D&D 5E D&D 5e Post-Mortem

[Stalker0]

To the OP, I do think wanting to move away from dnd after such a long stint with it is a pretty normal reaction. A lot of groups (mine included) at some point feel dnd burnout and want to try something else.

Of course, the question will be, will you be a group that ultimately comes back to dnd after a while (as mine did), or will you embrace alternate systems and continue your journey indefinitely with other systems.

Time will tell of course.

 

[Stalker0]

My play group just finished playing a Level UP campaign (after running several 5e campaigns).

I have several crunchy type players, and those players had expressed some discontent with the "lack of variation" in core 5e, they had missed some of the old 3e flavor with lots of subsystems and class and feats and XYZ.

Having polled my group on it just recently, the most surprising result was that players actually didn't like most of the extra crunch of LU at the end of the day (and by surprising I mean the players themselves were surprised to their own reactions). Perhaps in our later years we have just gotten tired of crunch and have come to prefer lighter systems.

 

[dave2008]

The CR system is completely out of whack.

Disagree - people just don't get it. Of course I don't really care about it and the game works without caring about it (which I think is a feature)

Many monsters are really really boring.

Some, but there are a lot of interesting monsters. This is an old complaint that doesn't hold water really. It did to some extent for the MM (but there are lots of interesting monsters in their too), but since then they have steadily improved.

Compare an average monster in the PF2 bestiaries to any random equivalent type monster in the monster manual.

I have, PF2 doesn't do a better in a lot of cases. I will admit it has been a long time since I did a comparison, but IIRC I would take almost any legendary 5e monster of any PF2 monster. Not mention the fact that they have steadily put out more and more interesting monsters.

I've also heard said that the official adventures are badly written and structured, but I haven't run any so I can't say.

I hate all prewritten adventures (from any company) so I will agree with you here!

 

[Baron Opal II]

As is my tradition, each time a campaign ends, I'm trying to learn from it.

Excellent!

It was a short campaign, based on old horror films and literature. As would become a 5e tradition of mine, it ended with a TPK because I couldn’t balance the challenges.
...
Over the decade or since 5e’s release, I ran a lot of games for many players – some at public events, some in my house, some on Roll20 or other VTTs. Most of them were pre-published because I didn’t have often time to write original content for the 2-3 weekly games I was running. And – more importantly – I didn’t trust the tools OR myself to make appropriate challenges.

A question about this. I've heard more than once, on this board and elsewhere, that encounters are hard to balance. What difficulties do you find? You've played this for a decade, and it sounds like you couldn't just make up an encounter in 10 minutes on some note paper with confidence. And I'm not talking about full stat blocks. Just "there's a large cave with two exiting tunnels, one at floor level and one that leads off from a natural balcony. Ehh, 6 hobgoblins and kobold bonegrinder would work." A trite example, but what have you found about the system that makes these large grey areas of uncertainty in encounter planning?

I haven't had the opportunity to play or really even run 5e, so I don't have much experience with the system. I have read it, and played every other edition. It seems that I hear this edition is "great to play, hard to run", and I'm having difficulty picking up why.

 

[Blue]

I just finished running a 3 year all-homebrew campaign in 5e, so let me chime in with my own post-campaign thoughts.

First, 5e is my favorite edition of D&D, starting back from Moldvay's Red Box Basic. That said, it's not my favorite D&D-like game, which is 13th Age by a lead designer of 3ed and the lead designer of 4e and written as a "love letter to D&D".

Second, I'm burnt out on running it. I just wanted my campaign to end these last few months. Compared to other systems I run it's a lot more DM prep to make things move smoothly. And I've found that I like systems where down beats/failure can occur with some regularity just like in stories and movies, but because of the punitive cost of character death in combat - which is one of the most common ways to overcome challenges - that's discouraged in a D&D context. Another part is that I have limited play time, and the number of combats per 24 hours needed in order to balance the classes against each other at higher levels is just not something I can provide. My next 5e campaign will absolutely use something like the Gritty Rest variant, or something quite different, to make rate of encounters per "long rest" be where I want it to be.

Third, while talking about being burnt out, I also mentioned my next campaign -- odd things to put together. It is the most popular game out there, and a common denominator for my play group. I'm pretty sure that my next long form campaign they will ask for more 5e. But I need a break from running it for a while. I'm still playing 5e in another group, so I'm not burnt out on the system completely.

Fourth, I am loathe to start a new campaign right before 2024 and the new books. I've had a campaign transition from 3ed to 3.5, and the thought of being the formative half year into a new campaign and someone wants to replace their character because of changes is not something I want to consider. This isn't really a postmortem comment as it is a pre-change comment, but does still apply to the concept of my next 5e campaign.

Fifth, while combat is expected with some regularity, the system doesn't give me tools for making each combat interesting and different. Most foes are sacks of HPs that do damage. Compare to 13th Age were so many foes, especially once you get to the amazing Bestiary and Bestiary II all have twists and things to differentiate the combats built in. I could convert, but (a) some of the tools they use to do this are foreign to D&D and would feel out of place (such as "on an even hit, do this as well"), but more importantly I've already talked about the prep being one of the things that burns me out with it.

Sixth, I've retreaded the same lower levels so many times. But considering some of my players, I worry that starting at high level will end up with characters that don't have party or self synergy. And I'm not sure that the higher prep needed will be rewarding for me. So I don't know what levels I want to run next, but I know what levels I don't and it's pretty comprehensive.

Seventh, wow, this is getting long, anyway Seventh: I love worldbuilding, and I have a whole bunch of ideas I want to flesh out for unique settings and tales that can unfold in them that are enhanced/created by the traits of the various settings. And this is almost exclusively D&D high fantasy, created with the concepts of D&D in mind. So I'm going to return of my own free will at some point to a D&D-like. And considering my current player base it's much more likely to be 5e or 2024, not Pathfinder, 13th Age 2nd, or other D&D-like game.

Eight, but for the short term, I've got one of my players (whom runs a 5e game I play in) offering to run, but either 5e or equally crunchy games like Star Wars 5e or Cyberpunk RED, or I'll run something that uses different GM and creativity muscles, like a PbtA game - I've already proposed Urban Shadows, Masks: A New Generation, and Monster of the Week.

 

[Stalker0]

Some, but there are a lot of interesting monsters. This is an old complaint that doesn't hold water really. It did to some extent for the MM (but there are lots of interesting monsters in their too), but since then they have steadily improved.

I do think compared to 4e monster design in 5e took a step back in several ways. 4e monsters are a lot more interesting in terms of abilities and the way some of them changed over the combat.

Now 4e had the grind problem that negated a lot of that innovation but that was steadily fixed in later books.

In comparison i do think there is a lot of “sameness” to 5e monster design.

4e also did more to make encounter design interesting, not just monsters but also traps, environmental effects, etc. it’s not that 5e prevents dms doing that but 4e really encouraged it. I found my 4e combats were a lot more dynamic environment than my 5e ones…and I had to learn to “force” in more of that for my 5e games, whereas it was natural in 4e

 

[Parmandur]

The interviews and playtests I followed seemed to reiterate that D&D is continuing to move in a direction that takes what I disliked about 5e and just lean into it more.

Yeah, it does seem that some of your personal frustration points are part of what most people like about modern D&D. It isn't changing in those areas for the next decade, maybe ever.

 

[dave2008]

I haven't had the opportunity to play or really even run 5e, so I don't have much experience with the system. I have read it, and played every other edition. It seems that I hear this edition is "great to play, hard to run", and I'm having difficulty picking up why.

Everyone is different, but I find it easy to run. With the tables in the DMG I can, and have, run encounters without monster statblocks at all. Just using the DCs, HP, Damage, etc. from the DMG tables. I can whip together an encounter in 5 minutes with ease. I personally don't understand the problems Retreater has with the system, but I believe they have them. I find it very flexible and easy to run. I don't worry about trying to balance encounters, or XP budgets, or CR. I just do what make sense to me and 9/10 it works. I would think anyone with experience with 1e/2e/BECMI would find it very easy as well.

 

[dave2008]

I do think compared to 4e monster design in 5e took a step back in several ways. 4e monsters are a lot more interesting in terms of abilities and the way some of them changed over the combat.

I think we sometimes have some misplaced nostalgia for 4e monsters. There are a lot of boring 4e monsters to go along with the grindy ones (solos). Solos didn't really improve until MM3 (and they did other things to make them a little less varied too, i,e, worse IMO). I think in general "elites" were the best designed. 5e "solos' in general are better than 4e solos IMO.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Disagree - people just don't get it. Of course I don't really care about it and the game works without caring about it (which I think is a feature)

You've attributed my original comment to another user. Probably a copy paste mistake when writing your reply. Anyway.

I strongly disagree. Sure if a system is dysfunctional you can ignore the bad bits, but the fact that you can ignore them does not make a dysfunctional system actually good. Isn't there some kind of fallacy here; the fact that you can houserule a bad rule away does not make the bad rule good.

Some, but there are a lot of interesting monsters. This is an old complaint that doesn't hold water really. It did to some extent for the MM (but there are lots of interesting monsters in their too), but since then they have steadily improved.

I have, PF2 doesn't do a better in a lot of cases. I will admit it has been a long time since I did a comparison, but IIRC I would take almost any legendary 5e monster of any PF2 monster. Not mention the fact that they have steadily put out more and more interesting monsters.

The problem is the monsters don't actually have anything interesting in them. They're just hit points. I admit I have yet to look at more recent monster designs, but comparing to PF2 is night and day. PF2 stat blocks are clearly superior. Even the most boring monsters have something that sets them apart from the others.

I hate all prewritten adventures (from any company) so I will agree with you here!

They can be well done, though. I think all the Paizo adventure paths I've played have been good. Abomination Vaults, Rise of the Rune Lords (PF1) and Curse of the Crimson Throne (PF1).