Most frustrating quirk of 5E?

[jgsugden]

I think we all have lists of things about 5E that are not perfect. Some of them might be major (for example, Sharpshooter and GWM are considered a major flaw by some people - and some others refuse to play a monk because of the MAD necessity to improve dex and wisdom to make them as effective as other PCs) and impact play significantly.

However, others are minor and only infrequently come up or, if they come up often, only have a minimal impact. What I am curious about is whether there are any minor defects that drive you bonkers.

For example: It drives me a bit crazy to not see a bastard sword in the PHB. We don't need it. LS and GS cover what we need... but I have a soft spot for the name 'bastard sword'. I reflavor other swords and call them bastard swords. However, the lack of those words on the page in the weapons table just pulls at my heart strings.

Also, I miss having small, medium and huge elements in the Monster Manual. The 'gradiations' of elementals was something I often enjoyed using in the past. I made my own versions the day I had the basic rules in my hands, but I was disappointed not to see then in the MM and I can't see that page spread in the book without thinking about it.

What minor thing bugs you? (...and if your answer is this thread, another thing that bugs me is people complaining about the subject of threads when they could elect to just not read them...)

 

[ccs]

1) The ability score negative/bonus progression in relation to the stats.
Ok, this isn't new as it's been in place since 3e.... I wasn't a fan of it then & I'm still not. I'd prefer the 1e progression/charts.

2) The S/L rest mechanic. Particularly the short rest.
I'd rather things just had a set # of uses per day.

3) Fully healing up after a long rest.

 

[robus]

The thing that bugs me the most is how poorly the game is introduced to new players by the PHB and the DMG (the DMG especially). It's written by experienced players for experienced players, IMHO. For the DMG mostly I think it's an issue of the order in which things are presented. There's no reason for the DMG (for example) to start with an info dump on world building. In fact I'd say the sequencing is exactly opposite to ideal! In other words it should start with how to run a game/session/encounters. Then introduce how to build adventures and unique creatures. Then finish up with creating a world of your own.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Full healing after a long rest mostly.

 

[Azzy]

1. The armor table. I mean it's incredibly ludicrous and arbitrary to begin with (why is ringmail now a heavy armor, for one example). But the cherry on top is that they got rid of banded armor (which historically existed), but kept splint armour (that didn't as a suit, and only then occasionally as pieces that covered limbs).

2. There's no way to gain additional skill proficiencies without taking a feat (if you're using that option), and then only once.

 

[Shiroiken]

Probably the biggest pet peeve of 5E for me is the armor and weapons. I admit they are technically workable, but they drive me nuts. Just like in 3E, once you have enough money, there are really only 2 armor choices. Well, technically a few characters wear medium armor, so I suppose that there are 3, but still. There are weapons that are pretty much just superior to their peers, an while Versatile is neat in theory, it's such an edge case use that it may as well not exist.

 

[Oofta]

No time compression so I can play as much as I want?

A more serious issue would be the wackiness of multi-classing warlocks getting back spells after a short rest. Well, multi-classing and spells in general is confusing. Not that I have a better suggestion.

Most other things I can just work around. The full healing after a long rest for example I just switched to alternate rules where a long rest is a week. With heat metal (nerf any enemy in armor) I can just say it doesn't cause disadvantage if wearing armor or grant a con save every round.

There are things I'd like added, but for the most part the base rules work well enough with a couple of minor tweaks.

 

[Larrin]

The first time I ever played D&D the catch-phrase of the night was "Out comes the Bastard sword". In my heart it's the weapon of reckless fighters happily escalating the situation. so I echo you in being annoyed at it not being core. I'd follow that up with the weapon design in 5e in general. Several weapons are just bad, and apparently that is intentional? Pikes are prohibitively heavy and don't benefit from polearm mastery. A whole slew of d8 martial weapons aren't versatile, some it makes sense, some it really doesn't. There is so little diversity of finesse weapons that dex based characters all have the same weapon. tridents are just spears. No 2d4 weapons. And design response has basically been like, "yeah, some of the weapons we made just suck." " Some people want to be able to chose bad weapons so that they have mechanical proof they care more about story than mechanics." "Not every weapon needs to be good. You think every weapon ever has been good? People all throughout history have had to kill things with bad weapons, and now you can do that in the game you love." "Sometime we just added a weapon to the table and didn't actually want players to use it, ever, just monsters that are supposed to have bad weapons."

I don't need exotic weapons, I don't need every weapon to be the same, but I'm bugged when so many weapons on the table are needlessly poor choices.

 

[dave2008]

For example: It drives me a bit crazy to not see a bastard sword in the PHB. We don't need it. LS and GS cover what we need... but I have a soft spot for the name 'bastard sword'. I reflavor other swords and call them bastard swords. However, the lack of those words on the page in the weapons table just pulls at my heart strings.

I understand it is just quirky pet peeve of yours (i.e i tis not about the mechanics, but the name), but I just wanted to make sure that you realized the term "bastard sword" is a modern term used to describe swords, not a historical one. Obviously the longsword as written is a "bastard" sword.

 

[pogre]

Grappling rules.