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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8343375" data-attributes="member: 82106">IMHO the key issue with 5e is simply a lack of transparency. As [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER] said, there's a specific set of design elements that go together with 5e in terms of encounter budget, adventure day length, rests, etc. but the design of 5e is pretty deliberately obfuscatory. OF COURSE people don't understand it, because it isn't spelled out, and there are specific choices of how things are allocated to mechanics, that make it less visible. Then you add on top of that the admonitions about GM's being 'in charge of the rules', what did the designers expect would happen? Not only do the writers of adventures not understand this stuff, most tables are completely at sea on it. What I'm saying is, it isn't simply a matter of there being some area where explanation was a bit thin, the game was deliberately designed NOT to be self-explanatory. Compare it with 4e, you can see instantly what I mean. Nobody had these problems in 4e. If they did, they knew right off the top of their head WHY, because they were going against what was spelled out in the DMG. In fact IMHO 4e was MORE flexible this way exactly because of this, you clearly could see what had to change if you modified your assumptions, and there wasn't a 'balance point' that you had to hit, there was just a sliding scale.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8343375, member: 82106"] IMHO the key issue with 5e is simply a lack of transparency. As [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER] said, there's a specific set of design elements that go together with 5e in terms of encounter budget, adventure day length, rests, etc. but the design of 5e is pretty deliberately obfuscatory. OF COURSE people don't understand it, because it isn't spelled out, and there are specific choices of how things are allocated to mechanics, that make it less visible. Then you add on top of that the admonitions about GM's being 'in charge of the rules', what did the designers expect would happen? Not only do the writers of adventures not understand this stuff, most tables are completely at sea on it. What I'm saying is, it isn't simply a matter of there being some area where explanation was a bit thin, the game was deliberately designed NOT to be self-explanatory. Compare it with 4e, you can see instantly what I mean. Nobody had these problems in 4e. If they did, they knew right off the top of their head WHY, because they were going against what was spelled out in the DMG. In fact IMHO 4e was MORE flexible this way exactly because of this, you clearly could see what had to change if you modified your assumptions, and there wasn't a 'balance point' that you had to hit, there was just a sliding scale. [/QUOTE]

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