D&D 5E D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs

[dave2008]

"Some" options?

You're left with 2 classes - fighter and rogue. That's it. The half caster classes mean that the game features repeated spell casting every single combat. How do I know? Because when I ran my Thule campaign, I allowed 1/2 casters like Rangers and monks, and every single encounter featured magic. Social encounters featured magic. Exploration encounters featured magic. Just like standard 5e, even with 1/2 casters, the PC's have a MOUNTAIN of magic available to them.

So, basically, I would have to strip out so much of the game, that it's just not worth it anymore. Anyone who wants to play a more tactically interesting game being restricted to fighters and rogues and 5e's ruleset is bored out of their minds because fighters and rogues in 5e do the same thing over and over and over again. They're the "simple" classes. That's their attraction. I've been told that repeatedly enough.

You want to do anything other than straight up attack in 5e with a fighter? Ok, well, there's no rules for it, so, now we're back to playing Calvinball. I want to sweep my sword through the sand and blind the three bandits in front of me. How do I adjudicate that action? 4e would be simple. 5e? There's no "maneuver" system in 5e. Which means I'd have to bolt that on or constantly have to make stuff up.

Heck, I want to throw my sword at someone, Conan style isn't handled by the system. Never minding the aforementioned chase rules.

So, yeah, it failed utterly to do what I wanted it to do. The players hated it because they found it unrelentingly boring as soon as dice started dropping.

If I were to do it again, 5e would be the last system I would try to use to run that style of game.

But, apparently, this is offensive to talk about because 5e can do everything and any failure must be entirely my fault and nothing to do with the system. So, I guess I'm just not as good a DM as the OP. C'est la vie.

I'm not at my computer at the moment so I can't properly respond. I will try to get back to you tomorrow. Have a good evening and thank you for the detailed reply.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, let me be more detailed again.

In this thread, which is complaining about people not being respectful, I said that I couldn't successfully run naval campaigns in D&D. Now, no one asked me for any details. I was just told I was wrong and that 5e will do naval campaigns perfectly fine. Ghosts of Saltmarsh was quoted. Let me elucidate in detail why 5e D&D (and 3e as well) doesn't do naval campaigns.

1. Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

Since this was pointed to, let's start here. GoH does have some rules for running ship combat. I'll get to that later. However, it has no guidance whatsoever for actually running a ship. How much are docking fees in Saltmarsh or Seaton? How much does a ton of salt cost and how much markup can I give it? There's a new dwarven silver mine here. They will likely need mining equipment. How much does a ton of mining equipment cost and what is the markup?

Oh, right. I have to make all that up entirely myself, all the while not breaking 5e's laughable economy system in a setting where you can, by the book, buy magic items at any time.

My players took one look at the book keeping required for running a ship, because there are no rules for abstracting it all away, and revolted to the point where the player whose character actually rightfully owned the Sea Maiden, dumped his character immediately and introduced his gnomish artificer.

Yeah, not a success.

Additionally, if you actually LOOK at the adventures in GoS, none of them actually feature anything between two ships. There are no pirate engagements, boarding actions (other than a very simple one in the very first module) or anything like that. Almost all the adventures occur on land - Sinister Secret, Danger at Dunwater, Isle of the Abbey, The Final Enemy, The Styes - six of the seven modules either feature no encounters or at most one encounter on a ship. Not really what I want from a naval campaign. And none of them feature combat between two ships.

2. Personal Experience

I've tried to run naval campaigns in D&D for a LOONG time. I tried in 3e with a homebrew campaign set in Scarred Lands and I ran the Savage Tide Adventure Path up to the seventh (?) module where you defend Farshore. I've run two campaigns in 5e - a homebrew set in Primeval Thule and Ghosts of Saltmarsh. The only reasonably successful one was Savage Tides and, again, like Ghosts of Saltmarsh, it features virtually no actual ship combat. One of the seven modules actually takes place on the ship in Savage Tides and even then, most of the module is about stopping in various locations and exploring. I have very, very extensive experience trying this.

3. DM's Guild and 3rd party Supplements

I own probably about two dozen 3e and 5e ship supplements. None of them actually work. They are either too complicated or too simple. And they all break down in use for one reason or another.

4. Platoon Scale Combat (See, I did get back to it)

The D&D combat ruleset will fight you every single step of the way if you try. The scale is entirely wrong - 5 foot squares? When encounters start at 1/2 a mile away? 6 second rounds? Yeah, that doesn't work. So, you add in 10 minute rounds. Only thing is, the wizard player then very rightly points out that in 10 minutes, he could vaporize that pirate ship before it even got into bow range with his extended range wand of fireballs (3e). Or, well, same in 5e really. The casters just have so many spells that it really doesn't work and it doesn't make sense that every pirate ship has a high level caster on it too. But, hey, we'll ignore that and just make it cinematic right?

So, we get into boarding actions. Your ship has 30 combatants plus the PC's, and the pirate ship has 60. Oh, hang on, each of those combatants take up 5 foot squares and your ship deck isn't anywhere near big enough to hold that many combatants. Where do we put them? Oh well, we'll go theater of the mind and ignore that bit too. So, dividing up the allied combatants, each PC is running his or her own character with sets of actions, and then six or so NPC's, each with their own sets of actions, HP and whatnot. The DM, meanwhile, is trying to track 60 NPC's, each with actions, and, let's be honest, they aren't all the same because some might be standard bandits, while others are scouts, and at least a bandit leader, who has reactions, never minding different AC's, HP's and whatnot.

Yeah, I want to grind through a combat in the next six hours. No thanks.

So, this has been MY experience (I'm not talking about anyone else, just me) trying to do naval campaigns. There are additional issues, but, these four have all been deal breakers. When someone comes up and says, "Hey, I want to do a naval campaign in 5e", then Hell yes, I'm going to tell them it's a really bad idea and to use another system. I'm not doing it because of some white room theory crafting. I'm doing it because I literally have hundreds of play hours banging my head on this issue and failing time and again and I'd like to save someone the pain of trying the same.

Trying to run naval campaigns in 5e D&D will not work. It just won't. Not unless you pretty much sweep under the table virtually every element of actually being on a ship anyway. Why do I say that? Because I've tried it. Repeatedly.

So, just to ask, how is this offensive to anyone?

 

[Lanefan]

I'll agree. 5e's chase rules are terrible.

So, if I wanted to run a chase, I wouldn't look to the mechanics in 5e for doing that, but, rather, start looking at how other systems do it. If chases are going to be a regular feature in my campaign, such as a campaign that centers around the PC's doing heists, or perhaps being bounty hunters, then I'd probably start looking for a new system, rather than D&D.

Interesting difference in approach from me, in that my first instinct would be to design and then trial-and-error my own chase rules to bolt on to whatever system I was already using, rather than look for (and then have to learn) an entire new system.

Again, I fail to see how suggesting a new system is a bad thing. It's always going to be so contextual.

I have one system. That's all I need.

If that system doesn't work for something - which certainly happens - then I will modify and kitbash that part of it until it does work; leaving the rest of it intact.

 

[Lanefan]

4. Platoon Scale Combat (See, I did get back to it)

The D&D combat ruleset will fight you every single step of the way if you try. The scale is entirely wrong - 5 foot squares? When encounters start at 1/2 a mile away? 6 second rounds? Yeah, that doesn't work. So, you add in 10 minute rounds. Only thing is, the wizard player then very rightly points out that in 10 minutes, he could vaporize that pirate ship before it even got into bow range with his extended range wand of fireballs (3e). Or, well, same in 5e really. The casters just have so many spells that it really doesn't work and it doesn't make sense that every pirate ship has a high level caster on it too. But, hey, we'll ignore that and just make it cinematic right?

So, we get into boarding actions. Your ship has 30 combatants plus the PC's, and the pirate ship has 60. Oh, hang on, each of those combatants take up 5 foot squares and your ship deck isn't anywhere near big enough to hold that many combatants. Where do we put them? Oh well, we'll go theater of the mind and ignore that bit too. So, dividing up the allied combatants, each PC is running his or her own character with sets of actions, and then six or so NPC's, each with their own sets of actions, HP and whatnot. The DM, meanwhile, is trying to track 60 NPC's, each with actions, and, let's be honest, they aren't all the same because some might be standard bandits, while others are scouts, and at least a bandit leader, who has reactions, never minding different AC's, HP's and whatnot.

Yeah, I want to grind through a combat in the next six hours. No thanks.

In fairness, that's not the system's fault. Given the requisite time and patience it would work as intended.

So, this has been MY experience (I'm not talking about anyone else, just me) trying to do naval campaigns. There are additional issues, but, these four have all been deal breakers. When someone comes up and says, "Hey, I want to do a naval campaign in 5e", then Hell yes, I'm going to tell them it's a really bad idea and to use another system. I'm not doing it because of some white room theory crafting. I'm doing it because I literally have hundreds of play hours banging my head on this issue and failing time and again and I'd like to save someone the pain of trying the same.

Trying to run naval campaigns in 5e D&D will not work. It just won't. Not unless you pretty much sweep under the table virtually every element of actually being on a ship anyway. Why do I say that? Because I've tried it. Repeatedly.

I've designed a homebrew system for naval combat but have yet to run it out in practice. I maintain that naval combat can be done in D&D, though it does require some reining in of the spellcasters.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You’ve claimed that D&D can be modified to be just as good at thing X as a “bespoke” game that’s been designed to specifically be about X.

Show me the quote.

This is where you do the thing you say you’re not doing. “D&D does just as well or better with less”.

That is not at all what the text you quoted says. I don’t know why you’re here with an axe to grind, but I’m tired of it. Stop blatantly saying that I’m saying things that I am not saying.

when I claim that I (ME, not you, not anyone else, ME) CAN'T do X in D&D, I must somehow "prove" that I couldn't do it and suggest that yeah, another system would be better, or that, since I've tried to do it for years and failed and never seen any successful attempt at doing it over the years, I consider it something that D&D can't do, that's "offensive".

What, in the text you quoted or anywhere else, did I say that you are reading as me asking you to prove your experience? Not being facetious. I would never intentionally suggest that in any context. I view such a behavior as fracking vile.

If running horror in D&D requires a 200+ page supplement, I think it's pretty fair to say that D&D doesn't do horror particularly well.

But it doesn’t. There is a supplement, and it doesn’t involve learning a new system, it’s just new classes, and if you happen to be unsatisfied with 5e’s travel rules as well, AIME’s variant is better. The fact there is a supplement that could be useful to that DM, doesn’t mean that what that DM wants requires such a supplement.

A DM could also find low magic classes on DMsGuild and spend 15$ getting some additional options, or like...allow the monk in a low magic game because it’s...not necessarily magical. And the Barbarian.

Again, I fail to see how suggesting a new system is a bad thing. It's always going to be so contextual.

I agree.

"Some" options?

You're left with 2 classes - fighter and rogue. That's it. The half caster classes mean that the game features repeated spell casting every single combat. How do I know? Because when I ran my Thule campaign, I allowed 1/2 casters like Rangers and monks, and every single encounter featured magic. Social encounters featured magic. Exploration encounters featured magic. Just like standard 5e, even with 1/2 casters, the PC's have a MOUNTAIN of magic available to them.

So, basically, I would have to strip out so much of the game, that it's just not worth it anymore. Anyone who wants to play a more tactically interesting game being restricted to fighters and rogues and 5e's ruleset is bored out of their minds because fighters and rogues in 5e do the same thing over and over and over again. They're the "simple" classes. That's their attraction. I've been told that repeatedly enough.

The Battlemaster exists, but okay. I’ll readily grant that the rogue deserves something similar, though.

You want to do anything other than straight up attack in 5e with a fighter? Ok, well, there's no rules for it, so, now we're back to playing Calvinball. I want to sweep my sword through the sand and blind the three bandits in front of me. How do I adjudicate that action? 4e would be simple. 5e? There's no "maneuver" system in 5e. Which means I'd have to bolt that on or constantly have to make stuff up.

Can I offer some advice, here? 5e has 1 formula for determining saving throw DCs. That attack obviously wouldn’t deal damage. The game features “special attack” options in the DMG that you can use to determine the action economy and compare for balance. Like, as I’ve indicated in this thread before, the 5e DMG kinda sucks at giving advice, but what you describe is a DC=8+strength or Dex mod+proficiency saving throw for them, same action economy as tripping someone.

Classic move, of course. Up there with shooting the chandelier so it drops on someone. (Dex save vs [determined by how heavy it is] damage +1d6 damage for every 10ft the chandelier drops, restrained. Half damage and no restrain on a successful save)

So, yeah, it failed utterly to do what I wanted it to do. The players hated it because they found it unrelentingly boring as soon as dice started dropping.

If I were to do it again, 5e would be the last system I would try to use to run that style of game.

Fair enough. My question is, would that translate to to telling a DM who has started a thread about running a low magic 5e campaign that “D&D 5e cant do that. Play something else”? (Hint: if not, the OP isn’t about you.)

Heck, I want to throw my sword at someone, Conan style isn't handled by the system.

It is. “An object that bears no resemblance to a weapon deals 1d4 damage (the DM assigns a damage type appropriate to the object). If a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack, or throws a melee weapon that does not have the thrown property, it also deals 1d4 damage. An improvised thrown weapon has a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet.”

It even gives you the range.

But, apparently, this is offensive to talk about because 5e can do everything and any failure must be entirely my fault and nothing to do with the system. So, I guess I'm just not as good a DM as the OP. C'est la vie.

Dude. Look, whatever I said that made you feel like this, I’m sorry. I have, however, at no point said that 5e can do everything, or that any failure is the DMs fault.

So, just to ask, how is this offensive to anyone?

I literally explicitly said to you...today, that it isn’t.

Some variation of “I tried this in D&D and it never worked for me, for these reasons.” Is useful and great. Even if the DM is undeterred, they’ve gained insight into what to look out for.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

In fairness, that's not the system's fault. Given the requisite time and patience it would work as intended.

I've designed a homebrew system for naval combat but have yet to run it out in practice. I maintain that naval combat can be done in D&D, though it does require some reining in of the spellcasters.

Yeah it’s a challenge.

The best way I’ve found to run groups of NPCs in combat is to treat them as one creature, with one turn, and generally have them do AoE damage with a save. This way, two ships have 4-6 turns, at most, in addition to the PCs.
I say 6 because sometimes it makes sense to split each crew into two groups. If not, then it’s;
Each PC
Each Ship (the ship’s turn covers the crew that are running the ship)
Each fighting force of each crew

If I want more moving parts, I’ll give battle groups legendary actions.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah it’s a challenge.

The best way I’ve found to run groups of NPCs in combat is to treat them as one creature, with one turn, and generally have them do AoE damage with a save. This way, two ships have 4-6 turns, at most, in addition to the PCs.
I say 6 because sometimes it makes sense to split each crew into two groups. If not, then it’s;
Each PC
Each Ship (the ship’s turn covers the crew that are running the ship)
Each fighting force of each crew

If I want more moving parts, I’ll give battle groups legendary actions.

When it gets to hand-to-hand, say in a boarding action, then I can more or less run it using the existing combat rules.

It's ship-v-ship at range where I saw a need for something, to handle things like rate of cannon/ballista fire, ranges, what specific damage gets done to the receiving ship on a hit, what the odds were of hitting someone on a ship, wind and tide effects, etc. etc. So, I tried building it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

When it gets to hand-to-hand, say in a boarding action, then I can more or less run it using the existing combat rules.

Fair enough. I enjoy running groups the way I do, obviously, but if the action is between fewer than 20 total combatants, I will put groups on one initiative instead, and move the whole group, then have each attack, then next turn. Which is still similar to treating them as one creature, I suppose.

It's ship-v-ship at range where I saw a need for something, to handle things like rate of cannon/ballista fire, ranges, what specific damage gets done to the receiving ship on a hit, what the odds were of hitting someone on a ship, wind and tide effects, etc. etc. So, I tried building it.

Ah, okay. Other than wind and tides, what was missing from the ship rules in Saltmarsh, if you don’t mind me asking?

 

[MichaelSomething]

I would like to add that due to having the Bard class, D&D is the best RPG for incorporating musical numbers! Can FATE do that????

 

[Aldarc]

So, you're now comparing a specific book meant to be run SPECIFICALLY using ALL the elements of 5e D&D like Ravenloft, vs a "bespoke" setting book like AiME and claiming both are the same? Ok, well, by that criteria, fair enough.

But, it does ignore my point. My point was that there isn't a whole lot of difference between suggesting you run a different game and suggesting you go out and buy a 200+ page supplement in order to do X. If running horror in D&D requires a 200+ page supplement, I think it's pretty fair to say that D&D doesn't do horror particularly well.

I think that there's a subtle difference, though one that doesn't necessarily detract from your main thrust. When you are picking up Ravenloft, you are running D&D PHB + Ravenloft for your horror game. When you pick up AiME, you are essentially picking up a stand-alone game. If you set about to play AiME for your low magic or Middle Earth games, you are not playing D&D 5e + AiME; instead, you are playing AiME, with D&D 5e PHB, MM, and DMG all but ignored. Could one pick out exploration and journey rules from AiME and add them to D&D 5e? Sure. But that's then treating AiME as a supplement book, much like Ravenloft, rather than a stand-alone game.

Exalted Third Edition is one of my very favorite games. I think it has pretty poor support for horror gaming. Light horror themes can work, but much of the way the game works is counterproductive to horror gaming. Like D&D you can utilize horror themes as a spice, but it does not really work well as a main ingredient.

This seems to be an underlying issue for the thread.

Edit:

I would like to add that due to having the Bard class, D&D is the best RPG for incorporating musical numbers! Can FATE do that????

There is Til Dawn and Rockalypse, if you are interested.