D&D 5E Is 5e the Least-Challenging Edition of D&D?

[Ashrym]

What's that? Sounds a lot like you are admitting that you can't solve this problem, or this. or these, or this.

The first and the last aren't problems. They are opinions that I pointed out are counter balanced. The second is "but it's not 4e", and the 3rd is you referencing yourself among people backing up your claims when all you you did was reference previous rules.

"I was hoping for a more complex system" does dot mean the simpler system does not work.

"It's not the same as this other edition" is not an example of an actual issue.

"This one ability gives the same bonus as a few other abilities" does not demonstrate a breaking failure. As I said, flanking requires characters to be in specific places in the combat, that may be easy at times but it also requires a negative tactical choice.

I can't solve problems that don't exist other than in edition envy, bias, and hyperbole.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes. That is why there were
and I'm pretty sure there were some other versions in other mm analogs (mm2 mm3 etc) that were special & deserving of their own name beyond just earth elemental similar to the mtof 202 earth elemental myrmidon but not recalling their names or the books they were in I'm not going hunting for them.

I'm sorry, what point is there to that?

"Yes, of the two CR 5 earth elementals the 3.5 one was weaker, but 3.5 had three other higher CR elementals that were stronger."

IF the 5e one is stronger, then it doesn't matter how many versions of the creature the 3.5 MM had. You were comparing the base elementals. Likewise, if you compared two young adult dragons, bringing in the Ancient Great Wyrm version of one of them would be pointless, it has nothing to do with the question.

Your own observation shows how far off the mark & deep into blatant disingenuous arguments that some people keep making claiming that bypassing DR was required.

So your point was to show that the tactical usage of various special materials, instead of blanket resistance, was something that wasn't universal? I'm confused, you seem to have jumped to a different point when I wasn't looking, I thought you were advocating for these materials, that is why you started by showing off golems who took less damage unless it was adamantium. Compared to 5e golems who take no damage unless it is adamantium or magic.

Also keep in mind that because elemental traits made a creature immune to critical hits & flanking in this case crit fishers couldn't help (and were dramatically more effective at getting crits even at level 1 in 3.5 than 5e's mid-late game ones) not could a rogue's sneak attack. The fact that this creature was immune to both barring some class features or something shows how easy it was for a creature to shake things up & force the players to shift tactics because of having more involved systems than "half damage unless you have a magic weapon"

So, are we no longer talking about the fighter? I thought we were talking about the fighter here, not the rogue. Because the rules for sneak attack have been massively changed and that is its own discussion entirely.

Also, why bring up crit fishing builds only to say they couldn't have done anything? Honestly, crits are a random element anyways, even with a crit fishing build, you cannot guarentee a critical hit will happen, so they are pretty much pointless in a discussion of tactics.

Regardless of what you think about all those feat chains, the fact remains that there are severe problems with implimenting wotc's own published variant rules because they went so far overboard expunging this sort of combat & the problems caused by trying to impliment the dmg's optional flanking and facing discussed over here because if so much missing structure attest to that.

The ironic thing is that a variant rule to "simplify" combat and allow it to function "so you don't need special feats to make moving more than 5 feet and attacking not be worthless. An 11th-level 5e fighter can run a full 30 feet, knock you to the ground, and Action Surge 5 attacks in your face with advantage as part of the base model, before any upgrades or subclass feats kick in. " could have been done with a couple sentences that don't require the gm to fix the variant rule by rebuilding the core rules.

edit: don't get me wrong, 5e did a lot of things that improved the game, but at the same time they went too far in many many areas & ended up creating new problems by not giving enough considerations to how removing things in the name of streamlining gameplay would affect other parts of the game

I use the optional flanking rules all the time. I have found no lack of structure to support it. I don't use facing, because we don't want to deal with that sort of thing. It is too minor a detail to keep in mind while playing.

I also have no idea what you are trying to say here. The game fixed things, but did it in a way that broke optional things that now you have to fix? I can't even begin to respond to this until I find some clearer examples of what you mean (without having to read an entire other thread of information)

Since it's so simple, please fgo over here & settle the apparently easy problem of implementing the dmg's optional flanking & facing rules without running into the serious problems several people in that thread pointed out with trying to use those half baked options. Clearly it's not as simple as you make it out to be given that nobody has even tried to correct people pointing out those problems.
I look forward to the simple solution you post.

Sigh, fine, but I have a question before I even start reading that thread. Where did you get that quote from? The one that supposedly shows I said:

5e enables DM's to build from the basics instead of forcing them to deconstruct from complexities.

Because I don't remember saying that, and when I click on the "show post" it takes me to this post:

Please read your own statblock pictures again.

DnD 5e Stone Golem has no damage resistances, so it never becomes a "mindnumbing 356 hit point slog". Actually in this example, the Golem who ignores 10 damage from every attack and has 107 hp could be the longer slog.

It kind of bothers me since I would like to know the context of why I said that, since I feel like I did not mean "I can fix any problem Tetrasodium points out to me"


But, while you answer that, I guess I'm reading an entirely new thread for giggles

 

[Chaosmancer]

What's that? Sounds a lot like you are admitting that you can't solve this problem, or this. or these, or this.

Second link makes no mention of any specific problem
Fourth link is just saying it is too easy.

Interestingly enough, the OP of that thread is making the claim that this tactical module does exist, and is arguing that adding the optional rules into 5e makes it more tactical.

So, I've only read up to the 8th post (and your links) and identified what I think the problems are.

1) Flanking is too powerful
2) Flanking is too easy because of new Attack of Opportunity rules

So, before I read any further, some suggested fixes.

For #1, I have a DM who didn't like the permanent advantage because we had a large number of NPCs in our party. So instead, we use this rule. (Not written in rule format, because we did this verbally at the table and didn't bother to write it down)

Flanking-> When flanking an opponent with an ally, you gain a +1 to the attack roll for every ally you are flanking with (ie, if you have 1 ally, +1, 3 allies +3). This bonus maxes out at your proficiency modifier.

You could also just make it a flat +1 (I think +2 would be a little more impactful than some people want it to be, due to 5e's bounded accuracy)

For #2, I would say the easy solution would be to institute the old AO rules, since that seems to be the issue involved. So something like

Attacks of Opportunity-> If a creature moves 5 ft while within your threatened range, then you can use your reaction to make an attack of opportunity, unless they have taken the disengage action before moving.

You could even add in that making a ranged attack or casting a spell triggers attacks of opportunity as well. But I think that would be going too far personally.

That took me... well, I read some other threads first, so we'll say 10 minutes since my previous post currently says it was 15 minutes.

Edit: Ah, now that I got to your personal post (I wanted to read up to it) I see that you want to make things incredibly difficult.

Towards inventory... I wouldn't bother with a rule for it personally. 95% of the time, no one bothers grabbing an item from their inventory when combat starts. You could also add in that AO happen when you take the Use Item feature. If you want to give some creatures the ability to cast spells without triggering AOs... I guess do so? It shouldn't be that hard, but I'd have a bear of a time trying to remember who I gave immunity to casting AOs to and who I didn't. I'd probably just make it a blanket "casting spells" if I truly wanted to go that direction.

But frankly, it sounds like you just want to take all of the abilities and rules of 3.5 and port them exactly over to 5e.

That's called playing 3.5. Just do that instead of making every rule in 5e match 3.5.
/EDIT

But, I should read the entire thread, make sure I can find anything else, especially since I haven't seen much about facing yet.

Ah, seems that I found the post you quoted, so I should address those points.

• Weapon rules, well I'd suggest looking on DMs Guild, weapons are a very common homebrew topic.
• Alternate crits, we did play with a "crit deck" of cards on Roll20 once. Had a lot of effects other than damage, also DMs Guild has lots of homebrew for that. Should be easy to find
• Tripping already exists, all it does is knock prone and that got absorbed into shove
• Sundering is trickier, might have to come with the weapon rules. You could use the DMG list of materials and health. That would give a sword an hp value of 10(3d6) and an AC of 19 to strike. Super rough answer, but I'm doing lightning round edits since I have to respond to an entire thread I wasn't even a part of
• Beefier rules for vertacality? Not sure what that even means. Could just be the diagonal movement rules, which do exist. Moving on
• Hex-based combat? You just use hexes. I have no idea what could possibly need to be written into the game for this. I use a hex map all the time so that radius spells are radi instead of blocks.
• Tactical Mass Combat. I agree, need a good system for that. I'm currently using the rough model provided by Matt Colville in his Strongholds and Follower's book. I'm looking forward to his Kingdoms and Warfare book that is going to provide a much deeper system. That is not something I would homebrew on my own, and it actually a complex subject that goes beyond tactical combat and into an entirely new system of play.
• Expanding Adv/Disadv to encourage stacking? I would just rule they stack. Done

So, read the entire thread. And other than your post demanding that every rule and exception from 3.5 exist in 5e, I think I found some quick and easy solutions. You are sure to tell me that I don't understand anything and that these solutions will clearly never work, but considering some of the them are rules that I am actually using I can say that yes, most of this would work just fine.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Yes, improved critical is a class feature for one fighter archtype giving you 19-20 crits, but...

Now we've gone from "this isn't there at all" to "yes, it's there, but it's different." That's moving the goalposts if I ever saw it.

Also it's a bit off the mark to say a fighter needed 4 feats because I made an extreme example.. especially considering they would have that by 4th level

No, it's really not. All the things the 5e Fighter can do as part of the base class add up to the sum of, and I'm being generous here, about 4 or 5 3.5 feats. Every STR-based Fighter proficient in Athletics basically starts off at Level 1 with better versions of Improved Grapple, Improved Trip, and Improved Bull Rush, to name a few. And every character in the game has a better version of Dodge.

Then, as you level up, since the 5e Fighter takes zero penalties from moving, the 3.5 Fighter needs even more feats just to keep up. The 5e Fighter's damage doubles when he picks up a 2nd attack and up 50% with his 3rd; the 3.5's does not, hence the need for various feats to try not to be bad at your job.

Now, as far as the OP goes, it is certainly a lot more challenging to make a 3.5 Fighter that isn't bad than in 5e, since in 5e, the Fighter isn't a bad base class. In 5e, write "Fighter" on your sheet. Congratulations, you've built a good Fighter. It sure is trickier to do that in 3.5. But, once you've selected the feats that allow you to do meaningful damage and move before attacking, the actual tactical choices you have in combat usually amount to "move," "knock the thing down," and "hit the thing."

"so you don't need special feats to make moving more than 5 feet and attacking not be worthless. An 11th-level 5e fighter can run a full 30 feet, knock you to the ground, and Action Surge 5 attacks in your face with advantage as part of the base model, before any upgrades or subclass feats kick in. " could have been done with a couple sentences that don't require the gm to fix the variant rule by rebuilding the core rules.

You don't need variant rules to use Action Surge or Shove. They're in the base rules in the PHB.

 

[tetrasodium]

Only if you think those are actually problems. They just got rid of game components that didn't add enough to the game to offset the cost. You're looking only at your preference and what you like without taking into consideration what everyone else enjoys.

Sounds like you're being selfish to me.

In other words it's unfinished and in order to use those variant rules you need to finish it. Not selfish at all. The current 5e could have been accomplished with the following variant rules

• simplified opportunity attacks: You may want to remove all opportunity attacks for things such as spellcasting in while in a threatened square, moving from one threatened square to another, interacting with containers such as mundane backpacks, & others leaving only making a ranged attack whie in a threatened square and moving away from an opponent while in a threatened square
• Simplified facing: You are considered to always be facing every adjacent square & your shield bonus applies to attacks from all directions
• simplified DR: You may want to treat both supernatural (Su) & extrordinary (Ex) abilities as simply being "Magic" while treating all monster damage reductions as a 50% damage reduxtion from any damage not coming from a spell, cantrip, magic weapon, or Su/Ex ability.

There's also the glaring omission that some of the above disingenuous posters feel safe saying that those things I linked are easily solved perspective issues here on page 27 but didn't dare say that in the thread were they were raised.

 

[Oofta]

In other words it's unfinished and in order to use those variant rules you need to finish it. Not selfish at all. The current 5e could have been accomplished with the following variant rules

• simplified opportunity attacks: You may want to remove all opportunity attacks for things such as spellcasting in while in a threatened square, moving from one threatened square to another, interacting with containers such as mundane backpacks, & others leaving only making a ranged attack whie in a threatened square and moving away from an opponent while in a threatened square
• Simplified facing: You are considered to always be facing every adjacent square & your shield bonus applies to attacks from all directions
• simplified DR: You may want to treat both supernatural (Su) & extrordinary (Ex) abilities as simply being "Magic" while treating all monster damage reductions as a 50% damage reduxtion from any damage not coming from a spell, cantrip, magic weapon, or Su/Ex ability.

There's also the glaring omission that some of the above disingenuous posters feel safe saying that those things I linked are easily solved perspective issues here on page 27 but didn't dare say that in the thread were they were raised.

Then discuss it with your group and add in those options as house rules if they want.

I wouldn't mind a big book o' options myself, but even if it were released I'd want to discuss it with my group to implement them.

EDIT: for me the rules you mention simply aren't worth the fiddly nature that would result.

 

[Ashrym]

edit... also @Ashrym I can provide evidence that your no magic items no magic world style is a minority, the results of wotc's own product line include how many hardcover adventures fitting that mold?... zero... yea, zero. That's dogfood that even wotc is not willing to touch let alone happily feed the market. It's fine that you want to play or run a game like that, but it's not contentious to say that is a unusual style game outside the norms of the majority of games.

I see you snuck this in to an edit.

That's not evidence. That's not even correlation even though it looks like it's the direction you would be going. The only thing that shows is those hardcover adventures use magic items. That has nothing to do with the fact that WotC has expressed many times the game is balanced around the assumption magic items are not required. It's also not a measurement of how many players own or use those books, or choose to change or not allow those items if they do use those book.

The game obviously allows for the existence of magic items. Statistically the game will provide them following the random generation tools too. That doesn't demonstrate how many DM adhere to the use in their games.

In other words it's unfinished and in order to use those variant rules you need to finish it. Not selfish at all. The current 5e could have been accomplished with the following variant rules

• simplified opportunity attacks: You may want to remove all opportunity attacks for things such as spellcasting in while in a threatened square, moving from one threatened square to another, interacting with containers such as mundane backpacks, & others leaving only making a ranged attack whie in a threatened square and moving away from an opponent while in a threatened square
• Simplified facing: You are considered to always be facing every adjacent square & your shield bonus applies to attacks from all directions
• simplified DR: You may want to treat both supernatural (Su) & extrordinary (Ex) abilities as simply being "Magic" while treating all monster damage reductions as a 50% damage reduxtion from any damage not coming from a spell, cantrip, magic weapon, or Su/Ex ability.

There's also the glaring omission that some of the above disingenuous posters feel safe saying that those things I linked are easily solved perspective issues here on page 27 but didn't dare say that in the thread were they were raised.

No, it's a finished product. You just don't seem to agree with how it was finished. A design goal was simplification. Wanting to go against that design goal is personal preference over the implementation based on feed back.

There's nothing disingenuous about it. Not being in agreement is not the same thing.

 

[tetrasodium]

Now we've gone from "this isn't there at all" to "yes, it's there, but it's different." That's moving the goalposts if I ever saw it.

No because context matters. In a discussion about ways of bypassing dr10 having crit fishing builds much more reliable(they could get down to like 12 or 13-20 iirc) is relevant. 19-20 is just not enough to say that champion is a crit fishing build in that context because they are going to be too rare for any meaningful impact on needing to do 10+ damage or deal no damage.

No, it's really not. All the things the 5e Fighter can do as part of the base class add up to the sum of, and I'm being generous here, about 4 or 5 3.5 feats. Every STR-based Fighter proficient in Athletics basically starts off at Level 1 with better versions of Improved Grapple, Improved Trip, and Improved Bull Rush, to name a few. And every character in the game has a better version of Dodge.

Then, as you level up, since the 5e Fighter takes zero penalties from moving, the 3.5 Fighter needs even more feats just to keep up. The 5e Fighter's damage doubles when he picks up a 2nd attack and up 50% with his 3rd; the 3.5's does not, hence the need for various feats to try not to be bad at your job.

Yes it does, but the complaint was hat fighter needed four feats to accomplish something & that was misleading uninformed or just disingenuous because as you yourself point out just now that's part of the base class & as the complaint was worded someone who did not know better might think that required a fighter to be very high level to accomplish using 5e style feat progression.

Now, as far as the OP goes, it is certainly a lot more challenging to make a 3.5 Fighter that isn't bad than in 5e, since in 5e, the Fighter isn't a bad base class. In 5e, write "Fighter" on your sheet. Congratulations, you've built a good Fighter. It sure is trickier to do that in 3.5. But, once you've selected the feats that allow you to do meaningful damage and move before attacking, the actual tactical choices you have in combat usually amount to "move," "knock the thing down," and "hit the thing."

There were quite a few that involved ways you yourself could move, things you could react to, & so on Sure lets talk about tactical options though, battlemaster sure seems to have lots of those.
Commanders strike is probably all new.
Disarming attack was a standard attack hmm... instead of burning one of your precious superiority dice you could do this each round & maybe multiple times per round... possibly with feats adding to it too

distracting attack isn't all that different from feint.. this also could be done every round instead of burning a precious superiority die.

Evasive footwork? hmm... This also could be done every round without burning a precious resource

Goading attack?
There was the goading feat but it was subject to MAD or you could do some of this kinda stuff & a lot of it... both were not things that required burning a superiority die & birraing a few of those stackexchange suggestions could mostly be done every round without burning a resource like superiority dice.

Lunging attack?
hmm.... There were quite a few ways to accomplish this but because it was dramatically more powerful they often took more investment than a single feat.


Maneuvering attack? That's probably new

Menacing attack?... few options here...

or do this at will as often as you want without burning anything like a superiority die or other resource

plus some of this stuff

Parry?
you had this

plus a bunch of feats that affected it in the phb alone. & could do it every round without burning anything like a superiority die.

Precision attack?
Well you had these plus a bunch more I'm sure...

Oh yea you could do them every attack you ever made instead of burning superiority dice or some other limited resource.

Pushing attack?
you yourself pointed out that this was something you could just do & there were lots of feats that gave you extra ways to just do it or changed how effective you were at it.


Rally?
That one is probably new yea, but there were lots of PrCs so you never know.

Riposte
You had riposte making it the first opponent to attack and miss you for that round provokes an attack of opportunity from you.

Sweeping attack?
Cleave is pretty similar

Trip attack?
You had trip & all these

as a thing you could just do plus a lot of them had various feats to improve upon them.

it's almost like your tactical choices criticism is off the mark with 5e having dramatically fewer tactical choices for fighters & other martial types.

 

[billd91]

The game obviously allows for the existence of magic items. Statistically the game will provide them following the random generation tools too. That doesn't demonstrate how many DM adhere to the use in their games.

Yes, and I’ll emphasize they’re there because they’re fun, players like their characters to have them. Fun. Not necessary. Players no longer need to stress about constantly upgrading their gear.

 

[Ashrym]

@tetrasodium

aid another = help
bull rush = shove
charge = dash
disarm = disarm (it's an option in the DMG)
feint = feint (via battlemaster or martial adept feat)
fighting defensively = dodge
grapple = grappling
overrun = overrun (it's an option in the DMG)
sunder =
splash weapon = falls under improvised weapon
spring attack feat = mobility feat
trip = shove
turn undead = turn undead
two weapon fighting = two weapon fighting

Terrifying rage is more of the berserker's intimidating presence ability. Demoralizing an opponent via intimidation is not any different going between editions. Describe an action that's clear on the intent and go for it. Ability / skill checks are less restricted to what a character can try in 5e because of the bounded accuracy, and more restricted if a person wants epic skill checks like balancing on clouds.

5e loses sunder and adds mark (DMG option), cleaving (DMG option), hitting cover (DMG option), creature climbing (DMG option), dodge, and disengage. There are attacking an object rules in the DMG but normally a person would disarm it first then it counts as an unattended object. That's all in the PHB and DMG

Feint isn't open to everyone but then again neither are turn undead or rage. Battlemaster (or martial adept) add to that list or improve on items within it. So do other feats.

5e doesn't have a shortage of options in that regard, especially considering the basic system is meant to be simple and avoid bonuses that turn into hamster wheel number inflation. It's WAI.