D&D 5E My biggest gripe with 5e design

[Hussar]

Honestly? This about sums up my opinion:

 

[Sacrosanct]

Meh, if your 10th level MU had 25 HP, then you were doing something wrong. By that time, you'd found multiple wishes, probably a magic pool or two, and likely something else that granted immunities and whatnot. I mean, a simple Protection from Fire spell (or is that the 2e version, it's been a while) protected you from like 80 points of fire damage. Never minding that gaining magic items that gave immunities wasn't all that rare. Oh, and nice cherry pick of choosing the one dragon that could do that kind of damage. Let's ignore things like 5th level parties killing ancient huge black dragons (DL 1 - ends with an ancient huge black dragon).

But, again, nice cherry pick. Let's pick the character with the LEAST hp to show how dangerous the game was. That 10th level fighter probably ran somewhere towards a 100 HP (he'd have at least a 16 Con by that time and probably a 19 or a 20 given the PLETHORA of magic items). I'd point out that actually, there's zero difference in HP between an AD&D 9th level fighter and a 5e one.

OTOH, the monsters dealt about 1/4 of the damage going from AD&D to 5e. Maybe 1/2. See, you keep saying it's not about the save or die effects, but, ignore the fact that 1e monsters were puny compared to their 5e counterparts. Less HP, less damage, hit less often, etc. Compared to their 3e counterparts, AD&D monsters were a bad joke.

The only reason the odds were tougher is because the game was designed to bypass the combat system in order to make creatures threatening.

Tell you what, run a spectre against a 7th level AD&D party, but, take away it's level drain. It's not scary. So, the only thing scary about it was the fact that the designers had to basically create entire subsystems to bypass character power in order to be an actual threat.

Every year we see this same tired old tripe pedaled out again and again. Things were so much harder back in the day. We had to walk uphill in the snow both ways just to reach the stick that we'd beat ourselves over the head with. It wasn't true then and it certainly isn't true now.

Again, if that’s your experience playing AD&D, then you were playing a vastly different game than everyone else. Multiple wishes by 10th level? Sounds like you were playing Monty haul. While ways to improve ability scores existed in 1e, you didn’t get automatic +2 bonuses every 4 levels like in 5e. They were super rare to get an ability score improved in 1e. I can only think of three or four adventures that gave that opportunity, and almost always also gave you serious penalties if you chose the wrong option (like castle amber). Magic items were random, so no, not everyone was going around with belts of giant strength and ioun stones and decks of many things that they always conveniently pulled the right cards


And yes, 25 hp was average. If that, since you also stopped getting CON Bonuses after 9th level and stopped rolling hit dice. You got 1 hp per level after 9th for MUs. Even fighters only got 3 per level. To say there is no difference between that and a 5e fighter makes me think you don’t have any idea what the rules in 1e actually are. You also had lower abilities in 1e because you didn’t have point buy or arrays to guarantee a good roll, humans didn’t all get bonuses to stats, and Demi humans had penalties to some stats to offset the bonuses they did get, but also were capped at certain levels. Monsters also routinely had better AC values than in 5e.

Typical avg hp for a 10th level Party was 23 for MU, 33 for thief, 42 for cleric (maybe 52 if the cleric had a con bonus), and 81 for a fighter with a 16 CON (being generous). I wasn’t cherry picking. Even without level drains or save or die, it didn’t take much damage to wreck your day for most PCs. Worse at low levels, when a single attack from a goblin or orc could outright kill your PC, even if they were level 2 or 3 (since you didn’t start at max HP like 5e either). How many 2nd level wizards, or 1st level fighters could die from a single non critical attack by a goblin in 5e? A housecat could kill a MU in 1e for Christ’s sake. Also, hp were more valuable because you didn’t recover them nearly as much as you do in 5e. There were no hit dice to roll during short rests. There was no going back to max at every long rest. Also, no things like low level revivify. You had a much lower pool of HP, and they had to last you much longer between recovery

sorry, you’re wrong. RAW, 1e was more dangerous to PCs than 5e. This isn’t uphill both ways nonsense. It’s objectively true by looking at the actual rules of the game, and something people accept as true because it’s so obvious.

You can’t say that there was no difference, and also say the reason they got rid of all those horrible things was because people hated them. Those are contradictory positions. You can’t deny a problem exists, and then say they fixed the problem because people wanted it.

 

[Hussar]

And yes, 25 hp was average. If that, since you also stopped getting CON Bonuses after 9th level and stopped rolling hit dice. You got 1 hp per level after 9th for MUs. Even fighters only got 3 per level. To say there is no difference between that and a 5e fighter makes me think you don’t have any idea what the rules in 1e actually are. You also had lower abilities in 1e because you didn’t have point buy or arrays to guarantee a good roll, humans didn’t all get bonuses to stats, and Demi humans had penalties to some stats to offset the bonuses they did get, but also were capped at certain levels. Monsters also routinely had better AC values than in 5e.

Umm, what? Fighters in both editions got d10 HP/level. True, at 10th, you'd drop back a bit, but, if you look at what I said, I did specify NINTH level. 1e fighters got to roll 8d6 to determine their Con score, so, 18's were pretty common. Oh, right, we're going to cherry pick rules even more and insist that no one used Unearthed Arcana.

Who needed point buy arrays? Most die rolled characters would put point buy characters to shame. 18 percentile Strengths, 16-18 Con, 15-18 Dex were pretty much standard for AD&D fighters.

Monsters "routinely" had better AC's? LOL. Now that is funny. When the BEST AC in the 1e MM was what, -2 for an Ancient Huge Red Dragon? ((Not counting unique monsters of course)) Been a while, so I could be off a bit, but, again, we're talking the 40 HP GIANTS edition. 96 HP was the biggest that monsters really got. ((Again, ignoring unique monsters))

You can talk Monty Haul all you like. We played by the rules. We generally used modules as well. And, well, my experience was very, VERY different than yours. Heck, this was the edition that ASSUMED 10+ magic items PER CHARACTER. And then assumed at least 6 PC's.

So, yeah, when the group had 60-100 magic items, it wasn't that far out of line that you had superhero characters.

I mean, why do you think they added in all that save or die stuff? Why do you think when they wrote high level adventures, the first thing they did was drop 2 plusses off of very magic weapon and nerfed a shopping list of spells?

It wasn't because the game was too hard.

 

[Lanefan]

And, yet, funnily enough, it was 3e I found to be most lethal. 1e and 2e? After you got about 4th or 5th level, you were virtual gods and nothing outside of save or die effects could actually kill you. It wasn't that the game was that much more dangerous, it's just that there were so many completely arbitrary things that could kill you - like poison.

Your experience with 1e must be vastly different than mine.

I track every death in my games by character, source and cause. Over the last few years the parties I've run have had level ranges anywhere from 4th-8th to 8th-10th, and the most common cause of death by far is still good old-fashioned melee.

Some numbers covering the last 15 adventures I've run, in which there's been 42 deaths, caused by:

25 - melee (giants and ice trolls are the main culprits here)
2 - fall from great height
1 - assassination
1 - accidentally squashed underfoot by a huge (party-controlled!) earth elemental
------------
4 - spell, lightning bolt
1 - spell, fireball
------------
3 - petrified (we count this as a death)
2 - death spell (equivalent)
1 - failed system shock roll
1 - teleport error, into solid rock
1 - explosions due to cascading wild magic surges

So, by my rough count that's 8 deaths by save-or-dies (or equivalents) out of 42; and of the 5 caused by spell I can't recall whether any of the victims would have survived on a made save or not. Oddly enough, none are by poison: though I use poison quite a lot they've always got someone in the party with Slow and-or Neutralize, or some other means of mitigating it.

The previous dozens of adventures (and great many deaths!) give similar findings, though the character levels are lower.

So, we simply didn't use those monsters. End of problem. Medusa? Basilisk? Level draining undead? Might as well have not even existed in the games we played. We knew, even back then, that these were poorly designed creatures whose only "danger" lie in the luck of the die. There was no "planning" or "strategy" to these things. They were pure "gotcha" encounters that served virtually no purpose other than to drag the game down a swirling hate hole.

A swirling hate hole?

Only for those who haven't been told up front that bad things are inevitably gonna happen.

Maybe it's because I played a lot of modules back in the day. Because, guess what? Most of the modules don't feature level draining undead or gotcha save or die. They were there, from time to time, but, never the focus and usually fairly side bar sorts of things.

Sorry, I don't see any heroism in "Hey, I got lucky and made my saving throw today".

The joy lies not in being a hero, but rather in simply surviving to fight another day. Fight enough days, and maybe heroism will find you...and maybe it won't.

 

[Lanefan]

Meh, if your 10th level MU had 25 HP, then you were doing something wrong. By that time, you'd found multiple wishes, probably a magic pool or two, and likely something else that granted immunities and whatnot.

Resistances, yes - better save and less damage. Outright immunities? Bloody rare IME.

I mean, a simple Protection from Fire spell (or is that the 2e version, it's been a while) protected you from like 80 points of fire damage.

Provided anybody a) had it prepared and-or b) thought to cast it. Neither, IME, is exactly a common occurrence.

side note: I don't recall any Protection From Fire spell but there is a Protection From Lightning (Druid-4, I think) that works this way, so maybe that's the one you're thinking of?

Never minding that gaining magic items that gave immunities wasn't all that rare.

Could you please pass this memo on to my DM? I'm fairly certain he hasn't gotten it yet...

OTOH, the monsters dealt about 1/4 of the damage going from AD&D to 5e. Maybe 1/2. See, you keep saying it's not about the save or die effects, but, ignore the fact that 1e monsters were puny compared to their 5e counterparts. Less HP, less damage, hit less often, etc. Compared to their 3e counterparts, AD&D monsters were a bad joke.

Here I completely agree: by RAW many supposedly-dangerous 1e monsters were either glass cannons or glass popguns. The answer, of course, is to beef 'em up some.

Hell, just giving Giants their inherent strength bonuses to hit and damage turns them into worthy foes.

 

[Lanefan]

Umm, what? Fighters in both editions got d10 HP/level. True, at 10th, you'd drop back a bit, but, if you look at what I said, I did specify NINTH level. 1e fighters got to roll 8d6 to determine their Con score, so, 18's were pretty common.

To begin with maybe; but remember that every death-revival cycle permanently cost you a point of Con in 1e, and rare indeed would be the front-liner who got to 9th-10th level without dying-reviving a few times along the way....

Oh, right, we're going to cherry pick rules even more and insist that no one used Unearthed Arcana.

We've never used the UA roll-up methods; so here's at least one crew that didn't.

Been a while, so I could be off a bit, but, again, we're talking the 40 HP GIANTS edition. 96 HP was the biggest that monsters really got. ((Again, ignoring unique monsters))

With one rather strange exception: dinosaurs.

There's some dinosaurs in the original MM with staggering numbers of HD, the highest being 36HD if memory serves. The average for 36d8 is 162 h.p.

 

[dave2008]

Disclosure: I really like 5e. When 3e came out, I mostly stuck with AD&D. When 4e came out, I didn't even want to touch it and stayed with AD&D. 5e? It brought me back. Overall, I think the design team deserves a ton of credit for designing a great game. I really want to stress how even though I have a gripe with it, doesn't mean I think it's trash or a bad game. I'm not "hating" on it.

But I think I can finally place my finger on what I like about it the least, rather than a general feeling. The saving throw thread helped clarify my thoughts a bit now that I've actually given more thought to it (I've always just tried to focus on the good parts rather than spend time thinking about what I didn't like. I mean, no game is perfect, right?)

My general feeling that I didn't like? The overall less-than-lethal changes made to monsters. That's a pretty well known gripe from folks. How in most cases, you get multiple save opportunities before something really bad happens, how green slimes are completely neutered, how poison is now just a little bit of damage and not a real threat like it was before, how there is no level drain, or instant petrification, rust monsters are neutered, etc. A green slime scared the hell out of you in AD&D. 5e? Meh.

Note: I am not saying save or die was a good thing, or it was better, or that anyone who hates save or die is a bad person who beats puppies.

Upon deeper thought: It wasn't save or die or really suck that I miss, but the secondary effect of it. I.e., players were extremely cautious and genuinely careful when going out on an adventure or discovering an enemy. You approached a gaze monster totally different than you did a rust monster, and approached the undead completely different from that, and same with a venomous creature or trap, etc. You got your supplies, did your research, prepped your spells, all for things to help mitigate poison, or disease, or extra weapons (because the slime or rust monster destroyed your old ones). Scrolls because one of your most sought after magic items.

After all this, how does this translate into my gripe for 5e? My biggest gripe isn't that they don't have save or die, but that the design seems to have placed all of its eggs into the HP basket. It all seems to be about HP mitigation and attrition, rather than trying to prevent individual effects (like disease, poison, petrification, paralyzation, item destruction, etc). And that seems to lead to players approaching battles with little variation tactics. Just try to inflict as much HP as damage as possible and don't worry about getting poisoned, petrified, etc. As long as you had HP left, you will never fail.

For example, an attack by a cockatrice in 5e gave you two saving throws at an easy DC, and if you failed both of those, you were only petrified for 24 hours. So you could afford to be much more aggressive and approach combat more traditionally. Your melee types weren't nearly as scared to engage in melee as they were in AD&D, where if you failed once, you were screwed forever. So in 1e, tactics were different.

Note 2: I"m not saying tactics aren't used in 5e, just that they aren't as much of a focus because the risk of failing a save is less.

Note 3: I also understand that DMs can always change things, but I'm talking about out of the box

Essentially, really bad lingering effects are much more rare in 5e than AD&D, and lack of lingering effects changes how people approach encounters. And to me, and in my experience, it makes the battles feel a bit too similar. I found myself missing the party planning phase, and the tactics phase. The importance of prepping spells other than combat spells. The importance of getting antidotes, and protection scrolls. The importance of realizing that many battle are best not fought at all, but avoided. With 5e, it seems like all you really have to worry about is managing HP. Even most bad conditions were ended after a round or two (since you get to keep rerolling new saves every round).

So how do I think this could be addressed in the 5e framework? I think 5e already has a mechanic that most players dread: exhaustion. I don't think bringing back level draining is the answer (most people loathe it). But I think there is room to diversify the hazards a PC can face long term other than HP loss (and even that is short term). Everything in 5e seems to reset on a long rest. Boo! lol. I think exhaustion should be utilized more often, and can be used to reflect things like disease, or the effects of potent poison, or even gaining a level of exhaustion if you've been raised/revivafied/healed from 0 hp. Change the life force draining ability of undead that brought the fear of God(s) into the PCs to inflict levels of exhaustion as a way to reflect the life draining aspect. Metagaming is always going to be part of the game (everyone knows to use fire against the troll), so bring back the fear of the undead. And slimes. And other monsters. Make trap disarming a suspenseful event again.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, and what I find is the weakest part of an otherwise great game. I am totally open to hear others' ideas of how to diversify dangers and hazards to PCs in 5e. Help get out of the "HP are everything" mindset.

I think using exhaustion as replacement for level drain and a cost of dropping to 0 hp is a great idea. You could make it a little more dangerous and say you can't recover HP (or HD if you prefer) naturally until you recover any levels of exhaustion first.

 

[Sadras]

Some numbers covering the last 15 adventures I've run, in which there's been 42 deaths, caused by:

25 - melee (giants and ice trolls are the main culprits here)
2 - fall from great height
1 - assassination
1 - accidentally squashed underfoot by a huge (party-controlled!) earth elemental
------------
4 - spell, lightning bolt
1 - spell, fireball
------------
3 - petrified (we count this as a death)
2 - death spell (equivalent)
1 - failed system shock roll
1 - teleport error, into solid rock
1 - explosions due to cascading wild magic surges

XP for this! What an impressive list.

 

[Coroc]

Umm, what? Fighters in both editions got d10 HP/level. True, at 10th, you'd drop back a bit, but, if you look at what I said, I did specify NINTH level. 1e fighters got to roll 8d6 to determine their Con score, so, 18's were pretty common. Oh, right, we're going to cherry pick rules even more and insist that no one used Unearthed Arcana.

Who needed point buy arrays? Most die rolled characters would put point buy characters to shame. 18 percentile Strengths, 16-18 Con, 15-18 Dex were pretty much standard for AD&D fighters.

Monsters "routinely" had better AC's? LOL. Now that is funny. When the BEST AC in the 1e MM was what, -2 for an Ancient Huge Red Dragon? ((Not counting unique monsters of course)) Been a while, so I could be off a bit, but, again, we're talking the 40 HP GIANTS edition. 96 HP was the biggest that monsters really got. ((Again, ignoring unique monsters))

You can talk Monty Haul all you like. We played by the rules. We generally used modules as well. And, well, my experience was very, VERY different than yours. Heck, this was the edition that ASSUMED 10+ magic items PER CHARACTER. And then assumed at least 6 PC's.

So, yeah, when the group had 60-100 magic items, it wasn't that far out of line that you had superhero characters.

I mean, why do you think they added in all that save or die stuff? Why do you think when they wrote high level adventures, the first thing they did was drop 2 plusses off of very magic weapon and nerfed a shopping list of spells?

It wasn't because the game was too hard.

Also @Lanefan and @Sacrosanct

Did not play 1e rules although I used 1e adventures but did play loads and loads of 2nd ed. And man, it was deadly, it was so deadly that I carefully designed custom magic weapons for the group to find relly soon so they could dish out some if they needed to. +4 and +5 arms were no rareness in my games.

I give you example: I once did the Menzoberranzan boxed set and did a huge homebrew underdark campaign on top of it. At one point the group of three drow PC, each with more than 60% Magig resistance and + weapons and armor etc. encountered a high level drow priestess, cannot remember level 14 or so.

This drow priestess cast harm on one player. Harm back then required a melee touch hit and was reducing the player to 1d4 HP LEFT plus a disease.

That means you got your 157 HP fighter with 18/96 STR e.g. and here comes 1 lowly level 13+ priest, cast harm, and if he hits there go 153 to 156 HP in one go.
Even if you were using weapon specialization and let us assume the 156 HP fighter has 3 attacks, if the priest e.g. has 16 dex and wears mundane platemail and shield for AC0, then the following happens:
The fighter maybe hits 2 out of three of his attacks, let us say a +3 two hand swords for 1d10+3 +4 (from str) +2 (from specialization) means avg 15.5, so 31
in one round.
Next round the priest only needs to hit once for 1d6+1 with his mundane mace and there you go, the fighter dies in the second round.

 

[Sadras]

You could make it a little more dangerous and say you can't recover HP (or HD if you prefer) naturally until you recover any levels of exhaustion first.

We have a similar rule, if one is exhausted one first needs to remove that condition before one can start recovering Hit Dice. In conjunction with Slow Natural Healing and our house rule where rituals expend 1 HD, this raises the danger levels.

Furthermore at our table incorporeal creatures (like shadows, ghosts and the like) ignore armour on their melee attacks.