D&D 5E (2014) Critiquing the System

[Aldarc]

You cant disagree with what i call something. Thats weird. That i called something something is not mutable.

Semantics, and not really the point, but it's best that we not quibble about that.

 

[Lanefan]

For myself (and others that have spoken up) this is something we don't like about BA. I want level to matter more. Even in 1E if you allow a 20 to always hit, mobs are still a threat and always were.

Unclear - are you suggesting this is a feature or a bug, that mobs are always a threat?

To me, it's a feature; and a very strong one.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Semantics, and not really the point, but it's best that we not quibble about that.

Like i said. Fine. No edition wars. But the thread is literally titled "Critiquing the system" so remarking negatively on bad aspects of editions is going to happen to some degree in this thread, it has nothing to do with edition wars, and to some extent you're just gonna have to acknowledge that for this comversation we are having right now that is completely normal. I shall refrain from trash talking the edition, but that is it. The fact it is probably viewed by a large number of people to be the worst edition for a great many reasons and a step in a bad direction is going to come up somewhat. As 5e borrows some stuff from it its highly relevant and at least to some degree people will speak about what they think 5e did right or wrong mechanically and otherwise and it will frequently be the case that in comparing it to other editions for analysis sake, some other editions may end up being critiqued and spoken negatively or positively of as well. Perhaps i shouodnt have said i call it "ee" but critiquing 4e is very relevant to critiquing 5e for some potential aspects of conversation. Same goes for other editions.

Thats all ill say on this topic. And yes. I agree. Lets not quibble. But negative critique does not constitute an edition war. So there will be some. Its normal.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Wizards shouldnt be outpaced by rogues so easily in arcana. Come on.

Arcane Tricksters come to mind.

Maybe wizards shouldn't be a class? Just have Arcane Tricksters with an appropriate background - Charlatan, Sage, Hermit, whatever. ;P

For myself (and others that have spoken up) this is something we don't like about BA. I want level to matter more.

Level matters a great deal. Look at the difference between 1st level spells and 9th, or between 12 hps and 200. 5e contracted the scaling of checks as an over-reaction to the numbers gaps of 3e (when 4e had already reigned in the gap between maxxed & untrained, in- and cross- class to the simple +5 of 'trained'), but, it restored spell progression to traditional levels and scales hit points more dramatically than ever.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm not sure if I ever could really put my finger on why it didn't "feel" like D&D other than all classes using the same structure.

There was a disturbing lack of class imbalance, yes. Fortunately, 5e has restored that, and it feels like D&D again.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Like i said. Fine. No edition wars. But the thread is literally titled "Critiquing the system" so remarking negatively on bad aspects of editions is going to happen to some degree in this thread...

Nod. Of course, I'd hope the intent is, at least, in part, for the critiques to be constructive. 5e's very open to being tweaked by individual DMs, and is a living system that can be improved upon going forward (even if it's currently very resistant to that in pacing philosophy). For that matter, 3.x, thanks to the SRD is also a living system, new d20 games could take advantage of any issues found with it, and, even the classic TSR era versions of the game have been pried open under an oblique case of the OGL, and OSR games could thus benefit, too.

Unclear - are you suggesting this is a feature or a bug, that mobs are always a threat?
To me, it's a feature; and a very strong one.

It's one feature of BA. Lack of a sense of advancement in out of combat skill without resorting to Expertise is a related bug.

 

[Sacrosanct]

1e with 2e elements has been my favorite edition since I started in 1981 (well 1e until 1989 obviously). Didn't like 3e. Way too much numbers bloat and didn't like how pretty much everyone was assumed to multiclass at some point. I am not a fan of min/maxing, so naturally I came to odds with 3e over that. Didn't like 4e, because it didn't feel like a D&D game to me, for reasons already mentioned upthread.

Even after 5e came out, I still said 1e/2e was my favorite even though I play 5e way more than those now. In all honesty, if I asked myself what edition I would want to play tonight, it' would probably be 5e. So I guess this old grognard has a new favorite edition? I don't think it's perfect (no edition is), but it's so easy to run, easier to play, and I love how it's way easier to achieve desired PC archetypes between backgrounds, subclasses, and feats. I don't need, nor want, a gazillion options (looking at you 3e), but the way the aforementioned structure of 5e works, it covers pretty much everything I want. As long as I use the slower healing rules options Now just bring back that cool black and white line art! Not everything has to be color.

 

[Don Durito]

More than once I've considered just giving everyone proficiency with everything and then just letting players have advantage on things they're skilled with.

 

[Bacon Bits]

It's tough to discuss 4E without getting into edition wars ... but to me it always felt like a very different game. Not necessarily a bad game, but more of a card based tactical war game with too much going on at higher levels which caused gameplay to bog down.

I enjoyed it well enough at lower levels and the design seemed simple but the interaction of powers/interrupts/interrupts of interrupts at high level had me looking for a new game when 5E came out.

I've always said that 4e is one of the best tabletop tactical squad-based combat games I've ever played. And I still believe that to be true today. It's a fantastic game in that genre. The addition of a few fringe mechanics like skills was enough to turn it into a fully fledged RPG. However, it never felt like D&D while I was playing it, and we ran into problems running it as a TTRPG.

I can even pin down the exact session that we all knew we were done with 4e. It was our third(ish) campaign in late 2009 to early 2010. There were seven PCs. I couldn't even tell you what classes the other PCs were, but I was playing a Fighter. We were low to mid level Paragon. Level 13 or 14. About half the PCs had enough system mastery to create a build, and the rest had a good idea how combat should work and what roles they should fill. We had the Character Builder and a nice laser printer, so we should had little difficulty with the management of characters and abilities. At this point, one or two players had already voiced that they were struggling to enjoy the game; they just weren't having as much fun as 3.x or AD&D.

I don't know where our DM got the module -- it was something online that had been produced in the first few months the game had been available -- but the module had already been very wonky in the past. This was an edition where the DM was rather discouraged from altering things on the fly and it led to very strange outcomes. This was the same module where you had a DC X Diplomacy check to convince a Duke to let you help to rescue his daughter, and if you failed you went on a subquest to get help and evidence that you could succeed. When you came back with help and evidence (a few levels later) the DC of the Diplomacy check to convince the Duke had gone up. Even knowing that DCs aren't fixed in 4e, it felt like we spent a bunch of time on a side quest to make it harder to convince a Duke that his only daughter was worth saving. (And, no, he wasn't secretly trying to off her. We asked.) Oh, and by the way, if you failed this second check then you were stuck at a dead end. You needed the Duke's help, and he wouldn't give it if you failed the second time with the evidence. There was no alternative given to move forward. Yes, obviously the evidence should have automatically succeeded, but the DM hadn't read the second encounter all the way through to realize that. This was also the module where you had to complete a Skill Challenge to get to a certain dungeon, and if you failed you took some kind of soft damage that basically meant once you started failing you were extremely likely to continue to fail. We only survived through some extremely lucky die rolling by PCs that should not have succeeded. Just very poorly put together, so a significant amount of blame for what happened next can be laid at the feet of the module author.

Anyways, back to our session of doom. About 30 minutes into the session, we began The Encounter. There were about 10 NPCs in a room with a lot of stairs and some partially submerged sections. A sewer, basically. Most NPCs were some kind of undead mummy things, while the rest were some necrotic or earth based construct, fiend, or elemental. Most of the NPCs had auras. Some of the auras did necrotic/poison damage. Others boosted necrotic/poison damage. Others granted resistance to radiant damage or everything except necrotic/poison damage (and all the NPCs were immune to necrotic/poison damage). I think some of them healed when they took necrotic/poison damage or had some kind of natural healing. Worse, least three of the PCs had spells that could create ongoing areas of effect, and every PC had reactions with some being at-will. This combat took forever. Four hours in and most of the players had checked out. It's not that it was a difficult encounter, it was that there was so much bookkeeping for what was going on with all the overlapping auras and so many reactions going on that the game moved too slowly. In the end, we spent the entire 6 hour session playing one encounter and we did not finish. We stopped because the DM was exhausted. The next session, we finished the encounter in the first hour, and got to the next town or safe area and ended early.

The session after that, one of the guys said, "Hey, I kind of want to run a 3e game," and everybody jumped at it. Nobody looked back.

I remember having a discussion with some of the guys later, and the overall feeling was that the only way to run that kind of encounter effectively would be to run it like a business meeting and really get a lock on pacing a being ready to act on your turn. Give every player responsibilities for tracking something, etc. The problem with that is that it would make playing D&D feel like attending a business meeting. Business meetings are about as fun as getting a cavity filled without all the entertainment of the drill and amusing ceiling posters. Nobody wanted to play 4e that badly.

 

[Don Durito]

I often felt that 4E kept me more engaged when it was not my turn, as the changes in the battlefield would affect what I wanted to do and I needed to keep an eye open for an interrupt or reaction.

But I agree that it did take too long and there were just too many small and fiddly bonuses that didn't make enough impact.

However, I made the mistake of making a rogue in 5e - and why pay attention when it's not my turn? Nothing anyone else does is really likely to have much impact on the one thing I can do on my turn every turn. Not every class is that bad - my paladin has real decisions to make - but my god playing a rogue was boring once combat started.