D&D 5E Does anyone else feel like the action economy and the way actions work in general in 5e both just suck?

[Lem23]

I don't even know what those two are

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying and Mongoose Traveller, respectively.

 

[darjr]

So if the character behind the one at the door squeezes, making room for another to squeeze by, then the character at the door could backup into that space and end there. Though that is a DM call really, but not quite a house rule, and is RAW as far as I can tell.

 

[darjr]

Something I've noticed about 5e. It seems there is a subtle complexity that people don't get or forget about. For instance a monsters stat block isn't all they can do. In 5e it isn't sub-optimal always to do things outside of the monsters stat block. And sometimes it's much better. For instance a str 19 of an Ogre gives it an awesome jump and ability to pick up and later throw a PC. Or grapple a PC and then shove them down, pinning them PRONE. Then his buddies can batter them senseless.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So if the character behind the one at the door squeezes, making room for another to squeeze by, then the character at the door could backup into that space and end there. Though that is a DM call really, but not quite a house rule, and is RAW as far as I can tell.

If this is in response to my posts about the door, etc. you should read them more carefully since that isn't what happened. If you are responding about something else, my apologies.

Something I've noticed about 5e. It seems there is a subtle complexity that people don't get or forget about. For instance a monsters stat block isn't all they can do. In 5e it isn't sub-optimal always to do things outside of the monsters stat block. And sometimes it's much better. For instance a str 19 of an Ogre gives it an awesome jump and ability to pick up and later throw a PC. Or grapple a PC and then shove them down, pinning them PRONE. Then his buddies can batter them senseless.

I can't speak for others, but for myself, the issue is that many creatures can try to do such things, but often times those efforts are not very effective. I see this as a design flaw myself, because many such actions should have a good chance of working--but just don't. For instance, Ogres have STR 19 but no proficiency in Athletics. A level 1 PC with STR 16 and proficiency in Athletics is +5 versus the Ogre's +4. So, the ogre would more likely fail in the attempt than succeed.

 

[tetrasodium]

Something I've noticed about 5e. It seems there is a subtle complexity that people don't get or forget about. For instance a monsters stat block isn't all they can do. In 5e it isn't sub-optimal always to do things outside of the monsters stat block. And sometimes it's much better. For instance a str 19 of an Ogre gives it an awesome jump and ability to pick up and later throw a PC. Or grapple a PC and then shove them down, pinning them PRONE. Then his buddies can batter them senseless.

While technically that's probably mechanically accurate that a large ogre or huge storm giant could do that , but if you start doing a lot of that on the fly you start edging into the appearance of calvinball and set precedents, d&d is too mechanically hard coded in too many places to be certain that fate style flexible actions like that won't run into problematic edge cases. For a simple example, your ogre picks up alice & beats bob with her plate clad body, both of them have sentinel, who gets to attack the ogre or why not.... I'm sure there are more examples of things like that with some of them dramatcally more problematic too.

There's also the problem of the numbers often not really supporting it very well pointed out by @dnd4vr above. Sure it might work great against certain spellcasters (ie many wizards), but so will most anything else.

 

[darjr]

To hard coded? 5e? I don't agree, that seems almost incredulous to me. It's rather a natural thing for an Ogre to do anyway. They are a discount Hulk.

As far as a +5 accrobatics, yea that guy is going to shine, but not nearly everyone will. Ogre's like picking on the weak. At a certain range, the one I think Ogres are traditionally expected. it can be VERY effective.

As far as the door response, it was to a later post but yea, I didn't read the whole thread.

 

[tetrasodium]

To hard coded? 5e? I don't agree, that seems almost incredulous to me. It's rather a natural thing for an Ogre to do anyway. They are a discount Hulk.

As far as a +5 accrobatics, yea that guy is going to shine, but not nearly everyone will. Ogre's like picking on the weak. At a certain range, the one I think Ogres are traditionally expected. it can be VERY effective.

As far as the door response, it was to a later post but yea, I didn't read the whole thread.

You misunderstand, I'll stick with the sentinel example. The feat says exactly what it does & what circumstances trigger it. The vast majority, or at least a sizable plurality of what a character can do is like that. Compared to a more narrative system like fate it's very hard coded. That doesn't say it's bad, just that it's a problem if you start doing too many unexpected things... For example, even while saying that it doesn't seem that you were able to decide if alice or bob is the one who has sentinel triggered or why not.

 

[DND_Reborn]

To hard coded? 5e? I don't agree, that seems almost incredulous to me. It's rather a natural thing for an Ogre to do anyway. They are a discount Hulk.

As far as a +5 accrobatics, yea that guy is going to shine, but not nearly everyone will. Ogre's like picking on the weak. At a certain range, the one I think Ogres are traditionally expected. it can be VERY effective.

As far as the door response, it was to a later post but yea, I didn't read the whole thread.

Sure, such things should be a natural thing for such creatures to do. But RAW they aren't--and that's the flaw.

A simple house-rule I've considered is grant proficiency to skills for a creature's highest non-CON ability score. So, an Ogre with STR 19 (its highest score) gains proficiency in all STR-based ability checks. Creatures also gain saving throw proficiency in their two highest ability scores.

Anyway, to your point, sure the Ogres will go after the weaker characters--grappling, shoving, etc.--but have to contend with the stronger characters attacking them at the same time.

So, if you are playing Ogres as more effective than RAW would support IME, that is fine, but then I would suspect you are house-ruling them benefits normally not there. One example I hear commonly done that is not RAW is granting Ogres advantage because of their size on attempts to shove a medium creature. Does it make sense? Certainly if that creature resists with STR (instead of DEX), but it isn't the "hard-coded" rule.

And don't worry about the door, I miss things too when I am skimming a lot to catch up, etc.

 

[TheSword]

You misunderstand, I'll stick with the sentinel example. The feat says exactly what it does & what circumstances trigger it. The vast majority, or at least a sizable plurality of what a character can do is like that. Compared to a more narrative system like fate it's very hard coded. That doesn't say it's bad, just that it's a problem if you start doing too many unexpected things... For example, even while saying that it doesn't seem that you were able to decide if alice or bob is the one who has sentinel triggered or why not.

I don’t understand the problem. If the ogre picks up Alice to strike Bob, then Alice gets to use her reaction to make a sentinel attack. If that’s what your DM decides. If you decide that Bob also gets a sentinel attack against the ogre when it reaches to grab Alice then so be it. Its a judgement call.

Actions are only limited by the player and DM’s imagination. The supposed restrictions on actions In the 5e rules raised in this thread seem to be Failures of imagination, or the expectation of having everything prescribed (exactly the reason I don’t like pathfinder).

To be clear you are free as DM to give any ogre the athletics proficiency if you want him to be better at pinning people. Though I would say rewarding a player for choosing athletics is no bad thing. The players skill defeats the mighty ogres strength... that’s heroic.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I don’t understand the problem. If the ogre picks up Alice to strike Bob, then Alice gets to use her reaction to make a sentinel attack. If that’s what your DM decides. If you decide that Bob also gets a sentinel attack against the ogre when it reaches to grab Alice then so be it. Its a judgement call.

Actually, neither get a sentinel attack. It doesn't work if the target of the attack by the attacker also has the sentinel feat:

Actions are only limited by the player and DM’s imagination. The supposed restrictions on actions In the 5e rules raised in this thread seem to be Failures of imagination, or the expectation of having everything prescribed (exactly the reason I don’t like pathfinder).

I think most, if not all, of us understand that. For myself I am just stating I think it is a design flaw in many monsters that they were not given proficiencies in many skills and saves that they should have.

To be clear you are free as DM to give any ogre the athletics proficiency if you want him to be better at pinning people. Though I would say rewarding a player for choosing athletics is no bad thing. The players skill defeats the mighty ogres strength... that’s heroic.

Certainly true, and again, I hope anyone playing D&D understands the DM's prerogative. But this also depends greatly on the feel and level of "heroism" the table wants. While I could certainly hope a higher level hero might be able to defeat the Ogre's strength, I wouldn't want a level 1 "hero" (hardly the term I would use), to be able to do it more often than not.