D&D 5E Is 5e "Easy Mode?"

[DND_Reborn]

Not that its cannon or anything, but FWIW the intent of breaking a long rest included at least one hour of total activity, be it fighting, walking, casting spells, etc.:

As far as the ambiguity of the English language, whenever you have a list of something preceded by a quantity or amount, that applies to the total of all items in the list, not just the first. If the other items are meant to have different amounts, those are included with each item. Otherwise, you are left with asking, "how much?" for each of the additional items in the list.

Consider a similar example: You should eat 2-3 apples, bananas, oranges, or similar pieces of fruit, every day to help maintain good health.

Who is going to read that and reasonably argue that you should eat 2-3 apples only, and maybe bananas, maybe oranges, or maybe similar pieces of fruit, to help maintain good health?

You have to go with what most people would get out of reading it. Most people, IME and IMO, understand any and all of the activities done must total 1 hour or more when it comes to interrupting a long rest. Just as pretty much everyone reads the other example and understands it is 2-3 pieces of fruit, examples are apples, bananas, and oranges.

Could they have worded it more concretely? Sure, but the point in 5E is that they shouldn't have to. Following the more reasonable interpretation makes the intent clear 9 times out of 10.

And even after a 1-minute battle, it won't take an hour to set up your camp again. Other than maybe gathering firewood, "setting up" your camp doesn't take an hour in the first place, especially if you are well practiced at it and do it regularly.

On another note, I have played in several very high level AD&D games (well into the 20's) and played into the Immortals Set in BECMI (starting at basic). Those characters were certainly super-powers, especially magic-users, but a lot of that was due to the plethora of magic items many had. While I rarely saw super-items in the mid-levels, by the time the mid- to high-teens came around, encountering an artifact or such in some fashion wasn't uncommon. I have not reach that pinnacle yet in 5E, but so far they are simply different beasts.

P.S. I am not going to debate these interpretations, I am just posting my findings and understanding. Thank you.

 

[tetrasodium]

Or, we can be... maybe more sensible and remember this is the "rulings not rules" edition, and take the language to be... suggestive, rather than proscriptive. So, mayb ethe GM will allow cantrips. Or rituals. Or some spell-casting outside of combat...

The problem with this is that there are too many instances of the language being written to encourage the expectation of munchkinism so right out of the gate the GM is setup for an uphill argument. There's very little 3.5 style "If I combine X with Y then technically it looks like I can do Z", so players come armed with "well it says...

• Spoiler: I regain [I]all[/I] expended spell slots when you finish a short or long rest." not just warlock slots so I should get my 18sorc slots back too

  
• Spoiler: all other creatures and objects are barred from passing plus spells an -other- effects

  
• Spoiler: It includes worn objects, his ring necklace or glasses count just as good as armor and it doesn't say I need to stay within 60 feet. cool that it lets me use my action to dash and BA to destroy with impunity eh?

  

  
  

  

  
  [*]

  Spoiler: It says when I hit and I roll fup to four times so have up to 40 foot knockback cantrip on my 18 sorc/2 warlock

  

  
  

  

  
  There are just too many instances where they write to the most absurdly permissive munchkinism to excuse it as just an artifact of natural wording when looking at things like the long rest rules
  

  

  
  [*]They pegged it to something everyone does (or tries to do) most every night & right out of the gate setup the gm for an uphill battle. Nobody wakes up in the middle of the night to spend an hour of walking around before going back to bed and waking up saying "I slept great!". The "—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—" clause is completely unnecessary for suggestive "maybe the GM will allow...." interpretation & actively makes it more difficult for the gm to interpret "strenuous activity". That "maybe the GM will allow..." line of reasoning is given extra strikes that do nothing but set the gm up for a fight to come knocking because wotc constantly rules in favor of munchkin interpretations like @dnd4vr so clearly pointed out in his post here. Punpun was an example of accidental unintended munhkinism, 5e dives too far into what appwars to be deliberate & intentional munchkinism too often for benefit if the doubt.

 

[Sadras]

So...
In 1e and 2e we dialed things down for the players (ensure the level draining undead perhaps target henchman first, death occurs at -10 instead of 0, allowed PCs to reroll poor hit points...etc)
In 5e we dial things up for the players (change up rests - gritty or homebrew, inject lingering injuries, use slow natural healing)

I ask again, which is the Easy Mode?

 

[Monayuris]

I disagree that 5e is “easy mode” because I feel the question is meaningless.

What some people mean when they say that 5e is easy-mode is that 5e is easier than AD&D all else being equal.

To me, it is the all else being equal that is meaningless. All else is not equal and can never be equal.

Take GM Jim and GM Bob. If GM Jim runs both a AD&D campaign and a 5e campaign, Jim’s two campaigns will probably resemble each other more (including in difficulty) than Jim and Bob’s campaign.

To give a specific example, my teenaged AD&D campaign ended at 9th level with one character who was a Titan and one who had a sentient artifact that was subservient to him. They also had like 1 million gp. So far, nothing like that has happened in any 5e game I have run.

As someone who runs both B/X and 5E and tried to run both campaigns with a similar difficulty level, my experience is that it is more effort and work to create an equally difficult game with 5E compared to out of the box B/X.

You are correct that one can run both games with the same difficulty. It becomes a matter of how much of the work you are willing to put in.

With my 5E game, I was constantly fighting against differences in expectations. I wanted a certain output, but the game constantly provided a different one.

 

[Oofta]

So...
In 1e and 2e we dialed things down for the players (ensure the level draining undead perhaps target henchman first, death occurs at -10 instead of 0, allowed PCs to reroll poor hit points...etc)
In 5e we dial things up for the players (change up rests - gritty or homebrew, inject lingering injuries, use slow natural healing)

I ask again, which is the Easy Mode?

I think very few people played older editions strictly by the book ... or at least that was my experience. Which is probably part of the discrepancy in "feel".

My games are, by and large, no more or less than they've ever did. That doesn't mean I didn't tweak a ton of things back in the day, I pretty much guarantee that we did.

But a lot of people played a much, much deadlier game than I ever experienced*. For us the fun was playing a PC, not writing up yet another PC to run through the gamut.

Which isn't to say people played wrong of course.

*Except for the guy we had DM exactly 1 time who had us all bring multiple PCs and then proceeded to come up with "creative" ways to kill our PCs. Like roll a die and the PC's number that came up was smashed by a giant hand.

 

[chaochou]

What I'd really love is a fantasy rpg with no 'daily' or even 'once per encounter/X minutes" resources. Have a primary limit not rooted in attrition, like "you may only have one active spell at a time." So if you want to cast fireball - you have to give up mirror image.

That game came out in 1977 and was called Runequest.

 

[tetrasodium]

So...
In 1e and 2e we dialed things down for the players (ensure the level draining undead perhaps target henchman first, death occurs at -10 instead of 0, allowed PCs to reroll poor hit points...etc)
In 5e we dial things up for the players (change up rests - gritty or homebrew, inject lingering injuries, use slow natural healing)

I ask again, which is the Easy Mode?

It's not that simple & it's wrong. You don't just keep going from 0 to -10 because you are bleeding out. If you are at neg6 you need 7 hp worth of healing to be at zero hp where you will lose a point doing just about anything. In 5e you are at zero and only need to heal 1hp to be fully functional if you take any amount of damage between current hp+1 & maxhp. In 5e if Andy is the barbarian is at at 1/117hp & takes a crit for 116hp Beth can heal him 1d4+casting mod with healing word & he's at 1d4+casting mod/117 hp

Spoiler: 3.5 death & dying stabilizing etc

ad&d 2e was even less forgiving

Spoiler: ad&d2e Character death

So yea... 5e is the easy one on that note & it's still missing the narrowly focused tools available to gms in past editions to specifically adjust an encounter to throw characters off balance like I detailed earlier.

 

[Lanefan]

At the start and end of every session, I ask the players for what resources they have left (hit points, hit dice, spell slots, and other finite resources like Ki, SP, sup die and the like).

I also pretend to write it down.

I actually do write it down at the end of each session, as players often record such things on the chalkboard and thus they tend to sometimes get erased between sessions.

Then at the start of the next session I read out what I wrote.

 

[Lanefan]

Fighting and resetting the campsite should take an hour.

This is reasonable.

However when the RAW refers to an hour of combat, and when most people see 'combat' as being the time between the first initiative roll and the last foe falling i.e. a minute or two at most, there's a serious disconnect.

If they really do mean an hour of actual round-by-round fighting then it's the dumbest rule in the history of dumb rules.

If they mean more like what you say then it's just very badly worded.

 

[Lanefan]

So...
In 1e and 2e we dialed things down for the players (ensure the level draining undead perhaps target henchman first, death occurs at -10 instead of 0, allowed PCs to reroll poor hit points...etc)

We did?

Other than death at -10 (which allows room for an unconsciousness mechanic otherwise sadly missing) none of those apply here...

In 5e we dial things up for the players (change up rests - gritty or homebrew, inject lingering injuries, use slow natural healing)

I ask again, which is the Easy Mode?

You forgot the words "as written" at the end of your question here.