D&D General Has 5e become noise?

[Micah Sweet]

I like a lot about LU A5E, in fact the best part was when we first switched to it and broke from all the horde of 5e content that had built up. "Just use these core books!" But now we've been playing A5E for 2-3 years, and we've built up our trove of supplemental A5E 1pp and 3pp content.. and it's just so much :'D Now it's all bloated and weighty, there's so much broken-OP stuff that makes my life as a DM a pain (I literally can't stop the berserker without killing every other party member 4x over, who decided that an archetype giving berserker prof in mental saves was a good idea?!). Anyway, content bloat. It happens to the best of us. We do this to ourselves, it feels like.

See, this isn't a problem for me, because I like content, and don't believe in bloat. I've never understood some people's desire that there be less content. Just use what you like, or don't.

 

[Distracted DM]

See, this isn't a problem for me, because I like content, and don't believe in bloat. I've never understood some people's desire that there be less content. Just use what you like, or don't.

The trouble is that I don't balance-check every option in every 1pp/3pp book that myself or my players pick up. When making characters my players do check with me if there's a new book/class/feat/etc that they're looking at playing, but even if something raises an eyebrow I typically don't want to just shoot it down, because I figure "this designer knows what they're doing, maybe it just looks a lot more broken on paper than it'll be in play." Nope, turns out it's way overpowered, and now I have to either do the design work myself to nerf the problematic features, or the player has to change their character's subclass/archetype/heritage/etc, which can be jarring.

So the more content that you have in the character options pool, the more likely it is that there'll be inevitable power creep (or leap), or some mechanics get extra wonky interacting with one-another, and that's just more work to make it right. You don't want to disappoint players either, but if their character is so powerful that the rest of the party gets toasted just so I can try to challenge the OP PC, that's no fun for the rest of the aforementioned roasty-toasty party

 

[Stormonu]

WotC itself has been only producing a trickle of product, the 3PP scene is where all the options and action is happening. I find it very interesting these days how much 3PP stuff is now available through D&D Beyond - seems like a regular stream over the drip of WotC itself.

Personally, I'm pretty saturated with 5E product. Much of the stuff I've been getting for 5E lately has been for my wife and her campaign. I've gotten to the point where I'm looking at other systems entirely or reprints of historical (early or non-TSR) products (such as Caverns of Thracia for 5E).

 

[Clint_L]

The trouble is that I don't balance-check every option in every 1pp/3pp book that myself or my players pick up. When making characters my players do check with me if there's a new book/class/feat/etc that they're looking at playing, but even if something raises an eyebrow I typically don't want to just shoot it down, because I figure "this designer knows what they're doing, maybe it just looks a lot more broken on paper than it'll be in play." Nope, turns out it's way overpowered, and now I have to either do the design work myself to nerf the problematic features, or the player has to change their character's subclass/archetype/heritage/etc, which can be jarring.

So the more content that you have in the character options pool, the more likely it is that there'll be inevitable power creep (or leap), or some mechanics get extra wonky interacting with one-another, and that's just more work to make it right. You don't want to disappoint players either, but if their character is so powerful that the rest of the party gets toasted just so I can try to challenge the OP PC, that's no fun for the rest of the aforementioned roasty-toasty party

Using DDB pretty much eliminates this problem. I just toggle on what I want available and toggle off the rest. Letting players use whatever 3PP they can find sounds like it could be a lot of work (not for most of my players because they could care less about the rules and just rely on me to know them).

 

[DrJawaPhD]

So you have no interest in the hobby or the industry beyond 5e?

You know actually now that I think about it, as far as adventure modules go I've used content from 2nd edition, 3rd edition, 4th edition, plus Pathfinder, and just converted the monsters, magic items, spells, etc, into 5e versions.

Good story arcs are independent of game rules so really everything is on the table, but I'm definitely only interested in homebrewing off the base 5.5e 2024 rules

 

[DrJawaPhD]

You’re the opposite of me. The anti-me. I can’t remember the last time I used a WotC 5E book, but it is certainly measured in years. I’m just more interested in the different stuff third parties create.

Same here but I'd call it more of a "bored with bland content that WotC publishes" versus "exhausted by overwhelming amount content WotC publishes"

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But lately

I take it you are an elf, and by “lately” you mean the last 40 years?

 

[Distracted DM]

Using DDB pretty much eliminates this problem. I just toggle on what I want available and toggle off the rest. Letting players use whatever 3PP they can find sounds like it could be a lot of work (not for most of my players because they could care less about the rules and just rely on me to know them).

Did they finally add the ability to regulate what content is available to PCs making characters in a campaign? It used to be that you could just choose what you were sharing with them, but if they had the books you couldn't disallow any content.

If so, cool! But I stopped using DnDB some time ago (and it's not useful for stuff like A5E)

 

[Corinnguard]

Did they finally add the ability to regulate what content is available to PCs making characters in a campaign? It used to be that you could just choose what you were sharing with them, but if they had the books you couldn't disallow any content.

If so, cool! But I stopped using DnDB some time ago (and it's not useful for stuff like A5E)

Maybe Level Up: Gateway will allow you to do something similar down the road someday.

 

[Cergorach]

What you're feeling is the same thing D&D players feel about other RPGs, sometimes a lot of hype about nothing, everyone trying to reinvent the wheel, looks interesting but isn't D&D, etc...

The problem for most people is that they have a limited amount of 'room' in their head for information to handle it at the same time. The amount is different for everyone, and if you're trying to keep track of everything 5e related, I can understand that it's become 'noise' for you, it's similar to trying to track all (PC game) Steam releases... Or all the news from all sources. Most people's brains can't handle that, or should handle that.

Personally, I let most of it (both D&D, 5e compatible, and other RPGs) just flow past me, only taking note of things that look or sound interesting, sometimes not even for looking into at that time, but for later consumption. There are so many channels I get my information from, that looking at everything right then and there is not realistic. As an example: Dungeons of Drakkenheim looked premium, but looked at it later, it was essentially a Mordheim D&D style, which is interesting, but not right now, especially when I was able to page through the books at the later time. I've stored that for IF I ever want to run such a D&D campaign. On the other hand, Cthulhu by Torchlight looked interesting, but didn't 'need' it when it came out. Now I'm looking for a certain style of monster, Cthulhu like monsters are a great fit, but the book apparently only has less then two dozen, with a couple even being the same monster with a greater and lesser variation, extremely disappointing. But some other 5e supplements came across my (virtual) desk that might unexpectedly have some stuff I'm looking for.

As with anything, it's about marketing, interests, 'needs', etc. Just watching all the commercials to keep up with all the products in the world is just a waste of your time imho. But the flood of not just D&D5e third party supplements, but pnp RPG products in general is useful, as it gives you more options when you're looking for them. And the reality is that sometimes you don't even know XYZ is out there until someone tells you about it and your interest is peaked.