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5E's "Missed Opportunities?"
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<blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 7515224" data-attributes="member: 12731"><p>I am onboard with the general idea of D&D 5E not being perfect... but honestly, I have a hard time seeing any of these five particular points to be major decision points either way.</p><p></p><p>1. To me, backgrounds are perfectly fine and a nice addition to D&D. That they mostly remain relevant through character creation and the very first few adventures where the group bonds together, but then begin to fade as you level out of the apprentice levels is absolutely not a problem to me.</p><p>2. While I absolutely agree (you should read the recent threads on Inspiration) I don't consider it to be a deal-breaker. We simply ditched Inspiration entirely, and haven't looked back since.</p><p>3. Several products use the treasure tables in the DMG, but for the actual hoards... well, this touches upon a real major issue with 5E... in fact it's so central, I'm deferring the discussion to after I've covered the rest of your points (see below)!</p><p></p><p>4. If you equate advantage with +5 you need to brush up on your statistical skills, I'm afraid. In short: Advantage works great and is a huge simplifier, and you're wrong. Sorry <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>5. Feel free to increase monster AC and decrease monster hp if you absolutely must. </p><p></p><p>Myself, I'm running my games with "all options on", and characters become scarily powerful and dish out huge amounts of damage, much more than the designers seem to have anticipated.</p><p></p><p>So maybe you should try allowing feats, magic items, and multiclassing? While I can see that for inexperienced groups with un-optimized characters and no optional subsystems that monster hp can appear huge, the solution is easy. </p><p></p><p>If anything your issue should soon be the reverse, like it is for me - that monsters routinely fail to provide any challenge to the player characters unless you upgrade them (or the encounters, more monsters, replacing monsters with harder foes and so on).</p><p></p><p>---</p><p></p><p>*) The secret is that in 5E gold is essentially worthless to adventuring heroes, unless you focus more on downtime than on adventure time. The obvious outlet for hundreds of thousands of gold coins is to be able to buy (or craft) magic items that then help you in your further adventures. Lots of gamers don't care for downtime activities - once they're done with one adventure or dungeon, it's time to jump into the next!</p><p></p><p>Official adventures often (always?) feature a world-ending threat, and offer few to no places for extended downtime. When you're on a clock, taking a week or year off to build a church or whatever feels outrageously out of place. </p><p></p><p>(Not that downtime hasn't got a place in the game. Only that that place is in sandboxy campaigns where the heroes are much more in control over their own destiny than official material allows, when it's always Tiamat or Demogorgon or Acecerak that comes knocking and the clock starts to tick...)</p><p></p><p>So I totally understand the reluctance of adventure authors to actually use the hoard rules of the DMG... and that is because they realize that WotC reneged on a key promise to offer backwards support for lots of campaign styles including the one their own official material offers. </p><p></p><p><strong>In short: D&D absolutely needs an utility-based pricing and creation framework for magic items.</strong></p><p></p><p>In the vein of the 3.x and PF DMGs, that is. Not the crap nonsense of "rarity". And <em>certainly</em> not the utter insanity that the new AL-adopted treasure point system where the glaring gold issue is swept entirely under the rug!</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Good luck with your game <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CapnZapp, post: 7515224, member: 12731"] I am onboard with the general idea of D&D 5E not being perfect... but honestly, I have a hard time seeing any of these five particular points to be major decision points either way. 1. To me, backgrounds are perfectly fine and a nice addition to D&D. That they mostly remain relevant through character creation and the very first few adventures where the group bonds together, but then begin to fade as you level out of the apprentice levels is absolutely not a problem to me. 2. While I absolutely agree (you should read the recent threads on Inspiration) I don't consider it to be a deal-breaker. We simply ditched Inspiration entirely, and haven't looked back since. 3. Several products use the treasure tables in the DMG, but for the actual hoards... well, this touches upon a real major issue with 5E... in fact it's so central, I'm deferring the discussion to after I've covered the rest of your points (see below)! 4. If you equate advantage with +5 you need to brush up on your statistical skills, I'm afraid. In short: Advantage works great and is a huge simplifier, and you're wrong. Sorry :) 5. Feel free to increase monster AC and decrease monster hp if you absolutely must. Myself, I'm running my games with "all options on", and characters become scarily powerful and dish out huge amounts of damage, much more than the designers seem to have anticipated. So maybe you should try allowing feats, magic items, and multiclassing? While I can see that for inexperienced groups with un-optimized characters and no optional subsystems that monster hp can appear huge, the solution is easy. If anything your issue should soon be the reverse, like it is for me - that monsters routinely fail to provide any challenge to the player characters unless you upgrade them (or the encounters, more monsters, replacing monsters with harder foes and so on). --- *) The secret is that in 5E gold is essentially worthless to adventuring heroes, unless you focus more on downtime than on adventure time. The obvious outlet for hundreds of thousands of gold coins is to be able to buy (or craft) magic items that then help you in your further adventures. Lots of gamers don't care for downtime activities - once they're done with one adventure or dungeon, it's time to jump into the next! Official adventures often (always?) feature a world-ending threat, and offer few to no places for extended downtime. When you're on a clock, taking a week or year off to build a church or whatever feels outrageously out of place. (Not that downtime hasn't got a place in the game. Only that that place is in sandboxy campaigns where the heroes are much more in control over their own destiny than official material allows, when it's always Tiamat or Demogorgon or Acecerak that comes knocking and the clock starts to tick...) So I totally understand the reluctance of adventure authors to actually use the hoard rules of the DMG... and that is because they realize that WotC reneged on a key promise to offer backwards support for lots of campaign styles including the one their own official material offers. [B]In short: D&D absolutely needs an utility-based pricing and creation framework for magic items.[/B] In the vein of the 3.x and PF DMGs, that is. Not the crap nonsense of "rarity". And [I]certainly[/I] not the utter insanity that the new AL-adopted treasure point system where the glaring gold issue is swept entirely under the rug! Good luck with your game :) [/QUOTE]
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