D&D 5E Is Tasha's Broken?

[overgeeked]

Yes. The book is designed to break 5e and open the gates to a revised edition.

Right? It’s like how people forget how to drive in the rain or snow every year. Anyone who’s play more than 5E is used to the pattern. Or anyone who’s played WoW knows the drill. The designers break things on purpose so they can sell you the fix. A lot of people mistakenly think WotC’s job is to design a perfect game that will never need updating, when the opposite it true. They stay in business because they produce a flawed game that needs constant updating.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure it is.

If you actually got healed for a meaningful chunk of HP, you wouldn't see the "pop up" healing technique. Instead, because in-combat healing is smaller than most incoming attacks, there's never a reason to try to hold onto your HP if you're already super low. If in-combat healing were actually stronger than a single hit, meaning you might actually go a full round without being on the floor again, then there would be a reason to try to hold onto that HP, rather than just gleefully leaping into the fray like so many people dislike.

Making healing be only small amounts actually encourages such behavior. And, of course, people then try to solve it by eliminating in-combat healing entirely, turning it into rocket-tag combat, repeating exactly the same mistakes 3e made.

I'm in favor of reducing in-combat healing to stabilization only, actually. Rocket tag be damned.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Right? It’s like how people forget how to drive in the rain of snow every year. Anyone who’s play more than 5E is used to the pattern. Or anyone who’s played WoW knows the drill.

IT BEGINS

I have so much schadenfreude right now!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

A shtick or 'observational skills'.

And this response addresses nothing I said about a tendency among a small subset of DMs who complain specifically about how hard it is to kill PCs as if that was the point of the game and so think decent healing is the Enemy.

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Look, it seems like the majority of your comments devolve into some form of "DMs suck and are terrible and try to kill players and I hate DMs."

Which, now that you've identified it's not a shtick ... well, okay?

But you do understand that you preferred way of playing isn't the only one? And that the difficulties have been dialed up and down since the very beginning of the game?

Here is a question from the very first Sage advice (Dragon Magazine #31, November 1979):

In GODS, DEMI-GODS AND HEROES it says that a forty-plus level character is ridiculous. In our game we have two characters that are at one thousand-plus level. This happened in “Armageddon,” a conflict between the gods and the characters. Of course, the characters won. What do you think about that?

So, yeah. From the beginning, some people played gritty. Some people played wish fulfillment. Some people played in-between. So long as everyone is having fun, no problem.

But blaming everything on DMs is just as tiresome as blaming everything on players. The only truism is that it's not DMs, nor players, that suck,

Just bards, and the people that play them.

 

[Bill Zebub]

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Or a pumpkin.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

The argument you are making remains grounded in optimization, which I am just not really sympathetic to. I'm more a "setting first" guy, so when there doesn't appear to be any argument that justifies floating ASIs that isn't "players can get that extra +2 where they want it", that isn't "this is why it works in the world", well... it may not be for me.

As an Eberron fan, one of the main elven cultures in the setting is very warlike, with roving bands of warriors on horseback raiding across the countryside looking for a good fight.
A culture of druidic orcs were responsible for helping to save the world from a planar incursion millennia ago, and some of their descendants keep the wards that bind their ancient foes intact to this day.
Another culture of orc paladins serve as the self-appointed guardians on the border of the Demon Wastes, keeping the horrors within from spilling out into the rest of the continent.
The Vulkoori drow are tribal jungle dwellers that worship nature spirits.

In each of these cases, I'd argue that the default ASIs for the races in question don't necessarily fit with the culture of the race as depicted in this setting, and the same can be said for any setting that differs from the Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk-established racial "norms". That in and of itself is a pretty substantial setting lore-based justification for floating ASIs, in my mind.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Or a pumpkin.

I think we need to leave Billy Corgan out of this ....

 

[Kobold Stew]

The whole argument for floating ASIs boils down to optimization, and I am just not sympathetic to arguments based on optimization. It would be different if having a slightly lower score had a huge impact, but it just doesn't.

This isn't even true in the post you quote.

Floating ASIs incentivize non-traditional builds (as with the halforc wizard) and reduce biological essentialism. Both of those are good outcomes, from my point of view.

Can they be used to optimize? Sure -- but optimization happens regardless, and floating ASIs have not opened floodgates of hyperoptimized builds. At best they allow players who want different race/class combinations to not be obviously behind traditional builds.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Look, it seems like the majority of your comments devolve into some form of "DMs suck and are terrible and try to kill players and I hate DMs."

Let's take a look at my post history!

On the front page:

Spoiler

This thread

A thread about a DM literally killing a PC unfairly,

Simulationism discussion

D&D cosmology

D&D technology and timeline

Tiny Hut and how I just accept it.

STR 20

Hit Points

Fudging -- a thread where I was attacked for taking the DM side.

Psionics

Gnomes

Missing Archetypes

magic and class level demographics

mocking NFTs to twenty pages

philter of love and how it is creepy

Vampire PCs

I can do this all day.

IF you want to harass someone, you should bring receipts.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Let's take a look at my post history!


IF you want to harass someone, you should bring receipts.

I did not mean to harass you. That's something I've noticed. So much so that I assumed it was, you know, your shtick.

If you truly think that this (taking random potshots at DMs) isn't something that you regularly do, cool! Carry on! My bad.