D&D 5E 5e - Just Missing the Mark

[Retreater]

Have you played Neverwinter?

My experience with Neverwinter has been strange. When I tried playing it on PC it was smooth, fun and seemed to capture the feel of 4e. But I couldn't get it to work with my controller, and I never felt at home with the mouse and keyboard control scheme (I'm a console gamer primarily). Then I got it for my Xbox One, and it runs like hot garbage. Staggering frame rates, incredibly long load times, and most confusing of all - it seems to be running a different version of the game with entirely different gameplay.

Since I can't get either version to work correctly, I don't play it.

 

[dave2008]

True. I could make 5e a great fit for my style of game with extensive house rules (which I have done for a previous campaign), but it amounts to re-writing the system when maybe a better fit already exists out there.

I've had to house rule every version of D&D I've played. 4e and 5e are about equal in that realm. However, the things from this list

"1. A broken CR system that creates boring or impossibly deadly encounters in equal measure.
2. A poor selection of official adventures to showcase a variety of campaigns.
3. Monsters that don't properly fulfill roles (in combat or fluff)
4. Undercooked tactical combat options
5. "Move and swing sword, cause damage" standard of combat
6. Inspiration, backgrounds not meaningful
7. A boring sameness throughout the whole game (between classes, levels, and monsters)"

Don't even warrant houserules. You just play the game like you want and it is really non-issue.

 

[Retreater]

I've had to house rule every version of D&D I've played. 4e and 5e are about equal in that realm. However, the things from this list

"1. A broken CR system that creates boring or impossibly deadly encounters in equal measure.
2. A poor selection of official adventures to showcase a variety of campaigns.
3. Monsters that don't properly fulfill roles (in combat or fluff)
4. Undercooked tactical combat options
5. "Move and swing sword, cause damage" standard of combat
6. Inspiration, backgrounds not meaningful
7. A boring sameness throughout the whole game (between classes, levels, and monsters)"

Don't even warrant houserules. You just play the game like you want and it is really non-issue.

I disagree. I have had to create house rules and my own content to get around these various issues. Here is a quick list of what I've done, and I'll be happy to go into more detail if anyone is interested:

1. Broken CR system. I fixed this by completely re-writing every monster that I used in the campaign encounters. I took my characters and averaged their vital statistics: HP, Save Bonuses, Attack Bonuses, AC, Saving Throws, etc. I then balanced the monsters they faced based on the abilities of the characters. So if I wanted a monster to last for 4 rounds, I based its HP off of 6 or so average hits from the party. Its damage potential, I balanced it against the average AC and HP of the party. I have a feeling that the designers of 5E didn't even take this basic level of care in planning out the monsters.

2. Poor selection of official adventures. I ran into this issue after the travesty that was Storm King's Thunder. When we had nothing left to play, I began writing my own adventure with the goal of publishing on the DM's Guild. We started playtesting. That's when I discovered that the CR system was broken (after 2 TPKs in three levels) and necessitated in all the changes I'm listing here.

3. Monsters need purpose. So I added some cool abilities to the monsters. Like the ability to push the characters away or grapple them and actually have a mechanical impact on the game (which isn't present in 5E). Others I gave dangerous ranged attacks (if the goal was to have an artillery "glass canon" creature) or the ability to soak damage and regenerate (if it was a bruiser). Monsters weren't designed in 5E to serve a tactical purpose. I changed that in my system. How do I know they weren't designed this way? I created a spreadsheet that attempted to classify creatures by level and role: is it a tough creature with a rock-solid AC, is it a high-damaging threat with an Achilles' Heel? The project had to be abandoned because there was no rhyme or reason to the design.

4. Undercooked tactical combat. By adding in cool, flavorful abilities on the monsters, this really brought life to the combats. The party was facing down a warren of goblin slaves (minions), while duergar soldiers pushed and prodded them into the path of a rolling war wagon. The war wagon shot mortars of crowd controlling poison gas, obscuring the sight of the party as the duergar overlord fired a hand canon into their last known position. Dangerous zones, shoving enemies under the treads of a war machine, the heroic feeling of cutting down multitudes of opponents - these are all things that don't happen in 5e, which made numerous set piece battles that will be long remembered by my group.

5. Move and swing sword. By giving the monsters more flavor and more abilities, the DM can raise the stakes. Climbing the war machine to get out of the poison gas and kicking away the goblins who are trying to pull you off, just so you have a better shot at the leader with the hand canon, this is so much more exciting than just chopping away hit points. But when the design paradigm of 5e is "higher level creatures just do more HP damage and can take more HP damage," you get a sameness in the game.

6. Inspiration. I made an alternate system for inspiration, which allowed it to be used to pull off battle maneuvers (similar to Encounter powers in 4E).

 

[dave2008]

I disagree. I have had to create house rules and my own content to get around these various issues. Here is a quick list of what I've done, and I'll be happy to go into more detail if anyone is interested:

My point was to change those things you don't need house rules. You can do it on the fly (at least that is what I find).

1. Broken CR system. I fixed this by completely re-writing every monster that I used in the campaign encounters. I took my characters and averaged their vital statistics: HP, Save Bonuses, Attack Bonuses, AC, Saving Throws, etc. I then balanced the monsters they faced based on the abilities of the characters. So if I wanted a monster to last for 4 rounds, I based its HP off of 6 or so average hits from the party. Its damage potential, I balanced it against the average AC and HP of the party. I have a feeling that the designers of 5E didn't even take this basic level of care in planning out the monsters.

The CR system works fine for a certain set of groups. It is fairly fast and simple and a good rule of thumb. Your approach, though more balanced for your group would have to be recalculated for every group and be adjusted each level as the PCs advance. And it still doesn't take into account player skill / group synergy. I just don't think that is realistic for a game. I've not played a lot of other games, but there is no edition of D&D that does this. I think you are asking to much. Now, I do have my own issues with CR and encounter design, but these are not them.

2. Poor selection of official adventures. I ran into this issue after the travesty that was Storm King's Thunder. When we had nothing left to play, I began writing my own adventure with the goal of publishing on the DM's Guild. We started playtesting. That's when I discovered that the CR system was broken (after 2 TPKs in three levels) and necessitated in all the changes I'm listing here.

I can't speak to official adventures as I don't play them. I know some think they are great and some think they are a mess. Regarding TPKs, I find this hard to understand as almost everyone who speaks up on these boards thinks 5e is D&D on easy mode. IF you go by the encounter guidelines and suggested CR you should almost never see a TPK. I think you a real outlier on this one.

3. Monsters need purpose. So I added some cool abilities to the monsters. Like the ability to push the characters away or grapple them and actually have a mechanical impact on the game (which isn't present in 5E). Others I gave dangerous ranged attacks (if the goal was to have an artillery "glass canon" creature) or the ability to soak damage and regenerate (if it was a bruiser). Monsters weren't designed in 5E to serve a tactical purpose. I changed that in my system. How do I know they weren't designed this way? I created a spreadsheet that attempted to classify creatures by level and role: is it a tough creature with a rock-solid AC, is it a high-damaging threat with an Achilles' Heel? The project had to be abandoned because there was no rhyme or reason to the design.

Pushing and grappling are standard combat actions that most , if not all, monsters can do RAW. You don't need all the rules tp be in the stat block. It is also completely within RAW to change weapons and armor and HP. You don't need to rewrite monsters to do any of these things. That being said, the monsters are, I agree, designed a little simple for my taste, and since I like making monsters I have posted over 200 custom monsters on these boards that do much of what your talking about. However, I truly believe that is a feature and not a bug in the system for 2 main reasons:

1) They work as is for a large group of people, most notably newcomers IMO
2) 5e puts a lot of weight on player and DM creativity - like older editions. You can do whatever you want - it just isn't spell out, but you do have a hose of guides to help you adjudicate situations. Some think this is a mistake, but having spent a lot of time playing and making monsters for 4e, I have come around (partially) to the 5e philosophy. All the time on the old WotC 4e boards people seemed constrained by the monster statblocks. They thought the monster could only do what is in the stat block - though not true; I think the origin of that viewpoint is the stat-block that tried to define everything.

4. Undercooked tactical combat. By adding in cool, flavorful abilities on the monsters, this really brought life to the combats. The party was facing down a warren of goblin slaves (minions), while duergar soldiers pushed and prodded them into the path of a rolling war wagon. The war wagon shot mortars of crowd controlling poison gas, obscuring the sight of the party as the duergar overlord fired a hand canon into their last known position. Dangerous zones, shoving enemies under the treads of a war machine, the heroic feeling of cutting down multitudes of opponents - these are all things that don't happen in 5e, which made numerous set piece battles that will be long remembered by my group.

see my answer to 3 above. I would just like to add you can have the same encounter you describe above in 5e.

5. Move and swing sword. By giving the monsters more flavor and more abilities, the DM can raise the stakes. Climbing the war machine to get out of the poison gas and kicking away the goblins who are trying to pull you off, just so you have a better shot at the leader with the hand canon, this is so much more exciting than just chopping away hit points. But when the design paradigm of 5e is "higher level creatures just do more HP damage and can take more HP damage," you get a sameness in the game.

I don't know why you would play 5e that way, we certainly do not. It seems more about how you play it than the system itself.

Wow, this is reminding me of the arguments I had when I was playing 4e trying to tell people they can play edition just like there whatever older edition. I really think it comes to to play style and not system.

6. Inspiration. I made an alternate system for inspiration, which allowed it to be used to pull off battle maneuvers (similar to Encounter powers in 4E).

Cool! I just allow them to make a check, which is RAW, that way it is tied to their talent / ability which I like better than inspiration (to be honest we don't use inspiration).

 

[Oofta]

Yep, we played epic levels. Never had a turn take longer than about 15 minutes, and that was from someone spending too much time strategizing during, rather than before, their turn.

The computer game argument always makes me laugh, though. 4e doesn’t translate any better to a computer game than previous editions (or 5e for that matter). It’s 100% tabletop DnD.

I ran a home campaign that went from 1-30, played in LFR's epic campaign to 30th (twice, long story). Game play started to drag at paragon, it slowed to a crawl in epic. We could do maybe 2-3 fights in an 6-8 hour game day. YMMV.

I had a longer response written up but ... meh. It's water (and editions) under the bridge. Have a good one.

 

[5ekyu]

I'm not sure any game system is going to solve your issues. So I'll take a quick stab at what I've done in my games.


You have to take into consideration your group. Encounter design is more of an art than a science and considering the vast difference in party size, options and


I've always done my own thing, but as others have said there are literally thousands of adventures on DmsGuild. It doesn't have to be official to be good.


Monsters don't have roles. They have descriptions and fluff. How you use that to set up encounters is up to you. For example goblins are tricky little SOBs who use hit-and-run tactic, scatter when threatened and never want to have an even fight. Ogres are big, dumb bullies who charge into battle, and so on.

It's not a tactical war game, monsters are just creatures that inhabit the world. But if that doesn't work for you, tweak them. I do it all the time, there are plenty of resources with advice on how to customize.

Another thing I do is adjust combats based on how well the group is doing. So if I had planned an ambush with 20 orcs in the next scene but the group is half dead? Now they have a chance to surprise the orcs instead of the other way around or the number of orcs is reduced a tad.

On a side note, I also use 6-10 encounters between long rests (I use the optional rest rules where a short rest is overnight and long rests are several days or more). I find this helps balance things out a lot and I can throw a lot more easy/medium encounters which I find easier to balance.


To a certain degree I will agree with this, but combat doesn't have to be boring. Throw in chasms to cross, chandeliers to swing from, hostages to escort. Have dialog during combat, improvise actions and put some effort into adding color.


There have been other threads on inspiration, there have been some suggestions I'm going to try. Let people claim their own inspiration for example, using index cards with personality traits/flaws.

Backgrounds are as meaningful or not as you and your group want them to be. Their a framework, what you do with that framework is up to you.



Yep, a champion fighter works exactly like a warlock. A beholder uses exactly the same tactics as a purple worm. Sooo much sameness.

It seems like maybe the fundamental issue is that you want the game to do something it isn't designed to do. It's just a set of rules, a framework. You have to breath life into it. It's a very flexible framework that can scratch a lot of itches, but that takes some work and accepting that you have to do a fair amount of improv and adjustment on the fly.

I could go on, but I don't think you're really looking for advice. I will agree that D&D requires a lot of cooperation between players and DM, and not every game is going to fit every one and not every DM will fit every player. I'll just repeat one of my mantras again: not every game is for everyone. Maybe D&D 5E isn't the game for you.

"combat doesn't have to be boring. Throw in chasms to cross, chandeliers to swing from, hostages to escort. Have dialog during combat, improvise actions and put some effort into adding color."

Yup. My question when GMs mske such a claim is "what other objectives or options did the challenge you presented with them have?"

When the answer comes up that they had to kill these bad guys and there wasnt really scenery to work with... it points out the source of the problem.

If **the gm** makes his scenes wholly about, focused on how to drop these bad guys to zero and provides no useful scenery or aspect of the scene to use... that's the recipe for the "boring" hp wear down.

 

[Retreater]

"combat doesn't have to be boring. Throw in chasms to cross, chandeliers to swing from, hostages to escort. Have dialog during combat, improvise actions and put some effort into adding color."

Yup. My question when GMs mske such a claim is "what other objectives or options did the challenge you presented with them have?"

When the answer comes up that they had to kill these bad guys and there wasnt really scenery to work with... it points out the source of the problem.

If **the gm** makes his scenes wholly about, focused on how to drop these bad guys to zero and provides no useful scenery or aspect of the scene to use... that's the recipe for the "boring" hp wear down.

The problem is that there are no guidelines on how to do this. The rules assume you do nothing of the sort. (If so, there would be examples already in official published adventures.) You're using the skills you developed in more robust editions to breathe life into what's in effect a shallow version of the game.

Even the rules for skills leave much to be desired. There are no rules for checks to swim, jump, climb, etc. It's just an automatic "your character can do this." By the rules, being in bulky, heavy armor doesn't cause any undue hardship when your fighter tumbles from a crumbling ancient causeway. All we get is how many HOURS he can swim before being exhausted and how many MINUTES he can hold his breath (likely 16+ minutes) before he starts to drown. Traversing a burning building? Well there are no rules about smoke inhalation, obscuring vision, slower movement while blinded, etc.

So how is a DM supposed to extrapolate an exciting, dynamic battlefield when the rules give no guidance? You might as well just make up your own system.

And if you're talking about boring, 30 ft square rooms with bags of hit points walking around, look at the official D&D campaign adventures.

 

[Oofta]

The problem is that there are no guidelines on how to do this. The rules assume you do nothing of the sort. (If so, there would be examples already in official published adventures.) You're using the skills you developed in more robust editions to breathe life into what's in effect a shallow version of the game.

Even the rules for skills leave much to be desired. There are no rules for checks to swim, jump, climb, etc. It's just an automatic "your character can do this." By the rules, being in bulky, heavy armor doesn't cause any undue hardship when your fighter tumbles from a crumbling ancient causeway. All we get is how many HOURS he can swim before being exhausted and how many MINUTES he can hold his breath (likely 16+ minutes) before he starts to drown. Traversing a burning building? Well there are no rules about smoke inhalation, obscuring vision, slower movement while blinded, etc.

So how is a DM supposed to extrapolate an exciting, dynamic battlefield when the rules give no guidance? You might as well just make up your own system.

And if you're talking about boring, 30 ft square rooms with bags of hit points walking around, look at the official D&D campaign adventures.

They've addressed some of your concerns in various podcasts about design decisions they made. Whether that works for you is another story.

The problem with giving specific instructions on how to resolve specific situations is that it's a never-ending rabbit hole of requiring clarifications. If you have rules for crossing an ice covered walkway, then you have other questions. Was the walkway recently salted? Is there any snow cover? How steep is the walkway? Is it perfectly level or uneven? What kind of shoe are you wearing or do you have cleats? Are you busy checking your phone and not paying attention to where you are walking but fortunately nobody sees you fall on your derriere?

Okay, forget the last one. The point is you can never provide enough detail. If you try, people just expect more. As far a published mods, most don't hold your hand all that much, it's still just a framework.

Could there be more advice? Sure. That's why I occasionally watch streamed games, read blogs, etc. There's a ton of advice out there you just have to dig for it a bit.

 

[Retreater]

They've addressed some of your concerns in various podcasts about design decisions they made. Whether that works for you is another story.

The problem with giving specific instructions on how to resolve specific situations is that it's a never-ending rabbit hole of requiring clarifications. If you have rules for crossing an ice covered walkway, then you have other questions. Was the walkway recently salted? Is there any snow cover? How steep is the walkway? Is it perfectly level or uneven? What kind of shoe are you wearing or do you have cleats? Are you busy checking your phone and not paying attention to where you are walking but fortunately nobody sees you fall on your derriere?

Okay, forget the last one. The point is you can never provide enough detail. If you try, people just expect more. As far a published mods, most don't hold your hand all that much, it's still just a framework.

Could there be more advice? Sure. That's why I occasionally watch streamed games, read blogs, etc. There's a ton of advice out there you just have to dig for it a bit.

I get that you can't provide enough details for every situation, but how about providing DCs for these basic checks?

Climbing a cavern wall?
Climbing a rope?
Swimming calm water?
Swimming rough water?
Balancing on a narrow ledge?
Picking an average lock?
Breaking down a wooden door?

Should we just assume a DC 10? Should we assume you don't have to make a roll? What would balancing on a narrow ledge covered in ice be (would it be a DC 15 or a DC 10 made with disadvantage)?

 

[dave2008]

Climbing a cavern wall?
Climbing a rope?
Swimming calm water?
Swimming rough water?
Balancing on a narrow ledge?
Picking an average lock?
Breaking down a wooden door?

D&D 5e is supposed to be flexible, so I like that they don't set DCs for every little thing.

In addition, if I remember correctly, the rules state that you only make a check if there is chance of failure. That right of the bat will be different for different characters. For instance, a person proficient wouldn't need to make a check at all to climb a rope under normal circumstances. However, the may need to make a check if they are being chased by orcs, over a pit of lava, while being overcome by heat and fumes. Then the DM just needs to determine if this situation is easy, medium, hard, or extremely difficult and the DMG provides guidance for DC's (and damage if you land in the lava) for those situations.