Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Yeah. That's how I run the vast majority monsters and NPCs. Some monsters and NPCs, though, are special and I want them to have a chance to live through hitting 0.
Most frustrating quirk of 5E?
Yeah. That's how I run the vast majority monsters and NPCs. Some monsters and NPCs, though, are special and I want them to have a chance to live through hitting 0.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
So first, there's no mechanical restriction on druids regarding metal armor. There is a statement that they will not wear it, but that's fluff. A druid PC who says to the DM that he puts on full plate is still capable of casting spells, wildshaping and using the rest of his abilities.
Second, paladins, unlike druids, do have a mechanical restriction as they can lose their paladinhood if they break their oaths. It's discretionary on the part of the DM, but it's a rather hefty mechanical restriction on paladins.
Third, those aren't the only two classes with restrictions. Barbarians are also mechanically restricted in that not all of their abilities work if they are wearing armor heavier than light. Wizards are mechanically restricted in what spells that can memorize if they lose their spellbook. And monks lose abilities when wearing armor.
Li Shenron
Legend
Those are not moral-based.
And the way the restriction is written for Druid doesn't sound like fluff.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
There's nothing moral about choosing(and it's clearly a choice from how it's written) not to wear metal. "Will not" is not "cannot." And there are no mechanical penalty for breaking that choice. The paladin DOES have moral restrictions, and there is a mechanical penalty for breaking them.
Last edited:
Ratskinner
Adventurer
I dunno. I had an FR book or two back in the 2e days that were absolutely horrible this way. One was printed in dark blue ink on slightly-not-as-dark blue parchmenty background and the other was the same except for being lightish brown on darkish tan. While the contrast (or lack thereof) was a big issue, the mottling of the pseudo parchment just put it over the top for unreadability.
::shrug::
Ratskinner
Adventurer
Personally, my biggest quirk is balancing the various classes on different recharge schedules....that's just odd, and really locks the game into that 6-8 encounters thing.
The Old Crow
Explorer
Heh, that sounds like awful design. I never had any FR books.
When 2e came out I did buy a pack of character sheets that turned out to have a background alternating between light green and dark green. The dark green was so dark the only way to read pencil on it was to tip the sheet so light would reflect off the graphite. In this case though I don't think they just made a poor aesthetic decision, but were instead trying to thwart the poor copy machines back in the day, and in the process managed to make their product a useless waste of money.
Ratskinner
Adventurer
Given the common practices in my college gaming group back then, I wouldn't be surprised if photocopy thwartation (look ma, I made a word!) wasn't a big part of the motivation behind that "design decision".
Winterthorn
Monster Manager
I cannot name an individual quirk so much note a holistic one: several aspects of the game have been simplified for the mass market it seems to me. For example, weapons and armor are do not offer enough mechanical variety and this diminshes cultural flavour options to me. Class and subclass features beg for more granularity too. A few more supernatural conditions could have been offered, and the monolithic proficiency bonus progression is just... lacking. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty good to be found in this edition, but I feel it falls short on closer examination.
I just had a thought: pehaps this simplifying approach was also a means to create design space for variants in campaign settings? FREX, homebrew wise, for my campaign world, I am considering changing the sorcerer and adding a witch class, and tweaking the whole weapons and armor tables. Looking at, say AiME there are wonderful tweaks to the rules to fit the flavour of the Middle Earth setting! So was that part of WotC's intent with the core rules?
I just had a thought: pehaps this simplifying approach was also a means to create design space for variants in campaign settings? FREX, homebrew wise, for my campaign world, I am considering changing the sorcerer and adding a witch class, and tweaking the whole weapons and armor tables. Looking at, say AiME there are wonderful tweaks to the rules to fit the flavour of the Middle Earth setting! So was that part of WotC's intent with the core rules?
Last edited:
Falling Icicle
Adventurer
I really dislike the spell index and the lack of classes in the spell descriptions.
For example, they could have done something like this with the spell headers:
Absorb Elements
1st-level abjuration [Drd, Rgr, Sor, Wiz]
That would have made it really easy to tell which classes can cast a particular spell. Instead, I have to go flip back to the beginning of the spell chapter and check if it's on a particular class's list. Ugh.
In 3.x, they put a little "M" following the spell's name to note which ones had costly material components. I really wish they had done that again in 5e. A "C" next to the spells that require concentration would have been really helpful as well.
For example, they could have done something like this with the spell headers:
Absorb Elements
1st-level abjuration [Drd, Rgr, Sor, Wiz]
That would have made it really easy to tell which classes can cast a particular spell. Instead, I have to go flip back to the beginning of the spell chapter and check if it's on a particular class's list. Ugh.
In 3.x, they put a little "M" following the spell's name to note which ones had costly material components. I really wish they had done that again in 5e. A "C" next to the spells that require concentration would have been really helpful as well.
Similar Threads
