Visibility
Most tables don't see any of it.
D&D General Mike Mearls says control spells are ruining 5th Edition
- Thread starter THEMNGMNT
- Start date
Most tables don't see any of it.
AnotherGuy
Hero
Sure, but that is like most things.
No all fans of the Orphan Black tv show know there had been a short run comic book connected to the show.
No all fans of Lost or The Office see their webisodes.
No all fans of musicians or sport stars follow their instagram accounts, potentially missing out on content.
It is the same with D&D.
What WotC did do is provide us with the DMsGuild with filter options allowing us to drill down to the content we are looking for and that is about the best they could do.
Yes but like I said
5e with designed around having variants to drill into personal table feel.
If no one sees them they don't exist tables.
This is why them putting third party contact on D&D and beyond is so much a better tactic. WOTC does most of the D&D-sphere's marketing.
AnotherGuy
Hero
WotC could certainly highlight the DMsGuild but you cannot expect them to advertise the competition (Level Up and all the other 5e variants)
Not really. I tried quite a few boltons to fix, various gaping holes in 5e over the years and they generally collapsed under the weight of a system designing against doing such a thing. Take a proper carrying capacity system made somewhat early on (or not so early) and look at how was it is for any player to start with powerful build to completely ignore it now as an example. Worse still is that you have many different takes on how to best go about inventing the same wheel because there is no finished wheel to start with.
AnotherGuy
Hero
The way I look at the core books, variants, DMs Guild and free stuff that exists is that if those do not work as is, they may spark an idea of how you or your table would prefer it, so they can be customised to your preferences.
With regards to your specific issue with Powerful Build
As DM I would allow the feature to stand as is for weight purposes, but not necessarily for items that are bulky - so it doesn't matter how strong you are, you should not be able to move and fight perfectly while carrying several suits of armour, not necessarily because of their weight but because of their bulkiness. There are several systems that don't use actual encumbrance but bulk. You can even incorporate both systems at the same time.
Grit and Glory is a free pdf which I know looks at bulk but like I said there are others. I'd recommend you to see if their system is suitable or inspires you to customise it. You could even brainstorm this with your players as a group so they do not feel you're short-changing them on a class feature.
Powerful build was just an example, one of the most obvious of the poison pill malicious compliance trivially accessable player options. That bold bit is where we disagree and why they can not work to fill the gap left by subsystems wotc did not complete over the last 11 years +not quite quarter revision. Specifically that "you" is wildly incorrect because the system is designed so the gm is denied that level of control. What happens is that the "you" only applies to the players because there are too many ways at too many levels of design where each individual player can choose to take an ice pick to the gm's efforts to finish 5e and do so with a veneer of innocence that allows outrage and frustrations over the eventual nerfs that follows the gm discovering.
Worse still is the fact that once you start going beyond low level core system functionality like carrying capacity or containers and move into finishing areas that show up more actively in play you quickly start discovering that similar readily accessible player facing ice picks exist in the core rules for most of the discreet components of the Frankenstein monster.
AnotherGuy
Hero
Noted, was just trying to help.
Unless you're running AL games for the public, I have to strongly pushback on this perception.
The DMs Guide gives you the authority in black and white and I could quote you multiple passages but I believe you are already aware of them.
The question becomes, why do you feel so constrained by the system and the players where discussion cannot ensue towards a resolution. Players constantly approach the DM to tweak this-and-that during character creation including backstory etc, why as DM do you not afford yourself the same benefit when you have an issue?
You will not get any disagreement from me that they could have improved on 5e in this last decade and to provide us with further mechanical alternatives.
This thread was started talking about why it doesn't matter if there are quotable passages granting the gm authority between quotable passages encouraging players to view it like a single player game or worse "tell your story"∆. Unlike past editions the gm has no space to give while taking so players can be happy about this cool exception/boon they got out of that little nerf the gm needed to do to support something instead it's just an endless chain of nerfs because right out of the gate 5e PCs are over tuned on everything and the expectations are builds like high int low strength fighters who never see even a single magic item. Anything the gm could give is just introducing new problems.
Once that snowball starts growing it doesn't take long before the changes that the gm is half heartedly empowered to make in the "tell your story"∆ edition poison the table dynamic. Once players decide that a style of play depending on a stack of nerfs won't be fun, even given a chance, they start playing in a way that proves it can't be fun now that they gave it a chance.
∆i always want to italicize the most toxic word in that but can never decide if it's encouraging players to think marysue story telling should take presidence I we the rules dice result and state of shared fiction in play or if it's encouraging players to view the rest of the table as mere sidekicks and meat computer supporting your story .
Not a Decepticon
Hero
It was something that you could do very easy with just Book of Vile Darkness, and likely as much a reason why this book was banned at many tables as all the edgelordness of it.
You needed to get a single level in Cancer Mage Prestige Class, which was rather easy to do - 6 ranks in Hide and Move Silently, three feats that do not have prequisites, evil aligment, must once been exposed to disease and poisoned. It gave you a feature "disease host" that meant you can be infected with diseases but ignore their negative effects and gain beneficial one. One of diseases in the same book was Festering Anger, which each day would permamently both reduce your Constitution by 1d3 and increase your Strength by +2. The modifiers applied this way stacked with themselves. Cancer Mage could ignore the Constitution penalty, thus getting for free effectively infinite strength. I think people immediatelly realized this is a game-breaking build. Cancer Mage also had no restrictions on what happens if you stop being one or even stop being evil, so you could take a dip and then go into something else, most builds would go for statcking "STR bonus now applies to X" features.
