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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rhenny" data-source="post: 6955502" data-attributes="member: 18333">I'll throw in a few more of my own observations/ideas from DMing and playing 5e over the past 2+ years - neither for nor against any other perspectives offered by many of the interesting posts in this thread. What I find most enjoyable about 5e (and perhaps this was an intentional design feature from reading over what Mearls, Thompson, Crawford, Perkins have said over the years) is that to me it seems like the one edition that makes it easiest to balance all three pillars (combat, exploration and interaction) of the game during any given session.  I happen to like hitting that balance.  I think 5e works well for balanced DMs and players alike.  On the other hand, it tends to break down (to lesser or greater degrees) for DMs or players who want to focus on any one of the three pillars more than equally. Players/groups that love spending all of their time in combat, playing uber tactical, looking for the epic combat encounters that push them to their limits, probably won't get as much of the Wow that 5e offers to those that like the balance.  The same goes for groups that favor exploration or interaction, shying away from combat (although those types of players are usually less concerned with rules and more concerned with story telling so that kind of overbalance isn't as incongruous with 5e).I think this is one reason why groups that accept the 4-8 encounter per day model will get the most bang for their buck when playing 5e.  Furthermore, to take advantage of what 5e has to offer, DMs/groups should also think about how encounters do not need to be specifically combat related, but rather they should be thought of as larger or smaller problems that a party needs to solve using resources as best they can to achieve a desirable outcome. Adventures need to be designed by establishing goals that are not related to defeating monsters as an end in itself, but as only one means to an end.From my own experience, and from reading about other people's gaming experiences with 5e, and from watching the live stream games run by Chris Perkins and other WotC staff members as well as Matt Mercer's Critical Role, the wow factor for most of these games is from a focus on character development, story telling (developing an interesting narrative) and giving players the chance to explore all aspects of the roleplaying experience, not focusing on combat alone. It works well for those that want the balance of roleplaying and mechanical crunch, foregrounding roleplaying and "rulings" rather than rules.</blockquote>

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