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Message: <blockquote data-quote="niklinna" data-source="post: 8405822" data-attributes="member: 71235">5E and PF2E both have an obsession with balanced action economy and restrictions that sap the fun out of combat for me, particularly with regard to pets and concentration mechanic. There are so many character abilities presented as "you can do this cool thing, except for this situation and that, and it doesn't work on X and Y" (see below). 5E's had a number of patches to how pets are handled, of course, but now that means there are many different kinds of pets with different rules for each, and it's a mess. Concentration is just an obviously slapdash gamist patch that makes sense for few spells. I conjure a wall of stone—it's not going anywhere, why should that require concentration? The hard limit of 1 concentration spell, and no way to push that via upcasting or accumulating penalties, also feels arbitrary. I've played games where you accumulate a penalty to further spells with each concentration spell you cast, and it's so much more fun (although those games can be just as arbitrary about which spells require concentration).This is all on top of the base issue of waiting your turn, rolling the die, and having nothing at all happen, rather than an interesting failure or a qualified success, which several other games I play provide. Whiffing is all the worse when other players at the table take a long time to figure out what they're going to do—usually starting the process when their turn comes around, for some reason, rather than while everybody else is doing their thing—and of course not being familiar with the rules, with all their little exceptions and conditions on usability of abilities, compounds that (see above). Which, with the explosive popularity of 5E and online gaming in general, seems to happen much more often than in my earlier gaming days.Which is itself on top of the issue that hacking at bags of hit points is boring. Injuries that have actual consequences are much more fun. And this is, admittedly, partly covered by conditions, but hit points are the fundamental mechanic by which "still standing" is measured.A good group can mask any or all of these issues, but they have to be masked or worked around by some kind of active effort, in my perhaps-limited play experience with 5E.</blockquote>

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