Fiddling around with Fifth Ed

[OB1]

How do feats and MC make that much of a difference? I play a RAW campaign playing a published adventure and I see some of the "problems" noted in OP, but I have never played without feats or with MC, so I have no reference point. Feats dont seem to a high impact on our game.

They don't necessarily make a huge difference but they can. With Feats and MC turned on, if your group then goes for full optimization, there are synergies that allow you to get quite a bit above the baseline in terms of power. As with magic items, they can simply make you better than what the game was designed for. Combine that with white grid encounters and a misunderstanding of how CR and daily encounter math works, and combat can become trivial using the base single encounter guidelines.

Of course, your party chose abilities specifically to become more powerful than the baseline, so I can never understand why people then complain when that shows up in play ( [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] for example, has issues with his game because of this, and then blames WoTC for not designing to his baseline rather than designing for the majority of players). It's like buying a Ferrari, driving it at 120 on the freeway and then being surprised when you are passing everyone else on the road.

There has to be a baseline somewhere, setting it for new and casual players makes sense, as it allows the game to be much more accessible to the masses. Hardcore players can either adjust that baseline to their tastes with the tools provided or turn off options to keep things in line.

 

[Oofta]

How do feats and MC make that much of a difference? I play a RAW campaign playing a published adventure and I see some of the "problems" noted in OP, but I have never played without feats or with MC, so I have no reference point. Feats dont seem to a high impact on our game.

It really depends on your game. D&D is based on the principle that the DM adjusts the game to match the number of players and their effectiveness as a group.

There are many things which can make the game "too easy"

• Having more than 4 PCs and not adjusting number of monsters in published adventures. I've hit this a few times in AL.
• Allowing for more permissive ability score generation than the standard. I think most people underestimate this one; if every PC is significantly above the curve, it's going to show.
• Too many magic items and giving (or letting people purchase) the perfect items. I've fallen into this one myself, it's a hard habit to change.
• Certain combinations. Dips into warlock for example seem to be popular way to get back spells for your other spell casting classes (something I'm going to house rule away)
• Feats depending on the party. Got a wolf totem barbarian giving all melee people advantage to attack every round and everyone has great weapon master? It makes a big difference.
• DM strategy. Not everyone is good at running monsters intelligently. But if you always line up your fights with monsters in fireball formation on an empty field, don't complain when they get fireballed.
• Party tactics. Some parties are simply more effective than others. Either through luck or planning some groups are better than others even with everything else being equal. I've hit this myself - two different groups I was DMing using same point buy ability scores, magic items and encounter guidelines. One group could simply handle more than the other.

 

[Tony Vargas]

. I've been redesigning every monster and the encounter math. The game I'm running now is still 5e from the players' perspective, but everything on my side of the DM Screen is homebrewed.

Bottom line: you've made the game your own. You found issues & dealt with them.

Which is exactly the point of 5e DM Empowerment.

 

[Satyrn]

That's what dominate person is for. Want to put the fear of god into people? Have the barbarian turn on the party.

It works so well!

In a past campaign, my plan for the the big fight at the end was to have a coven of succubi dominate the whole party and make the players fight each other.

It started out so awesomely when the fighter failed his Will save (3e!), but it turns out the cleric's player was harboring a paranoia that I would do just that (It works so well!), and he had the right spell prepared to end the effect immediately. No problem, I just moved on to dominate the rest of the party, and that worked fine as every one but the cleric failed their saves, so the fight ws still on . . . except it turns out the cleric player's paranoia ran deep. I think half his spells must've been devoted to countering domination and mind control! And just like that, my plan was shot down hard. I was so stunned, I had the succubi shrug in resignation and surrender.

This "fight" lasted maybe three rounds, with not a single hit point shed, but man was it dramatic, full of tension and relief. It ranks as one of my favorites.

 

[Retreater]

In my original post I meant that I was running the game RAW and then saw that it wasn't balanced how I liked, and then I added houserules. I wasn't complaining that the game felt off after I added my homebrew content.
I have been frustrated with elements of the design of 5e. For example, my party had characters with ACs so high at 4th level, that typical, level-appropriate monsters would have to roll a 16 or higher to hit (and even then do only 5 points of damage or so). And then, to try to challenge the group by attacking their Dexterity saves, I threw 2 hellhounds, and had a TPK in 2 rounds.
I've been trying to add terrain features that can hurt or help the party depending on their tactics, trap encounters, skill challenges during combats, etc., just to liven up things. But I can't help but think, "I'm not really running D&D anymore" because there is no support for this through any official channels (unless I missed it). At what point does my houseruling and homebrewing make it a game that's not D&D?
Which is why I came here - not to say "5e is broken" but to ask "are you experiencing what I'm experiencing, and if so, what are you doing about it?"

 

[Satyrn]

At what point does my houseruling and homebrewing make it a game that's not D&D? "

The guys who create D&D do the same thing you've been doing, and have from the start. The essence of the game - and the 5e tells you this, too - is to make the game your own. Not just in the setting and adgentures, but the rules, too. Even when there's official support, the game wants you to create your own stuff if what's in the game isn't what you want in the game.

You're nowhere near the point where it's not D&D. You'd only be at that point when you stop using the D&D rules as tbe base for your homebrew.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I have been frustrated with elements of the design of 5e. For example, my party had characters with ACs so high at 4th level, that typical, level-appropriate monsters would have to roll a 16 or higher to hit (and even then do only 5 points of damage or so).

Which is why I came here - not to say "5e is broken" but to ask "are you experiencing what I'm experiencing, and if so, what are you doing about it?"

I am experiencing this, to some degree, and it's great! Level 4 PCs can fight a suitably-heroic number of chumps before they start slowing down, and they can even rush into a fight without the expectation that they're probably going to be stabbed.

One of my big issues with 4E was that, no matter what you tried to do about it, you were definitely going to get hurt in every fight. One of my big issues with 3E was that you were very likely to get hit so hard that you would drop from full to zero over the course of 1-2 rounds. Fifth edition addresses both of those problems, to some degree.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In my original post I meant that I was running the game RAW and then saw that it wasn't balanced how I liked, and then I added houserules. I wasn't complaining that the game felt off after I added my homebrew content.
I have been frustrated with elements of the design of 5e. For example, my party had characters with ACs so high at 4th level, that typical, level-appropriate monsters would have to roll a 16 or higher to hit (and even then do only 5 points of damage or so). And then, to try to challenge the group by attacking their Dexterity saves, I threw 2 hellhounds, and had a TPK in 2 rounds.

Nod. DM screens are good for those issues, hit as often and do as much damage as works for the flow of the encounter/story.

That's not to knock re-tooling encounter/monster side of the game, BTW, and good job pulling that off for your campaign.
I'm just lazy, and enjoy the improvisational style of running.

I've been trying to add terrain features that can hurt or help the party depending on their tactics, trap encounters, skill challenges during combats, etc., just to liven up things. But I can't help but think, "I'm not really running D&D anymore" because there is no support for this through any official channels (unless I missed it). At what point does my houseruling and homebrewing make it a game that's not D&D?
Which is why I came here - not to say "5e is broken" but to ask "are you experiencing what I'm experiencing, and if so, what are you doing about it?"

At no point are you "not running D&D anymore," the point of D&D is that it's a starting point, that you will take off in some other, better, direction. The worst, most not-D&D thing you could do would be to try to run it strictly 'by the book' (which isn't even really possible) - only if you do that would it be 'broken' (actually, incomplete, because you're not providing the whole of the DM role).

D&D is a non-deterministic function.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Of course, your party chose abilities specifically to become more powerful than the baseline, so I can never understand why people then complain when that shows up in play [...]. It's like buying a Ferrari, driving it at 120 on the freeway and then being surprised when you are passing everyone else on the road.

Obvious question: What kind of game gives you a choice to be more powerful, and then expects you to not take that choice? That seems like a critical design flaw, right off the bat.

 

[OB1]

Obvious question: What kind of game gives you a choice to be more powerful, and then expects you to not take that choice? That seems like a critical design flaw, right off the bat.

How is it a critical design flaw that when you make a choice that will make you better at something it does?

If you choose the Actor feat to become better at acting in game you do, if you take Great Weapon Master to be better at wielding heavy weapons it makes you better at that.