19 out of 20 toddlers polled wanted more candy. You should see the candy options we're including! Polls don't lie!"

Are there any players complaining at the moment? I see a lot of DMs potentially having kittens, but players? With 5E I typically see players complain when the DM puts house rules into play, but base rules are designed with them in mind.

 

[Ibrandul]

Are there any players complaining at the moment? I see a lot of DMs potentially having kittens, but players? With 5E I typically see players complain when the DM puts house rules into play, but base rules are designed with them in mind.

Some of them. A couple of my players have become pretty deeply unhappy with the unlosability of 5e in recent years.

 

[Quickleaf]

Are there any players complaining at the moment? I see a lot of DMs potentially having kittens, but players? With 5E I typically see players complain when the DM puts house rules into play, but base rules are designed with them in mind.

So, if you're having fun and your players are having fun, nothing I say matters.

But, I think the answer is yes. Yes, players are complaining. They have been complaining for some time. I can't tell you how prevalent it is. I've stopped going to Reddit because I just don't get much from it these days, but years ago there were a steady stream of players saying "Our game/DM is too easy." Ok, I found a more recent example for you: Players keep saying my combats are too easy.

 

[James Gasik]

Ok, so, as far as condition tracking goes, I highly doubt 2024 will be as bad as 4e was when it came to the various conditions someone could be inflicted with. And my group handled it the same way I do to this day- we bought a ton of different colored pipe cleaners at Hobby Lobby and made little colored rings, each color-coded to a different condition (bloodied is red, dazed is blue, stunned is black, brown is prone, and so on). And you just put the ring on the mini.

As for Theatre of the Mind players, back in the dawn time before I switched to using battlemaps and minis exclusively, I had a white board that I used to keep track of these details. I had a nice magnetic one and a bunch of different colored magnets to help track things.

To this day, the most annoying part of being a DM is tracking individual monster hit points, because my groups absolutely refuse to focus fire on anything, lol. That isn't to say an AoE "save ends" style effect like Slow isn't obnoxious to track, but that's not exactly anything a new problem.

Certainly, 2024 could make DMing easier, but I don't feel that it's become more difficult than it's ever been before. Though you know, that's just my opinion.

 

[haakon1]

I like 5E, it's my favorite edition so far with 3.5 a close second … But 3.5 is second because it just stopped working after about level 14 or so.

I don’t mind playing 5e. Doesn’t enthuse me or annoy me much. It’s been 20 years since I played AD&D and more than a decade since 4e, so by default 5e seems to be my second favorite, perhaps a tie with PF1.

I much prefer 3.5e (Core rules only), and I agree it needs a level cap. E6 says at 6th, you say 14, I think maybe 12, but yeah, a cap is widely advocated.

5E could use a tune-up, after 10 years a lot of lessons have been learned. It's time for a refresh. But, as you said, a steady stream of income from DDB, VTT, or whatever could ease the pressure off of making another release for a long time.

OK. If 5.24 is a minor change, and becomes mostly the forever edition, that’s the most I could ask for from an edition change/“update”. Other than just not doing edition changes.

 

[tetrasodium]

Not sure why it's only on the DM to "keep track" of any of these things. IME the whole table can get involved in "keeping track". 5e is still a LONG way off of many other editions in things that you gotta track.

The GM tracks those status conditions because nearly all of the points raised wind up being attached to individual monsters rather than an area on the grid and based on every single UA we saw showing us a shovel to lower the bar so those status effects can be applied to many one off monsters thankss to lowering the already on the ground level low bar even further by explicitly making it RAW that PCs can chop up their attack chain to move around & drag things out with the option to engage in anime Jiiiiiiiiiiiii☆ pushing for a status update before deciding what to do with the next explicitly allowed decision point in their attack chain.

Alternately... I don't know if you are somehow implying that you find success in handing players statblocks for monsters & just checking out to let the players run both sides of the combat for you with good results. In my experience even stuff like "I can't reach it from here... It has 50ft of movement bob, move the $monster so it can attack Alice" tends to result in bob saying "that would be an AoO " when the monster takes the 15 foot path that exposes it to one or more AoOs rather than a logical result more often than not. I don't expect that to. I don't expecrt your experience to replicate across many tables if you are suggesting this method be used

☆ anime/Japanese (uncomfortable ssssttttttaaaarrrrrrreeeeeeee more friendly to phonetically drawing out.

 

[haakon1]

Not sure why it's only on the DM to "keep track" of any of these things. IME the whole table can get involved in "keeping track". 5e is still a LONG way off of many other editions in things that you gotta track.

Some players may help, but not all. Some anecdotes…

One of my players - who’s been in my 3.5e game for 20 years, and is currently DMing his own 3.5e game - still gets confused over how many actions he can take in a round. He often tries to do about 1.5 rounds worth because he gets so excited.

Another player in my other campaign, who’s played for about 5 years now, sometimes gets confused by things like the difference between and ability score and its modifier, e.g., a 14 versus the +2.

A guy I used to play with was rolling d12 instead of d20 for many sessions.

 

[Oofta]

I’ve been running the Yawning Portal version of Against the Giants for a four-PC party of characters at the level suggested by the module, and I have tried as hard as I possibly can to kill them without changing the module or pulling shenanigans, which was the deal from the get-go (the players wanted a more challenging and more deadly campaign than our last one)—and they have consistently stomped enormous battles way beyond what CR says they should be able to handle. And it’s not because I’m playing the monsters poorly (many of them are 5e sack-of-HP-witha-stick giants).

I used to love running and playing 5e until this experience made me realize that all the battle tactics and carefully planned turns ultimately boil down to the DM deciding whether the players win or lose—because unless the DM puts a thumb on the scale, the players will always win. I fear 5.5e exacerbates that “feature” of the game (though I still hold out a fool’s hope that the new MM will boost the monsters all around to match the undeniable player power creep). If so, I plan to start searching for groups that want to play a different game, because as a player I want to believe my tactical choices matter, and frankly I don’t anymore.

I don't use modules but my general impression is that encounters are always targeted at the lowest common denominator. They're targeted at players who don't know what they're doing, don't synergize, don't have any concept of decent tactics. The other potential issue is the 5 minute workday that's plagued pretty much every edition. If they can always get a long rest after every fight or two you really need to kick up the threat level a few notches.

I don't know why they don't cover this in modules, but you have always needed to adjust the difficulty level for your group. It's not that hard to do and it's not the fault of the system, even if the module should be providing options. There simply is no one size fits all.

You can increase difficulty multiple ways, add more monsters and make sure the don't show up in fireball formation and/or in waves. Set up little goals like the guy in the back is going over to what looks like an alarm for reinforcements.

If you don't want to do that, I simply add pluses to AC, attack bonus and damage. I make sure the enemy has effective weapons or can force the PCs into somewhere that their weapons are effective. Also consider just adding attacks you would think are thematically relevant. For example give giants a sweeping attack that targets multiple creatures in an arc. Give them a charge attack something like the fire giant dreadnought's charge attack.

I also use the gritty rest rules, a short rest is overnight, a long rest is several days. I typically have between 4 and 6 fights between long rests.

I've run multiple groups now to level 20, sometimes they stomp on my encounters but just as often or more often I stomp on the party. Difficulty level is always in the hands of the DM.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

For us, just increasing long rest to one whole day, instead of one night made the game way harder and more satisfying.
No fireball after fireball. No shield literally every round.

 

[SteveC]

So, if you're having fun and your players are having fun, nothing I say matters.

But, I think the answer is yes. Yes, players are complaining. They have been complaining for some time. I can't tell you how prevalent it is. I've stopped going to Reddit because I just don't get much from it these days, but years ago there were a steady stream of players saying "Our game/DM is too easy." Ok, I found a more recent example for you: Players keep saying my combats are too easy.

I sort of want to call shenanigans on this, as I think players more want the illusion of difficulty than actual difficulty. But if actual players in a campaign want it to be more difficult, isn't that just the DM's job? I mean I did a quick google of "how to make 5E more difficult" and there were many suggestions.

Anytime I see threads about DM houserules, they tend to be about making the game harder. "Long rests take a month, short rests a week. And adventures have to be completed in hours." I've seen that one a bit, and that will make the game more challenging.

I am sure there are some players who legitimately do want more challenge (people do like to play combat as war in campaigns) but I really suspect that a couple of sessions of "we're going to use Hackmaster crit tables!" might show that to be more in theory than reality.