D&D 5E Critiquing the System

[Coroc]

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

1. HP scaling is an issue as I think you start with too few and end up with too many. The should have normalized starting HP and per level growth a bit better.

2. Subclasses are great, but I'm actually not sure I like them more than prestige classes. As time goes on, subclasses are starting to feel more restrictive and "forced" while prestige classes feel more loose and flexible. Also, there's inconsistency in design scope between classes and subclasses. As an example, the D&D cleric is really overdue to be overhauled to make it thematically broader so it can hold a lot more divine/priestly archetypes. This is part of the reason why people question the existence of classes like Paladin and Ranger.

3. Inspiration is an interesting idea that is very wonky in its execution. I've gone through several different iterations of it to try to make it work better and have a more significant and consistent place at the table.

4. The ability scores are still not balanced well, and don't offer enough to PCs outside of what they do for your class. All ability scores should have significant class-agnostic secondary benefits the way Con does. There's too much of a "stock build" issue for each class as it is, leading to too little diversity between characters and making character building feel shallower than it needs to.

1. Easily fixable, if you like to rough up low levels start at 2 or 3 with maxed HP roll /average after that.

2. I hate prestige class and MC except for CRPG, I am so glad you can build quasi "MC" in 5e with eldritch knight , arcane Trickster , or class X wit the criminal background. That is one if its finest game design features.

3. I love inspiration and it is in no way wonky. It is players last resort deus ex machina chance at my table and we normally allow it to affect a DM d20 roll also. It is a good reward instead of X independent of whether you calculate detailed XP or threshold XP

4. Yea there is some things about attributes which bother me a bit - but you would not be able to have bound accuracy were the attributes differently. I am to lazy to explain the math on it in detail now, but it has to do with the small prof bonus rang (1-6).
To make some attributes more meaningful use the "associate alternative attributes to skill checks" rule
e.g. perception with int, intimidation with str ( I also allowed it to be done with con wit ha dwarf once) etc. etc.

 

[FrogReaver]

Please avail yourself of the ignore function. Thanks!

And @Mistwell, please consider not replying to Einlanzer0.

I watch sports and the guy that instigates a situation is rarely penalized for it. That’s well and good when the referees have to make an immediate decision based on what they are seeing with no help of replay.

Curious what your excuse is for why that happens here?

 

[DEFCON 1]

There's not a single thing in the game that is not an "issue" for me at some time or another. It comes up and does something I personally as a player/DM don't care for, my internal monologue sighs, and then I move on. Or if it comes up enough, I create a bunch of new house rules for my next campaign to see if I can ameliorate my issues. Some work, some don't. The ones that do work (amended skill list, the Using Variant Abilities for skills variant etc.) I keep going with. The others that didn't actually fix or satisfy my issues I just go back to what the game had before.

But the thing is... none of that bothers me. I have no problems making house rules for individual campaigns, changing power levels up or down, grittier fights / easier fights and so forth. I also try to never look at characters in a vacuum via what the PHB could say they could be and then get all upset at what a potential problem a PC could have. I try to only care about the PCs that actually appear at the table and do what they do. So stuff like "Expertise means a Rogue or Bard could be more of X than this other class" doesn't matter to me one whit because if I never actually see a Rogue or Bard played at the table with Expertise in Arcana, or Religion, or Athletics, or Survival etc. etc... then it's not actually an issue.

And this goes for a whole crap-ton of other things. And I'm not immune by any stretch-- I'm constantly coming up with scenarios of how the game could work which make me go all squiggly... and often inspires me to develop whole new sets of rules to try and "fix" these scenarios (when I can't just brush them off). But then only to finally realize after wasting all this time that my problems are things that won't actually ever appear in the game (especially depending on the types and size of the party). So as a thought-experiment my rules jiggering might come up with some interesting ideas... but in truth they become completely unnecessary and are never used.

Does D&D have things that an individual will find irritating? Absolutely. Does "fixing" them via house rules actually solve the issue? In my case only like one out of every ten.

 

[Iry]

1) Give Archetypes more Exploration and Social Pillar abilities.
2) Two weapon fighting should not require a bonus action.
3) Replace Ready Action with Delay Action.
4) Simplify the bonus action casting rule.

Those are my four big ones. I feel like 1) is sorely lacking, and 2-4) would make the game run much smoother.

 

[Einlanzer0]

There are basically only two problems with 5E:

1) Everyone's already said it, but Hit Points. Not only do characters have too many HP at any but the lowest levels, but they recover those HP far too quickly, which trivializes any combat that doesn't end in death. It doesn't matter if you get shot for 75 damage, when you can spend nothing and be back to full like it never even happened; and if it doesn't matter, then why are we wasting time on it?

2) Bounded Accuracy describes a bizarre, non-sensical world, where the world's strongest human routinely fails to lift an objects that can be lifted by the world's weakest human. The differences between individual capability are much smaller than the uncertainty of the die roll, which is so far out of line with our daily experiences that it sticks out like a sore thumb.

For your specific example in #2, I don't necessarily see that as a bounded accuracy problem, but more of a problem with the d20/ability score system in general. I actually like bounded accuracy, but I also think this touches on why a lot of people find the skill system a bit unsatisfying. For luck to totally supersede skill in these sorts of contests it is a bit silly. That said, it's also supposed to be an abstraction. There are often specific reasons why you would or would not be willing to pull something off where someone less skilled might. I like trying to incorporate those reasons into the overall narrative.

But I also use expertise more loosely than it exists in the core rules to help alleviate that issue.

 

[Nebulous]

We played last night. The ranger (the original PHB ranger) has a wolf spider beast companion. The spider is treated like an extension of the character, is that how it is supposed to be? For instance, even if the spider is in another room, the player psychically controls the spider to do what she needs it to, at all times. Now this does make the ranger considerably more powerful so maybe I shouldn't complain, as it is an advantage no one else has, but it goes above and beyond what a Int 3 pet would be able to do. Sometimes she even has it communicate with other PCs by waving its mandibles to mime information. It's all rather silly but so far I have ignored and am just biding my time to have the spider devoured by something much larger that likes the taste of spider. The player - I'm quite sure - will be traumatized. She's very attached to Hazel the spider.

Also, we had issues with reactions and when they reset, it got very complicated. Maybe we were tired. It was a 2.5 battle so our brains were taxed.

 

[tetrasodium]

sorlock frontloading I think is more a victim of "We want to give you cool features that define who you are as a character fundamentally" not mixing with "Oh, we're going back to 3.5 style multiclassing where you just kinda take levels willy-nilly". 4e by no means was the best solution, but there are some major fundamental design constraints imposed by generic multiclassing.

true to a degree, but it's much worse than that with those two with seemingly more thought gone into "how can this MC combo appeal to the inner munchkin" than "how can we make a cool class". saying "multiclassing is optional" does not excuse not catching the blatant combination that happens when you call both normal & pact magic spell slots "spell slots" and include the sentence " You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a short or long rest." or the implied permission for coffeelock asshattery that was the obvious design goal for aspect of the moon. Before anyone suggests that there may have been some people who really wanted it so the sorcerer could stand guard all night or something as the target they were aiming for... I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.

It's even harder to imagine that it was accidental that every cantrip/L0 spell was changed to scale with extra dice based on character level but eldritch blast was changed from a class feature that did "(25 feet +5 ft./2 levels), does 1d6 damage per level of Warlock, and requires a ranged touch attack to hit. " into a 120 foot cantrip that scales with extra blasts based on level without forseeing that it would be the "take a level of Fighter for one of these feats" type thing they were obviously trying to avoid by making all of the other extra attack abilities based on your level in the class granting them

@WayOfTheFourElements brought up gritty realism & that reminded me of another gripe. Things melt down badly when you try switching to it. Too much of the systemis still based on units of time rather than rest periods & you wind up with way too much "I need the gm to tell me how this changes" that can lead to disastrous results.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

I love the system, it's my favourite tabletop rpg system of all time. But yes after all the years of playing it is not perfect. There's too many little things to mention like how some item weights and costs make no sense, the druid has very few non-concentration spells, rules for sight are very much subject to DM interpretation but those are mostly nitpicks.

My biggest critique would be that after you pick your subclass you mostly feel locked in for choice during progression. Sure you get to pick feat of ASI sometimes, and magic users get to choose which spells they get or prepare but for the most part there aren't a lot of ways to customize a character compared to say 3.5 or 4. This is is why I'm so excited about the alternate class features UA and really hope it comes through to publication.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Late level combats are a slog.

2) DEX and STR: A 18 DEX, 18 STR fighter wielding a longsword deals as much damage as a 18 DEX 3 STR fighter wielding a rapier. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Yep this one is pet peeve of mine too, but fixing it either makes all Martial's more MAD than casters, requires further tweaking of casters, or results in collapsing of sacred cow stats into fewer stats

 

[toucanbuzz]

1. HP scaling is an issue as I think you start with too few and end up with too many. They should have normalized starting HP and per level growth a bit better.

Is this a philosophical angle (what do hit points actually represent) or a mechanical issue (scaling threats)?

If it's philosophical, you could adopt a Vitality system (replaces death saves with a small pool of vitality that represents the actual damage the body can take), wherein hit points reflect the ability to avoid lethal damage and mitigate harm, improving over time with experience, and vitality almost never changes (because one direct hit from a giant's club will kill any humanoid).

If it's mechanical, that's an ongoing battle. AD&D capped hit points but didn't cap spell damage, making high level play unbalanced but preserving some lower level threats. On these forums during 3rd edition, a homebrew called E6 was created to cap games at 6th level and provide balanced benefits for adventuring past that level that kept games grounded instead of spiraling into feeling like DC Comics (TM) superheroes.

2. Subclasses are great, but I'm actually not sure I like them more than prestige classes. As time goes on, subclasses are starting to feel more restrictive and "forced" while prestige classes feel more loose and flexible...

D&D began by making classes feel special. Only the fighter was good with weapons. Only the rogue could disable traps. Only the cleric could heal. You felt awesome when only YOUR character could save the day. You got your chance to shine in the spotlight. Anything that denigrates the classes by blending them into utility of other classes takes from that. Personally, whatever you want to call it, I'm a fan of anything that makes the classes more unique.

3. Inspiration is an interesting idea that is very wonky in its execution...

I don't use it but that's because I don't see the need for it. Fun as a reward for new players, fun as a "hero point" to help save the day, but to each their own. Plenty of blogs out there how to make it more prominent and meaningful.

4. The ability scores are still not balanced well...

I don't think they ever have been. House rules can fix this. Don't like long bows (which require historically around 150 to 200 pounds of pull to fire) relying on DEX? Change it. Don't like Dexterity affecting everything under the sun? Switch to a system that applies Intelligence (quicker thinking) to Initiative, for example.

Ultimately, I love the system. I think they didn't do a good job with solo monsters or CR at high level, but the more I run games, the better I get what is a good challenge, and the better I get at fixing these things without needing an overhaul. For example, the demon lords in Out of the Abyss are pathetically weak for CR23 monsters. So, I added a bit of homebrew: max hit points, immune to non-magical weapons, resistant to anything less than +3 weapons, added some major spell abilities that they used to have, gave them rakshasa style magic immunity (if they want). You do this, they become a major challenge. Same thing for anything else.

I feel they've given us a reminder from Gary Gygax's famous quote: “The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.”