Tequila Sunrise
Adventurer
Personally I'd say that 5e has a lot of regression to game elements that I don't like, and nothing that I can really call an improvement over what I already have. But I think you and I are more or less on the same page.
D&D 5E Everything aboot 5E looks boring.
- Thread starter Ratinyourwalls
- Start date
Ratinyourwalls
First Post
I think the main thing that is contributing to me finding the playtest info currently in our hands is the bestiary. The overly basic stats of all of the monsters really leads to boring adventures and boring combat imo. It's sets a cornerstone for one of the basic pillars of the game to be dreadfully boring.
JeffB
Legend
Agreed. One of the things I feel is crucial for WOTC to do for NEXT is to keep with 4es interesting monter abilities/powers that make them unique..things like the Ettins swat, or shifty kobolds, the orcs dying action, etc. . Nothing more boring than 2 claws, 1 bite round after round or hobbos that are not any different than orcs or gnolls barring a handful of hit points and some flavor text.
john112364
First Post
It's been stated that the monsters have not received much love as of yet. Hopefully the fun stuff is forthcoming.
Steely_Dan
First Post
Which would be?
Steely_Dan
First Post
They're already fun for me and mine, I don't understand the problem.
slobster
Hero
No problem per se, I'm just antsy to peek behind the curtain and see how monsters are generated in 5E. The monsters so far are all right (inability to hit notwithstanding) but I want to see what it will be like to modify existing enemies and homebrew new ones in a 5E campaign.
Steely_Dan
First Post
slobster
Hero
I like elites and solos in principle, but with monsters in such early incarnations they don't work properly so far, and I'd reserve judgement until I had a much larger sample size (or access to the creation guidelines) in any case. So I'll have to wait and see for those.
john112364
First Post
Not a problem per se. They're just rather bland for the most part. (There are a few exception, granted). But, I also understand that this is a play test and some spicing up is forth coming. And as I think about it I'm sure some will remain bland because there's only so much you can do to, say dire rats. But I'm looking forward to the elites and solos making things interesting.
Steely_Dan
First Post
Work properly in what way?
Steely_Dan
First Post
I think elite and solo could be a designation you apply to any creature, not a creature pigeonholed into the role.
slobster
Hero
The to-hit bonuses are too low, and hp can be way too low. If you've run the blind ogre fight in Blingdenstone you know what I mean. He goes down way too fast, and there is never any palpable sense of danger despite fighting what should be a deadly battle against a physically dominating foe.
In my experience so far with 5E, fights against a lot of simple enemies (even far more than the encounter guidelines suggest) work out very well. The streamlined rules and monster stats make gameplay fast, while the sheer enemy numbers and their possible lethality (all they need is a few lucky rolls . . . ) make it dynamic, interesting, and suspenseful.
Small groups of even supposedly powerful enemies(elites), on the other hand, are dominated by the PCs advantage in the action economy. The enemies are too fragile to last long in a slugfest, and too simplistic and streamlined to give the fight any depth or excitement.
In my opinion, that's a major flaw in monster building so far. But it's a very early playtest, so I don't fault them for it. I'm sure they'll learn a few things from the playtest and give us more refined enemies in later iterations.
Steely_Dan
First Post
slobster
Hero
More hp and +2 to hit across the board would be a good thing to test. It wouldn't address all my problems with elite design, as I think complexity should still be upped and their action economy should be adjusted. Doubly so for solos.
But you're right, that would be my first step if I were houseruling the playtest packet.
Therein lies the rub.
And that also lies at the heart of my firm suspicion that a decent subset of 4e fans criticizing DDN don't want a new edition at all, merely a 4.5e. Anything more than a cleaned-up 4e means that DDI 4e support will, sooner or later, vanish.
Yeah, I've also been getting that "let's throw lots of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks" feeling at times, unsettlingly.
Steely_Dan
First Post
Cool, I was thinking a Solo dragon could move, claw you, move, claw someone else, move, bite someone, move, breath weapon and/or spell cast, all in the the one turn (and maybe Tail Slap someones's ass as a Reaction).
Oh, and wing buffets.
slobster
Hero
Something along those lines sounds good for a dragon. Something that needs careful calibration (in this specific case, but also for solos/elites/normal mobs in general) is making sure that your monster can legitimately threaten an entire party, but isn't able to use that to focus fire and carve a single PC into meaty slivers in a single round. Mechanics like breath weapons are excellent for that, as they can affect the whole party but can't be condensed to nuke a single character. AoE's in general are like that. Stacking too many physical attacks on a single target can be problematic, but then you can juggle the math and throw in some other options to make it work.
All of this is stuff the system will have to address some day, but they don't seem to have started yet, as they've been focused on PC design and core mechanics for the system.
Tequila Sunrise
Adventurer
"Magical items are part of the story, not the math." (They are part of the math, and pretending they're not is just a return to the ambiguities of yore.)
Rolling stats is default. Rolling hit points is an option.
Classes don't have a common AEDU structure. (Yeah I know 4e already regressed this way; I don't play or allow E classes.)
As well as various other minor regressions, which aren't worth mentioning because I'm okay with not liking 5e. I don't need the temptation to drop ~$90 on a new edition. And yeah I know 5e is all about a little bit of every edition and modularity, but why compromise when I can keep playing 4e?
Not a fan of this "flat math" stuff either, though this is the closest thing to innovation that 5e's got from what I know.
Steely_Dan
First Post
1) I don't see how having an extra +1 to +3 due to DM discretion is ambiguous.
2) Not true, you can take default array.
3) Well, that's personal, and 4th Ed specific, after DMing 4th Ed for 10 sessions or so, I grew to despise the AEDU format.
4) I love it, no more +37 to hit and such malarkey,
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