D&D 3E/3.5 A 3E/4E powergamer DMs Storm King's Thunder

[Tony Vargas]

Not sure why you felt the need to come to the 5e forum and post about how you hate 5e though.

IDK, Jester Canuck's Alt, why did you post so heavily in 4e forums?

Seriously, Mr. Oblivion isn't warring against 5e, he's not trying to drag the whole hobby down and watch it burn, he's relating his experiences.

Yeah, maybe it's a blog post, but I'm going to try to talk him into giving 5e a chance and maybe banging it into shape for himself. It's the biggest strength of the edition, that you can make it your own, and "STFU" doesn't help anyone do that.

First off, does casual oblivion even want suggestions? After all, walking away (from 5E) is a perfectly acceptable solution.

Solution for him, sure - a solution that works well for virtually everyone on earth ;P - but a failure for 5e, which is trying to heal the rift in the fan base and striving to be 'for' fans of all past editions. IIRC (from the WotC boards) Mr. Oblivion was rather put off by Essentials pulling back from 4e, so might still (no offense) be running on a bit of bitterness from that.

Third, more info on what seems to be the actual problem?
Instead I'd rather let casual oblivion process things in his or her own time.. and perhaps CO will start up a new thread when and if ready for input?

Good question, and good suggestion.

It's not that I dislike what 5E does, I dislike how 5E does things.

Not a good sign.

I dislike how 5E gets from point A to point B. Everything feels like a coin flip. Heads you win, tails you fall on your face, though falling on your face is rarely fatal. I find that deeply unsatisfying, and almost entirely unavoidable. It's intentionally designed into the math, and it really isn't that flexible.

d20 is necessarily like that, though, isn't it? You either hit the DC or not. 5e is tuned so the DC isn't exactly a fair coin-flip, it's more often 65% or so success (sadly, that includes /failing/ a save).

I'm finding it bothers me more from the DMs chair. I wanted to DM to get a feel for the math, to see if it could be modified/fixed. From where I'm standing, I'm feeling like it would be more trouble than it's worth, and the end result at the very least wouldn't be 5E anymore.

5e's quite amenable to not being 5e anymore. "Make the game your own, and all." Check out the job CapnZapp's doing on 5.1 in his series of threads...

Combat--Combat in 5E goes by fast, often in 2-3 rounds. Monsters hit pretty hard, which is necessary to threaten PCs in a 2-3 round fight. 2-3 bad rolls in a row and you find that you didn't accomplish anything or you find yourself a bloody pulp on the floor.

All true, and intentional, but not that hard to tune differently. You can bring down both monster & PC damage - or make all your adjustments on the DM's side of the screen, bringing down monster damage and boosting their hps and/or damage-mitigation.

With BA, these rolls tend to be somewhat close to 50-50 and 2-3 round losing streaks are common.

IMX, admittedly mostly low level, it's more like 60/40 or 70/30 it skews towards success, I suppose, in part, in support of the fast combat goal.

Non-combat--I feel the sting of BA more here than in combat to be honest. Too often things seem to come down to a single skill roll, with a relatively high chance of non-success. That or there isn't much of a penalty for failure and the entire party rolls and somebody almost always rolls high, which kind of trivializes things.

Also a d20 thing. 3e addressed it by encouraging specialization and having very high DCs, so that, in a party designed to cover all the bases, likely only 1 or 2 would have a shot at any given non-trivial check. 4e and 5e rebelled against that and tried to keep everyone viable in most circumstances. 4e also addressed that & the other issues you brought up with structured Skill Challenges and group checks (which I've really just gotten more and more enthused about over the years). SCs are gone, but group checks are, I'm pretty sure, in 5e somewhere. Calling for a group check reduces the swinginess and the issue of 'somebody always rolls high' (when the system would otherwise imply one success is all that's needed) or 'somebody always rolls low' (when the system would otherwise imply that one failure blows it for the party - as in earlier-d20 stealth situations).

So, (1) lean heavily on group checks, they reduce swinginess and keep everyone involved. One thing I've started doing recently is to call for a knowledge check (or when someone asks to make one - or, I hate this, rolls and calls it out grr....) if only one player rolls, it's pass/fail, if others pile on, it becomes a group check and, even if someone rolls high, if the majority don't succeed, they reach a wrong consensus. :>
and (2) If you must, build yourself something akin to the a Skill Challenge for more meaningful non-combat encounters. You needn't share it with the players, just use it as a DMing tool to add some depth to the resolution.

The skill/check system is kind of featured in the PHB to an extent that I'm less eager to throw it out entirely

But it's so DM-dependent you can be pretty free with it.

1. I find there is far less agency in 5E than there is in any other edition of D&D, and to an unsatisfactory degree.
2. The law of averages in 5E I find means little when most things are more or less decided by 1-3 rolls.

Ah, that made some of the above gel for me. I think you might find that re-tuning monsters for longer combats (in rounds, they should still resolve pretty quick) and adapting Skill Challenges (or at least making heavier use of group checks) might help a lot. It's even something you can do from behind the screen without having to horribly violate AL conventions.

Good Luck!

 

[Jester David]

IDK, Jester Canuck's Alt, why did you post so heavily in 4e forums?

Not an alt; renamed my account to better fit the name I use elsewhere online.

Why did I post on the 4e forums?
Well, I posted on the "general D&D forums" on the WotC side for a while (and here). That was my forum of choice prior to the 4e switch. And on that site, the "past editions" forums were a ghost town waaaaay at the bottom of the page. (Unlike here where it's a few lines down and no scrolling is required.)

After the switch, I posted for bitter, trolling reasons. That lasted for maybe six months or so.
Then I grew a brain and realized that was a waste of my time.
From then, I was critical, but tried to post relevant stuffs. And to get advice and discuss stuff for my ongoing 4e homegame, which ran for over a year (almost two). Typically spending as much time on the DM advice forum as the general one.

I posted to talk general D&D - regardless of edition - to get advice, give advice, discuss new releases, speculate on future releases, and chat gaming as a whole.
Picking an edition war helped with none of that. And taking shots at 4e derailed discussions more than not. Even valid complains inevitably started edition warring.

Seriously, Mr. Oblivion isn't warring against 5e, he's not trying to drag the whole hobby down and watch it burn, he's relating his experiences.

Saying he "hates 5e with a passion" isn't relating his experience. Going onto any fan site and saying you hate what that community is about "with a passion" will draw fire and generally not lead to productive discussion..
Doubly so when his love for 4e is mentioned in the same post. That's drawing a line in the sand.

Yeah, maybe it's a blog post, but I'm going to try to talk him into giving 5e a chance and maybe banging it into shape for himself. It's the biggest strength of the edition, that you can make it your own, and "STFU" doesn't help anyone do that.

Except he's not asking for help. He doesn't even detail the house rules he's using. He just identifies himself as a "power gamer", acknowledges he's already using houserules, and doesn't request any help with his game...
The TL;DR for the OP is basically "Gave 5e a short, ran a game, still think it sucks." The best response to that is a "Cool story bro" GIF.

Similarly, the only advice I can give is "go find a 4e game." He identifies as "the biggest 4e fan" so who am I to try and change that?
If the people at AL like him as a DM, he try and convert them. Advertise at said store. Or put out a call for players on Roll20. Failing that he can maybe find a non-D&D game.
If he just wants to complain about 5e then I'd direct him to http://screamintothevoid.com/

 

[thecasualoblivion]

IDK, Jester Canuck's Alt, why did you post so heavily in 4e forums?

Seriously, Mr. Oblivion isn't warring against 5e, he's not trying to drag the whole hobby down and watch it burn, he's relating his experiences.

Yeah, maybe it's a blog post, but I'm going to try to talk him into giving 5e a chance and maybe banging it into shape for himself. It's the biggest strength of the edition, that you can make it your own, and "STFU" doesn't help anyone do that.

I mostly posted this as an update to my threads on playing in Curse of Strahd, which a number of people here found interesting. It does bear saying that I have a lot less to say about things this time around, on account of my negative reaction to DMing 5E.

My negative reaction has come somewhat as a surprise to me. I got through an entire campaign as a player in more or less good spirits and wanted to come back for the next campaign. It wasn't until after a few months of running Storm King's Thunder, and we've been having better sessions honestly than my Curse of Strahd group did, that things really started bothering me to the point where I'm about to walk away.

Solution for him, sure - a solution that works well for virtually everyone on earth ;P - but a failure for 5e, which is trying to heal the rift in the fan base and striving to be 'for' fans of all past editions. IIRC (from the WotC boards) Mr. Oblivion was rather put off by Essentials pulling back from 4e, so might still (no offense) be running on a bit of bitterness from that.

A bit of hard feelings yest, though not specifically about Essentials. I was in the crowd who initially embraced Essentials as an addition to 4E, though I later soured after it became clear that it was the new way going forward and that the old 4E design was more or less being abandoned. I haven't given WotC a cent since they announced 5E, I do all my current gaming using other people's books.

Good question, and good suggestion.

Not a good sign. d20 is necessarily like that, though, isn't it? You either hit the DC or not. 5e is tuned so the DC isn't exactly a fair coin-flip, it's more often 65% or so success (sadly, that includes /failing/ a save).

It was never something that bothered me in earlier editions, except maybe the 3E skill system, and it was something the stuck out as a sore spot from the first moment I started playing 5E at the table. My reaction to it during my first session shortly after the 5E launch was the primary reason I didn't come back for a second. Years of 2E, 3E, and 4E never caused that sort of reaction in me, and I've played 2E since 5E's release and I didn't have that reaction there. It looks similar to earlier editions, but it plays different. There is a lot of that I find in 5E.

5e's quite amenable to not being 5e anymore. "Make the game your own, and all." Check out the job CapnZapp's doing on 5.1 in his series of threads...

All true, and intentional, but not that hard to tune differently. You can bring down both monster & PC damage - or make all your adjustments on the DM's side of the screen, bringing down monster damage and boosting their hps and/or damage-mitigation. IMX, admittedly mostly low level, it's more like 60/40 or 70/30 it skews towards success, I suppose, in part, in support of the fast combat goal.

The issues there are motivation and workload. Motivation comes down to that beyond 5E being popular and familiar with prospective players, there isn't much I really like in the system. I don't particularly like any of the classes, I hate how the core mechanic works, I find 5E's flavor to be too vanilla, I'm not a fan of 3E-style multiclassing, I'm thoroughly unimpressed with bounded accuracy, and while combat faster than 3E or 4E might have been nice, 5E went way too far in the wrong direction. 5E doesn't really offer me anything but the name when considering building a homebrew D&D that will take a bit of effort. I honestly much prefer AD&Ds core combat engine, and to tack on a non-combat system from somewhere or just free-form everything like we did back in the 90s.

Also a d20 thing. 3e addressed it by encouraging specialization and having very high DCs, so that, in a party designed to cover all the bases, likely only 1 or 2 would have a shot at any given non-trivial check. 4e and 5e rebelled against that and tried to keep everyone viable in most circumstances. 4e also addressed that & the other issues you brought up with structured Skill Challenges and group checks (which I've really just gotten more and more enthused about over the years). SCs are gone, but group checks are, I'm pretty sure, in 5e somewhere. Calling for a group check reduces the swinginess and the issue of 'somebody always rolls high' (when the system would otherwise imply one success is all that's needed) or 'somebody always rolls low' (when the system would otherwise imply that one failure blows it for the party - as in earlier-d20 stealth situations).

So, (1) lean heavily on group checks, they reduce swinginess and keep everyone involved. One thing I've started doing recently is to call for a knowledge check (or when someone asks to make one - or, I hate this, rolls and calls it out grr....) if only one player rolls, it's pass/fail, if others pile on, it becomes a group check and, even if someone rolls high, if the majority don't succeed, they reach a wrong consensus. :>
and (2) If you must, build yourself something akin to the a Skill Challenge for more meaningful non-combat encounters. You needn't share it with the players, just use it as a DMing tool to add some depth to the resolution.

But it's so DM-dependent you can be pretty free with it.

Or I could just disregard the skill system almost entirely like I did running 2E and as I mostly did running 3E. It's not really a selling point for 5E.

Ah, that made some of the above gel for me. I think you might find that re-tuning monsters for longer combats (in rounds, they should still resolve pretty quick) and adapting Skill Challenges (or at least making heavier use of group checks) might help a lot. It's even something you can do from behind the screen without having to horribly violate AL conventions.

Good Luck!

None of that really adds the agency I'm craving back into the game.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

You know, my players and I definitely had some growing pains coming over from 4e, I was a 4e Char-Op and i feel that some things are useful for your consideration that we've learned:


- When rolling checks don't have everyone roll individual checks, honestly it was kinda like this in 4e as well- either make a group check or have a single person roll, and only roll if they're under time pressure (or it would have to be a binary pass/fail that can't repeat.) Make sure you set the DC at such a level where it isn't too easy, nor too hard to pass for the specialized people in your group, use increments of 5, a 10 is a fifty-fifty pass/fail for people who aren't trained usually, 75% chance of passing for someone who has the training, and the odds of passing for each will decrease for every 5 you add at a rate of 25% each time, adjust those slightly based on prof bonus- you'll observe specialization become a stronger force over time as proficiency bonus goes up- trained individuals will scale, untrained characters will not.


- When considering the swingyness of combat, follow the encounter guidelines in the DMG, and remember that the game is balanced around 6-8 encounters per each long rest to limit the abuse of big-ticket combat items- it also gets less swingy if you use terrains with walls and such breaking up the area so large area of effect spells, and dog pile tactics would be less effective in ending the encounter all at once. You might want to break out the battle grid, it CAN work as theater of the mind, but that's like learning something extra on top of your complications with the system itself, if you're fighting theater of the mind and everyone is just stacked in this little melee, it's going to feel ridiculously swingy and one sided.


- Be willing to consider houserules, no not these extensive full on system redesigns it's tempting to groan about "not being worth it"- simple things, restricting crits to their 4e status of auto-hit + maxmized damage on the normal roll helps make the game feel less swingy on both sides.


- The most important thing, is to keep a positive attitude, this isn't so much advice for 5e specifically, it's advice for moving between editions, particularly since it's become a contentious issue in recent years. It's easy to panic and think everything is different, and then blame all your growing pains as you get used to the new format as being symptoms of bad design but it's partially a product of misaligned expectations, and a healthy dose of confirmation bias. Remember when you first started 4e? Or your 2e? You probably did lots of things wrong, give this edition the same benefit of the doubt, the same "what is the rule on that thing that just felt weird?" "why didn't the way I adjudicated that function very well? what can i do differently?"

 

[D_E]

If you aren't already, maybe try liberally rewarding player cleverness with the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. After all, advantage transforms 2-3 rolls into 4-6 rolls, which should greatly reduce the variance. And if you can train them to always be on the lookout for ways to tilt the situation to their advantage and avoid walking disadvantageous situations you might have a more interactive experience.

Also if you aren't already, for out-of-combat encounters try to avoid setting up narrative situations where one skill roll decides success or failure, and remember that you don't have to call for a roll if you don't want to.

 

[Sunseeker]

Optimization isn't the issue. Talking with everyone at the event, we seem to have the most optimized table out of the seven. In addition, this table is more optimized than the one I was a PC for last season during Curse of Strahd.

Walking away is going to happen, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything to talk about. For what is bothering me, it's a feel thing. It's not that I dislike what 5E does, I dislike how 5E does things. I dislike how 5E gets from point A to point B. Everything feels like a coin flip. Heads you win, tails you fall on your face, though falling on your face is rarely fatal. I find that deeply unsatisfying, and almost entirely unavoidable. It's intentionally designed into the math, and it really isn't that flexible. It's hard to be specific, it's a general thing.

I'm finding it bothers me more from the DMs chair. I wanted to DM to get a feel for the math, to see if it could be modified/fixed. From where I'm standing, I'm feeling like it would be more trouble than it's worth, and the end result at the very least wouldn't be 5E anymore.

I think I've already stated this same opinion. I like the simplicity of 5E, but I agree the game feels way too random. I think if you eliminate BA, you could make it much less random (I did this in one game, it was much more controlled outcomes), but you're basically playing the math the same way 4E or 3.X did, with ever increasing defenses and modifiers.

 

[Jester David]

Randomness: I like it in 5e. Because it means you always need to roll. The die is never irrelevant, which can happen in 3e/4e. (Except at high levels with classes that have Expertise.)
Although, oddly, at low level combat is far less swingy in 5e. You wiff a LOT in 3e/4e at low levels unless you really optimize.

If you want a little more stability, I'd recommend dropping the d20 for 3d6. The bell-curve makes success much more likely.

 

[flametitan]

I'm also curious: As a DM, how often do you set DCs for improvised actions, and what target number do you set?

For me the ideal way to run D&D is to engage with the d20 as little as possible outside of combat, in which case I'll use the very stable passive scores or let an idea succeed or fail, and infrequently allow a roll. When I do call a roll, I highly doubt I'll throw more than a handful of objectives with a higher DC than 10-15, not even past the 10th level mark.

 

[Herobizkit]

Speaking for my own experience with 4e:

4e had its own type of Bounded Accuracy hard-coded into its leveling system. Assuming "core only" (ie no Dragon Magazine) Feats and Classes, it seemed to me that the 'monster math' always increased at a fixed rate in relation to the PC's math. No matter how much I tried to increase the capabilities of my character, the math never quite caught up and any non-minion fights were a slog. When the Monster Manual introduced their 'New Math', the basic solution was to lower monster HP and up their damage by half. This made fights a little shorter, but the 'whiff factor' remained.

4e Complex skill checks were ridiculous. Not only did they offer the same pass/fail as 5e's skill system, varying target numbers (depending on how the challenge was designed) meant that players weren't doing anything but trying to 'beat the math' in some kind of mini-game. It felt like [Press A to Arcana] to me.

To that end, 4e does not model any kind of a realistic campaign world at all. I find it's far more suited to a Superheroes-style game. My immersion, if you will, was constantly broken any time a 4e mechanic prevented me from doing even a simple task.

For me, Essentials FIXED a lot of 4e's base design. E-classes/feats etc worked well in tandem with the standard game and shored up a lot of 'feat taxes' that were just awful. But then, you get the glut of mostly unnecessary/inferior feats and you start tumbling back into 3/P's feat tax territory.

 

[Krachek]

A while back I commented on joining an Adventurer's League Curse of Strahd campaign. For the new season, I decided I wanted to run a table this time.

With one exception, it's gone very well so far. I managed to get a good table of players, and we've been pretty stable attendence wise. In fact, I think I managed to get the best group of players out of seven tables at our weekly events. I gave suggestions power-gaming wise during character creation wise and everyone built an effective character. We've been tearing through the adventure, we're further along than any other table that began at level one, and have almost caught up with the table that started at level 5. Also, I find it interesting that the world's biggest 4E fan is running the only 5E table out of 7 tables that isn't using a battlemap. We are also not exactly an official Adventurer League table. I'm using some house rules, kind of a prerequisite of me running a table, in order to mitigate some of the sore spots in the game and be able to run it more how I want it to be run. Everybody has been cool with it.

That being said, I said there was one exception. That exception is that running 5E is really teaching me that I hate this system, and hate it with a passion. I already told the organizer that I won't be back next season(I'm her ride to the event), either as DM or player. I'm going to try to stick it out, as the organizer can't really replace me, and I'd be letting the table down if I left. The reason I don't like 5E is because I'm a math guy, and I hate the math. The math is too random and too swingy, and the math doesn't lend itself to flexibility.

4ed is a square.
5ed is a hand drawn circle.
It can take time to adjust your eyes.