D&D 5E Critiquing the System

[Coroc]

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The DM is also free to assign advantage and disadvantage as they see fit. So maybe rather than having Urkel auto fail, I give Urkel disadvantage on the check or Johnson advantage, or both. At that point, while some possibility may exist of Urkel beating Johnson, it will be fairly miniscule to be certain.

....

Agree with everything else in your post except this

This is a bad example for some reasons: It is a contest, and armwrestling is much about technique so it is not a situation where I would disallow a contested roll. To give the muscle man advantage would be a bit unfair except he had a feat saying to do so. And it would not prevent the possible (although unlikely) outcome that he loses.

Better example would be Johnson and Urkel decide to lift a heavy weight. And here I would say Johnso has the chance to beat e.g. DC15 alone and gets advantage if Urkle decides to help him. Urkel alone might not try but if it only were some kilograms so the DC is 5 then he may try as well.
That is consistent, as demanded by @Saelorn

 

[Aldarc]

In general when looking at the system,...

* Boring Monster Design: quite possibly the worst of the WotC Era

* Hit Point Bloat

* Game balance between Short Rest and Long Rest classes is dependent on GM pacing

* Action Economy: Bonus Action often feels like a design crutch that incidentally screwed over a variety of different options that are tied to it, such as two-weapon fighting. And IME the interaction between the Attack Action and other actions is often confusing for new players.

* IME, for a variety of reasons, play tends to breakdown at around level 6-8

* Inspiration: IME, it feels like WotC did not even apply half-effort when designing this mechanic, which often fails to engage those who like Fate-like meta mechanics while also irritating those who dislike Fate-like meta mechanics, while also feeling disassociated from the character (even more than it is in Fate). Sure, there are ardent defenders of Inspiration - not interested in how they use it - because, overall, Inspiration feels like it's mostly regarded as a dud design.

* Skills: kinda boring and uninteresting. Maybe would have preferred just ability checks without the skills. Players, IME, tend towards one of the problems of d20 D&D where they engage the skill rather than the action in the fiction (e.g., "I would like to roll Perception."). While this is something that a DM can "correct" through framing, the system tends to reinforce and encourage player engagement with skills.

* Saves: Still leaning too heavily on reskinned Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves, which leaves Strength, Intellect, and Charisma saves lacking.

* Character Build Choice: Great if you want a basic build and locked into your choice, but not exactly a tremendous amount of choice unless one opts for multiclassing characters. IMO, part the attractiveness for MCing for players is in how it empowers player choice more than pure-classing does. Unless you pick a mage (and even then there is sometimes the illusion of choice and trap options), your choices amount to mostly race, class, subclass, which means that typically your build choices end at around level 3.

* Advantage/Disadvantage: an elegant design, but its ubiquity kinda dulls the game and now comes across as uninspiring with each new addition of how characters can gain advantage

* Expertise: It seems a bit extreme in how it scales. It's one of the few ways that players can improve their skills, which leads to people complaining that rogues and bards can do use "their skills" better than they can, which leads to people trying to find ways to gain Expertise. There could have been better ways to implement the design intent of Expertise without some of its problems.

* Less modular than the initial sales pitch. Sure, there are a lot of dials and knobs, but that was also true of every edition.

 

[Tony Vargas]

.
The 6-8 encounter is ...+ noncombat encounter. Means: The party meets a NPC and with application of social skills they manage to coerce info (= one encounter)

If an encounter doesn't ablate some hps or expend some slots, it's not really adding to the days challenge.

The party has to scale an obstacle and invests some of their resources, e.g. cast spiderclimb, attach rope, makes some athletics checks with the chance of falling damage (=another encounter)

Bit better.

* IME, for a variety of reasons, play tends to breakdown at around level 6-8

I'm curious about the reasons, because that seem rather early to be having issues, really, the game should be at it's best about then.

Do you, OTOH, find that levels 1-3 work well?

 

[tetrasodium]

If an encounter doesn't ablate some hps or expend some slots, it's not really adding to the days challenge.
Bit better.

I'm curious about the reasons, because that seem rather early to be having issues, really, the game should be at it's best about then.

Do you, OTOH, find that levels 1-3 work well?

I'd move it more towards 8-12... but IME there are too many things that come online at the same time that combine in ways that firmly rocket you into the kind of mid-late teens problems you would see in 3.5 Too much dps, excessive recovery abilities, plethora of escape hatch & save of the opponent wins abilities all at once results in drawn out epic battles of rocket tag that mostly limit themselves to nerf weapons.

Certainly the seeds begin to sprout around 5-6, but the sprouts are managable early on & progression accelerates from there

 

[Aldarc]

I'm curious about the reasons, because that seem rather early to be having issues, really, the game should be at it's best about then.

The early levels were playtested more than the later ones. Around levels 6-8, a lot of class abilities come online that multiply both the ease of survivability and complexity of the game. IMHO, the (relative) lack of player choice also impacts these levels as the major decision points for customizing a character are mostly gone by this point. Around this level or a few levels later, some classes begin to outshine others - though maybe it is more accurate to say that some fall behind others - and that problem tends to expand from there. And usually, for some reason, a lot of player enthusiasm tends in the game tends to wane around this point. I don't find "blame the GM" or "blame the players" the right moves here to be helpful, because I have observed this happen with multiple good GMs. This may be a confluence of aforementioned factors.

Do you, OTOH, find that levels 1-3 work well?

Pretty well. But I generally find low-level play more fun than mid to higher level play.

 

[Coroc]

If an encounter doesn't ablate some hps or expend some slots, it's not really adding to the days challenge.
....
Bit better.
....

Nah that's not true, an encounter holds the chance to diminish some of the party resources, in no way this has actually to happen! It is risk and reward:

E.g.

The PCs botch the social skill checks, and the NPC who is a high level mage gets angry and attacks causing a near TPK, so in how is this encounter not to be awarded higher as some hapless goblins draining a spell slot and five HP of the fighter?

The PC jumps a wide chasm to attach a rope bridge to allow for the party to cross safely. If he falls, it is almost certain death and his body would be difficult to recover for a resurrection. It is just an athletics check so it is not counting as an encounter?

 

[Li Shenron]

5th edition does a lot of things right. Curious to hear what peoples' biggest issues are with it.

Abusable Guidance cantrip and inappropriately strict Druid armor limitation, but I am now at peace with both these "bugs" having tamed them after a more in-depth reading and interpretation of the RAW.

I do not criticize big design decisions anymore, just individual elements, and those 2 are the only ones I used to have issues with in 5e. If I disagree with a major design of a RPG, I just play another game.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So you're saying that a 5e character with a +6 athletics bonus trying to climb a wall produces unreasonable results?

But a 3e character with the same +6 bonus in climb produces reasonable results?

Exactly! A 5E character with +6 to Athletics is (supposedly) pretty good at climbing. They're either very talented and somewhat trained, or very experienced. They should be able to get over an easy wall with no problem, but the rules say that an easy check is DC 10, so they'll actually fail on 15% of attempts. That is why (you suggest), the DM should not have them roll; because if they did, then something unreasonable may very well happen.

To contrast, a 3E character with +6 to Climb is a talented novice. They have a little talent, and some training, but very little experience. They should still be able to do easy stuff with no problem, but the rules of 3E actually show this to be true: an Easy check in 3E is DC 5. They are still a novice, so you wouldn't expect them to pull off the DC 35 stuff that high-level characters often do; and the math also shows this to be true, since they can't score higher than 26.

On the other end of the difficult spectrum, we wouldn't expect someone who routinely fails an easy climb to have much chance at all of making a hard one, but Bounded Accuracy in 5E says that they can. The same individual with +6 to checks, who would fail an Easy climb 15% of the time (if we actually had them roll), has a 35% chance of making a Hard check. Everyone has a chance at making a Hard check. The average, non-proficient Human has a 15% chance of making a Hard check.

In 3E, you need a minimum of +5 in order to attempt a DC 25 check, and most people have +0 as a baseline. You never have to worry about an untrained character succeeding at a Formidable (DC 25) or harder task, where a trained one fails, because untrained characters have no chance by the math; rather than requiring DM fiat to say they have no chance.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Exactly! A 5E character with +6 to Athletics is (supposedly) pretty good at climbing. They're either very talented and somewhat trained, or very experienced. They should be able to get over an easy wall with no problem, but the rules say that an easy check is DC 10, so they'll actually fail on 15% of attempts. That is why (you suggest), the DM should not have them roll; because if they did, then something unreasonable may very well happen.

To contrast, a 3E character with +6 to Climb is a talented novice. They have a little talent, and some training, but very little experience. They should still be able to do easy stuff with no problem, but the rules of 3E actually show this to be true: an Easy check in 3E is DC 5. They are still a novice, so you wouldn't expect them to pull off the DC 35 stuff that high-level characters often do; and the math also shows this to be true, since they can't score higher than 26.

On the other end of the difficult spectrum, we wouldn't expect someone who routinely fails an easy climb to have much chance at all of making a hard one, but Bounded Accuracy in 5E says that they can. The same individual with +6 to checks, who would fail an Easy climb 15% of the time (if we actually had them roll), has a 35% chance of making a Hard check. Everyone has a chance at making a Hard check. The average, non-proficient Human has a 15% chance of making a Hard check.

In 3E, you need a minimum of +5 in order to attempt a DC 25 check, and most people have +0 as a baseline. You never have to worry about an untrained character succeeding at a Formidable (DC 25) or harder task, where a trained one fails, because untrained characters have no chance by the math; rather than requiring DM fiat to say they have no chance.

Thanks for clarifying your position, but why are you comparing 3e's Formidable check to 5e's Hard check? I think it would make more sense to use similar checks from both.

In that case, IIRC the 3e DC is 15, making the hard check quite easy for your "talented novice". In fact, assuming "take 10", the "talented novice" can't fail to climb the wall.

I'd also point out that the "talented novice" has a 10% chance of succeeding against that Formidable check in 3e.

Heck, at the end of the day, even the 3e DM is determining the possibility of success when assigning a DC (unless it is defined in a module or such, in which case someone still assigned it at some point). Is assigning a DC 30 to a task for a character with a +9 bonus really so much better than saying, "sorry dude, you fail"? Sure, I realize that the 3e DM is probably looking at the task and deciding it is in line with other DC 30 tasks, but if the results are the same then the only one who can likely appreciate how the result was arrived at is perhaps the DM. The players just see that they failed despite rolling a Nat 20 (in which case I believe it's better not to even ask them to roll, since that's a massive let down).

I still hold that a system of rigid DCs and bonuses cannot generate a more rational system of outcomes than one derived from human judgement and good sense.

 

[tetrasodium]

Thanks for clarifying your position, but why are you comparing 3e's Formidable check to 5e's Hard check? I think it would make more sense to use similar checks from both.

In that case, IIRC the 3e DC is 15, making the hard check quite easy for your "talented novice". In fact, assuming "take 10", the "talented novice" can't fail to climb the wall.

I'd also point out that the "talented novice" has a 10% chance of succeeding against that Formidable check in 3e.

Heck, at the end of the day, even the 3e DM is determining the possibility of success when assigning a DC (unless it is defined in a module or such, in which case someone still assigned it at some point). Is assigning a DC 30 to a task for a character with a +9 bonus really so much better than saying, "sorry dude, you fail"? Sure, I realize that the 3e DM is probably looking at the task and deciding it is in line with other DC 30 tasks, but if the results are the same then the only one who can likely appreciate how the result was arrived at is perhaps the DM. The players just see that they failed despite rolling a Nat 20 (in which case I believe it's better not to even ask them to roll, since that's a massive let down).

I still hold that a system of rigid DCs and bonuses cannot generate a more rational system of outcomes than one derived from human judgement and good sense.

I think that the proficient+prof bonus/not proficient was a good change, but at the same time expertise is too drastic a bonus that scales too well & they did away or downplayed things like skill synergy bonuses, things that add flat values to skills, & collapsed the skills in on themselves. making it too easy for a high school math teacher to be just as good at theoretical physics as stephen hawking was because it's just part of the "math" skill