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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6782659" data-attributes="member: 996">No assumption, you came right out and said it.Because they're not a wound system, at all.  They also fail as model of climate change, for similar reasons. ;P  For any given thing an RPG can do, there are many games that do it better than D&D.  There's not exactly a shortage of games that do everything better than D&D.  Heck, even if D&D, itself, goes and does enough things better than it had been, it gets labeled 'not D&D.'  Quality of sub-systems just isn't a major issue.5e starts to feel pretty well padded by 5th level or so, sure.  The level you run/play it at seems to make a big difference in perceptions.  I've run mostly Encounters and 1st-level intro games, so I'm acutely aware of how randomly deadly it can be at 1st level.  You've finished whole adventure paths with it, you've seen how easy it gets as it progresses.Until he was raised, which was fairly readily available at that level, of course. There always are some folks who won't hear a bad thing said about a current edition, and others who can't be anything but critical, deserved or not.  In between, the rest of us try to have discussions.  When that failed catastrophically, we got the edition war.  Nothing that bad's going on. Maybe.  But it's not consistent.  If the design is just to be easy and survivable, why make 1st level characters so fragile?  IMHO, the design is mainly one of the things they said it was:  an attempt to capture the feel of the classic game.  That includes characters dying easily at 1st level and being blaze about supposedly deadly danger at higher level.  The reasons for the latter have shifted a bit, but, by and large, 5e has succeeded in that design goal.Of those, only 'faster' and 'simpler' were design goals, and the latter contingent on choice of modules.  Well, 4e only a little more lethal overall, and less so at low level.  3e & earlier, more lethal out of the lower levels.  AD&D and earlier had much better saves at high level, and death was readily rendered a temporary inconvenience.  So, no it's not a simple 'easier by design,' it's shooting for the same feel by slightly different means, and leaving most of it to the DM.  The DM can coddle even fragile 1st level characters and make them feel invincible, or erase optimized high level parties at his whim.That seems quick to me, for a serious/engaging/challenging 'set piece' encounter, anyway.One or two levels will make a difference.  Really you should already be seeing the difference, especially with the Druid (getting 'knocked out of wildshape,' btw, is nbd).  Absolutely.  But if you go all heal-bot with it, you've thrown away a lot of versatility.  If you've just hit 3rd, you've only just started to actually play 5e.  It's not really until you're well quit of apprentice tier that you can say you've given it even a small chance, let alone a fair one.  If at all possible, I'd suggest starting future campaigns at higher than 1st level if you really want to give it a fair chance.  And, definitely try several full-caster classes, at least one of which isn't a heal bot.  Wot no DM screen?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Wouldn't run 5e without one.But, but... the book was begging for it! Yep. That's the paradigm.It's always possible they'll add more meaningful class choices to the 'advanced' game.There's no way you should feel forced into being a heal-bot in a Cleric where literally everyone can heal.  How the heck do you manage to snatch character deaths from the jaws of victory with a group like that.  You've got Druid Wildshape hp buffer, lay on hands, and Cure Wounds/Healing Word on multiple class lists.  WTF?  I guess you're just lacking in DPR, so fights drag on?You're also supposed to speed through the first few levels very quickly, the exp chart is skewed that way.  If you go longish, full-'day' sessions, you could even do a level per session, in theory.  Then he's "doin' it wrong."  ;P  Yes, I'm aware of the irony.  But, really, the only reason to run 5e "by the book" is because you like the results.  (Well, and during the playtest, to actually /test/ it, but the playtest is over - as an aside, I didn't get out of 'playtest mode' the first time I ran 5e, and the results were disastrous, as soon as I got back into the old-school swing of 'screw the book' and got behind a DM screen, it was fine... well, not fine, HotDQ was still pretty awful...)Yeah, you're definitely not getting a fair chance to see what 5e can do.You should want to run a game that's fun for your players.  That may or may not include killing their characters off constantly.  If your players don't like frequent PC deaths, you have to tweak the game harder at low level than at high - if they do like the feel of constant jeopardy, you have to tweak it a lot harder at high level than low.It ratchets down.  By 5th it really, really should be gone, but you should be noticing it tapering off at 3rd.</blockquote>

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