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

[Oofta]

It's really not as easy to tweak as you make it out to be. Want to change from trench warfare style body counts to something more reasonable than 6-8 encounters/day & it's a gigantic gordian knot to the point that even wotc's own variant rule to do exactly that causes massive problems far worse than it solves.
View attachment 119140
Use it & you screw the balance between long rest & short rest classes before even getting into all the spells & powers that are affected or the fact that x/day charge magic items nearly enter cantrip levels of spammability.
View attachment 119141
It's designed for gonzo demigod level powers walking the battlefield with impunity who sleep it off each night to repeat tomorrow.... don't like that?... slow natural healing & healer's kit dependency are there to do... well...
View attachment 119145
Which amounts to not really even needing to use or buy the cheap & lightweight healer's kits because everyone with a cure spell or power(ie Lay on hands) can expend any unused spellslots or charges to cap off everyone's hp before getting those same slots back.

If the hostility to making badwrongfun changes to 5e is still in question, you need only look at dmg264 & try to implement those on a ddb character.... go ahead, I'll wait while you find the boxes to track those.

Spoiler

You won't find them there. but hey, the first result is fillable y0!

View attachment 119147

Hey, maybe none of that bothers you & you like 5e as is but want to use skills with different attributes from phb175.
View attachment 119150
Better be prepared to finish building that system for wotc because those examples are the only ones you can show your players & the old style of skill checks where x skill uses y stat is reinforced on the sheet, ddb, & just about everywhere else despite how ability checks rather than skill checks being the non-variant version presented on phb174.
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having GM empowerment "emphasized" is great in theory, but when the system is designed in ways that make wotc's own examples impractical meaningless badly unbalancing or needlessly difficult that emphasis rings rather hollow at best. WotC obviously felt these things had enough appeal to waste pagespace on rather than something else like the ridiculous Bishounen comparison being made, they just couldn't be bothered to make sure they work or finish them.

If anyone else cares (@tetrasodium you've already decided you hate the game so feel free to ignore) I use the long rest rules and to compensate I have any spell that lasts for an hour or more have it's duration multiplied by 5.

As far as skills with different abilities, all you have to do is add your proficiency modifier to your ability score modifier. Not sure what's to difficult about that. But ... if you aren't good at adding you can add custom skills in DndBeyond. I use it sometimes for equipment, particularly thieves tools for my rogue.

Not sure how to respond to the rest of the rant other than to say it's not a problem at my table or with any other DM I've ever played with.

 

[Ashrym]

That's why you can;t play a cyborg and and lose your humanity in exchange for more power.

Not a true cyborg, but the renegade mastermaker concept isn't new. Sanity, horror, and madness options go along with medicine for amputation and prosthetics with any character that can craft them. Add some ventilating lungs, and arcane propulsion arm, maybe an arm blade. It's normally a "mad scientist" artificer concept. The warforged race is thematic too.

I could totally run a Frankenstein campaign along a similar style.

A person could probably just tie a sanity score to spell casting in general to create losing oneself for power. Or add required training to take place in an outer plane that inflicts madness when leveling up to higher levels.

You point is valid. It fits fantasy horror, not scifi. Losing your humanity in exchange for more power is something we can do not in the same way.

And you aren't playing a japanese schoolgirl trying to get your crush to notice you by enacting a complex social coup.

I probably could do that with reskinned honor and sanity scores but I looked at the premise and thought "Yeah no, I'm out."

 

[dave2008]

You just added weight to my claim that 5e is built saying that certain playstyles are badwrongfun.

That is not true at all. Just because a game slides a certain direction, doesn't mean it is saying the other direction is no fun or wrong.

Look, no edition of D&D has ever had everything I wanted. My list of 1e house rules was about 5 pages long, conversely, my list of 5e house rules could fit on a page. I find the base game very flexible and can accommodate many play styles. My group likes a bit more realism/grit, but to still be heroic when needed. Here are some things we do that work for us:

1) bloodied HP (BHP = [STR mod + Con Mod x size]) in addition to HP as normal
2) Armor w/ DR (only when attacking BHP: DR = AC-10), this makes heavy armor more important which we like
3) death at 0 BHP
5) regular healing for HP, slow healing for BHP (1 HP per week)
6) Spend HD to "recharge" short rest abilities (make HD attrition a real thing), or empower stronger attacks or faster movement. Adds a level of exhaustion/resource management to the game we like.
7) We tried

These things get us a gritty realism, while still using the baseline assumptions of the game.

If you want to play 5e in a style you like, let me know what your looking for and I can hep with ideas of how to make the work in 5e. If you just want to rant about 5e, that's fine, but please don't waste my time asking for help if that is all your interested in.

 

[tetrasodium]

Not a true cyborg, but the renegade mastermaker concept isn't new. Sanity, horror, and madness options go along with medicine for amputation and prosthetics with any character that can craft them. Add some ventilating lungs, and arcane propulsion arm, maybe an arm blade. It's normally a "mad scientist" artificer concept. The warforged race is thematic too.

I could totally run a Frankenstein campaign along a similar style.

A person could probably just tie a sanity score to spell casting in general to create losing oneself for power. Or add required training to take place in an outer plane that inflicts madness when leveling up to higher levels.

You point is valid. It fits fantasy horror, not scifi. Losing your humanity in exchange for more power is something we can do not in the same way.



I probably could do that with reskinned honor and sanity scores but I looked at the premise and thought "Yeah no, I'm out."

uhh....

Spoiler

Wotc may have toned down & omitted certain aspects of it to cram more FR/Waterdeep based AL faction type stuff into a non-FR adventure, but it's still there. Some of you are going on like honor & sanity are some new & off the wall oddball trope being added to d&d that it's never even come near.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's really not as easy to tweak as you make it out to be. Want to change from trench warfare style body counts to something more reasonable than 6-8 encounters/day & it's a gigantic gordian knot to the point that even wotc's own variant rule to do exactly that causes massive problems far worse than it solves.
View attachment 119140
Use it & you screw the balance between long rest & short rest classes before even getting into all the spells & powers that are affected or the fact that x/day charge magic items nearly enter cantrip levels of spammability.
View attachment 119141
It's designed for gonzo demigod level powers walking the battlefield with impunity who sleep it off each night to repeat tomorrow.... don't like that?... slow natural healing & healer's kit dependency are there to do... well...
View attachment 119145
Which amounts to not really even needing to use or buy the cheap & lightweight healer's kits because everyone with a cure spell or power(ie Lay on hands) can expend any unused spellslots or charges to cap off everyone's hp before getting those same slots back.

If the hostility to making badwrongfun changes to 5e is still in question, you need only look at dmg264 & try to implement those on a ddb character.... go ahead, I'll wait while you find the boxes to track those.

Spoiler

You won't find them there. but hey, the first result is fillable y0!

View attachment 119147

Hey, maybe none of that bothers you & you like 5e as is but want to use skills with different attributes from phb175.
View attachment 119150
Better be prepared to finish building that system for wotc because those examples are the only ones you can show your players & the old style of skill checks where x skill uses y stat is reinforced on the sheet, ddb, & just about everywhere else despite how ability checks rather than skill checks being the non-variant version presented on phb174.
View attachment 119152
having GM empowerment "emphasized" is great in theory, but when the system is designed in ways that make wotc's own examples impractical meaningless badly unbalancing or needlessly difficult that emphasis rings rather hollow at best. WotC obviously felt these things had enough appeal to waste pagespace on rather than something else like the ridiculous Bishounen comparison being made, they just couldn't be bothered to make sure they work or finish them.

Hmm, I might have a solution.

Don't use DDB.

I don't, haven't for the entire run of 5e except for a single play-by-post game hosted on DDB.

So, that combined with telling players "okay, roll Intelligence + proficiency" takes, what, three of those complaints out of the picture?

I also have to say "gritty healing doesn't work because they will just use spell slots" doesn't seem to jive with "the players are gods who sleep off all damage". I mean, if they can't sleep it off and have to use spells to heal... that is going give them fewer resources to work with, which seems to be working as intended.

So, yeah. Don't use their poorly implemented digital character sheet, and the only complaint I can see as being a real tricky problem is messing with long and short rest durations. And it seems that people have found their solutions to that, as Oofta has said on many, many occasions.

Not a true cyborg, but the renegade mastermaker concept isn't new. Sanity, horror, and madness options go along with medicine for amputation and prosthetics with any character that can craft them. Add some ventilating lungs, and arcane propulsion arm, maybe an arm blade. It's normally a "mad scientist" artificer concept. The warforged race is thematic too.

I could totally run a Frankenstein campaign along a similar style.

A person could probably just tie a sanity score to spell casting in general to create losing oneself for power. Or add required training to take place in an outer plane that inflicts madness when leveling up to higher levels.

You point is valid. It fits fantasy horror, not scifi. Losing your humanity in exchange for more power is something we can do not in the same way.



I probably could do that with reskinned honor and sanity scores but I looked at the premise and thought "Yeah no, I'm out."

I was trying to think of a good way to describe Maid: RPG without name dropping it. I have a few friends who love the thing, but it is the weirdest anime game I've played. Not the weirdest out there, just the weirdest I've played.

But yeah, you can kludge together systems. But, DnD isn't Shadowrun or Burning Wheel, by design, so there are playstyles that are hard if not nearly impossible to play. I just felt like giving an over-the-top example instead of a reasonable one.

 

[tetrasodium]

Hmm, I might have a solution.

Don't use DDB.

I don't, haven't for the entire run of 5e except for a single play-by-post game hosted on DDB.

So, that combined with telling players "okay, roll Intelligence + proficiency" takes, what, three of those complaints out of the picture?

I also have to say "gritty healing doesn't work because they will just use spell slots" doesn't seem to jive with "the players are gods who sleep off all damage". I mean, if they can't sleep it off and have to use spells to heal... that is going give them fewer resources to work with, which seems to be working as intended.

So, yeah. Don't use their poorly implemented digital character sheet, and the only complaint I can see as being a real tricky problem is messing with long and short rest durations. And it seems that people have found their solutions to that, as Oofta has said on many, many occasions.

I don't use ddb & don't allow it at my table because I'm not willing to allow someone's ddb subscription to dictate how I can run the game, but still had huge pushback & had to remove two players from my campaign over it.

as to your comment about the healing, there was some detailed back & forth about that several pages ago. Party got sucked into ravenloft at level 5 & became subject to slow natural healing/heal kit dependency but was only able to purchase two for the group. Between adivine soul scorlock (alice) Bard(chuck) & paladin (bob) the only use of those 20 heal kit charges was one time the rogue just said he was using it while AB&C were "spending a lot of time asking everyone's hit points & burning heals one by one asking after each heal/lay on hands" immediately after someone cast tiny hut (wrongly) thinking they'd be impervious to attack. Never have the two burned all slots & left anyone lacking enough hp to care so even getting ambushed would be ok for a quick nova before getting all of their spell slots back. after 2-3 months like that in ravenloft they still have 18-19 charges left.

Heal kit dependency & slow natural healing are going to make a big impact on the party with few heals, but with multiple heal casting PC's it's a complete nonissue

 

[Chaosmancer]

I don't use ddb & don't allow it at my table because I'm not willing to allow someone's ddb subscription to dictate how I can run the game, but still had huge pushback & had to remove two players from my campaign over it.

Okay, if you don't use DDB, why did you bring up the lack of DDB supporting a optional rule as any sort of proof?

As far as I know, until just recently, DDB didn't support Unearthed Arcana classes either, did that mean WoTC didn't want us using them for playtesting? I would think that conclusion is a bit absurd, so why claim that a lack on DDB is evidence that WoTC doesn't want you using optional rules they wrote. Especially since a different company is in charge of that website and coding it to allow the content it uses?

as to your comment about the healing, there was some detailed back & forth about that several pages ago.

Party got sucked into ravenloft at level 5 & became subject to slow natural healing/heal kit dependency but was only able to purchase two for the group.

Between adivine soul scorlock (alice) Bard(chuck) & paladin (bob) the only use of those 20 heal kit charges was one time the rogue just said he was using it while AB&C were "spending a lot of time asking everyone's hit points & burning heals one by one asking after each heal/lay on hands" immediately after someone cast tiny hut (wrongly) thinking they'd be impervious to attack.

Never have the two burned all slots & left anyone lacking enough hp to care so even getting ambushed would be ok for a quick nova before getting all of their spell slots back.

after 2-3 months like that in ravenloft they still have 18-19 charges left.

Heal kit dependency & slow natural healing are going to make a big impact on the party with few heals, but with multiple heal casting PC's it's a complete nonissue

Okay, again, that doesn't seem to address the point. You said that the rule was pointless to implement. Now you are defending that with a specific party make-up. What about a party with a Barbarian, a Fighter, A Rogue, and a Wizard. Is it pointless to implement for that party?

No, by your own admission in this quote, it will make a big impact on that party.

And, I argue that it makes a big impact on ABC there as well. Those are resources they might not have otherwise spent if they are using spell slots to heal instead of buff, debuff, or harm. And, if they were running Ravenloft by the book, I think starting at level 5 means they were starting at higher level than the adventure was designed for, since I think the Death House is meant to buff up people who come in at level 1, but only up to level 3.

So, if your point is that a team of magical healers didn't need to use non-magical healing... yes, that is exactly what I suspect would happen. But, since they are spending more resources than they might otherwise spend, that should have an impact. Additionally, if the party is finishing every adventuring day with over half their spell slots unused... then they aren't being challenged enough anyway and removing recovery options isn't going to change that.

 

[Helldritch]

Using HD to heal, and it being dependent on healer's kit is part of my game since (almost) the beginning of 5ed and it works quite well. Healer's kit are a valued ressource as they help the healers in keeping their spell slots for emergency or something other than healing. It does not render our martial characters weaker by any stretch as they are the ones that are usually targeted for magical healing. By using this rule, it does help in making the characters more cautious.

In addition, it made the Healer and Inspiring leader's feat quite desirable at my table. At least one of these always appear in any group I'm DMing.

 

[MichaelSomething]

having GM empowerment "emphasized" is great in theory, but when the system is designed in ways that make wotc's own examples impractical meaningless badly unbalancing or needlessly difficult that emphasis rings rather hollow at best. WotC obviously felt these things had enough appeal to waste pagespace on rather than something else like the ridiculous Bishounen comparison being made, they just couldn't be bothered to make sure they work or finish them.

If you want something done right, you got to do it yourself...
Personally, I blame all the people who complained about 5 minute adventuring days....

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, and this applies equally well to a lot of the things people miss from old editions' versions of monsters. Amp up the ghoul paralysis, add back in negative levels, let poisons to Str or Con damage, make aboleths immune to damage from non byeshk weapons, make golems immune to magic...

I've bolded a word there - what does it mean?