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

[Maxperson]

OK I gotcha, fair enough and yeah I saw tons of re-rolls, esp. at low levels but no-one say, making say, Wizards use a d6 for HP as an actual house rule or the like. When that happened it was an alternate class or something (and usually hilariously overvalued in balancing terms).

Yeah. And I saw a few that gave max hit points at first level, but by and large the vast majority just had you start with what you rolled, even if your fighter had 3 hit points at first level(1 + 2 for con).

It was a bit different for those convention games with pre-generated PCs. They had to create the PCs with a certain fairness in mind, so the hit point rolls were most likely influenced in some manner.

 

[Arnwolf666]

Its funny, there were extensive rules for henchmen & hiring in 1e, but I rarely saw them used.
Just another thing that varied wildly back in the day, I guess.

it vRies widely. We used them alot. But we didn’t want them to die. There was a maximum number you received based on charisma. Plus it was considered dickish and evil to send them into a situation that you knew they would die. Morale checks happened alot. The hirings would say no sometimes based on that morale Check.

for me henchman and morale checks were the best part of the game.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So in a party with a paladin, 2 clerics, a druid and 2 wizards, the odds that one of them will have psionics is about what, 1 in 7ish?

Actually, just less than 1 in 10. Nearly 91% of such groups, even using Method V, would not have a single character with psionics.

 

[Undrave]

So here we were, going underground to explore an abandoned Dwarven fortress we knew to be crawling with undeads, with our NPC 'buddy', a friggin' Formosan Warlock who's patron apparently knew how to stop the undeads, when we encountered Troglodytes by a body of water.

Turned out there was an Aboleth in there.

There was four of us, all Lv 6: Dwarf Paladin, Dwarf Barbarian, Dwarf Warlock, and me, the Svirnefblin Monk.

That was pretty terrifying, especially when the Aboleth took control of our NPC sidekick AND the Barbarian. I managed to keep the Formosan from doing too much damage thanks to Silence, but once it came to attacking the Aboleth I kept rolling below 10, it was awful. Also, our Warlock went down.

 

[Ashrym]

I find critcal hits rather intimidating. I don't recall crits as scary in first ed.

 

[Hussar]

I find critcal hits rather intimidating. I don't recall crits as scary in first ed.

That makes sense since 1e didn't have critical hits.

Although, we often made that a common house rule where a 20 granted you an additional attack.

 

[DND_Reborn]

That makes sense since 1e didn't have critical hits.

Although, we often made that a common house rule where a 20 granted you an additional attack.

Most tables IME just doubled damage on a critical hit in 1E, but I saw the extra attack variant used a few times.

 

[Haffrung]

I've come to the same conclusion as the OP. Combat is 5E just isn't very dramatic. It's little more than a HP reduction race. I find I'm having to try out all sorts of house rules around rests, crits, and exhaustion to inject some peril into the game. And the monster design is blah. How much different really is an ogre from an owlbear from a troll?

I've never played Pathfinder, and only briefly dabbled in 3E, but this dissatisfaction with 5E combat and monster design is the biggest reason I'm gearing up to run PF2 for my next campaign. It looks like it makes combat much more dramatic, varied, and tense.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've come to the same conclusion as the OP. Combat is 5E just isn't very dramatic. It's little more than a HP reduction race. I find I'm having to try out all sorts of house rules around rests, crits, and exhaustion to inject some peril into the game. And the monster design is blah. How much different really is an ogre from an owlbear from a troll?

Would anyone notice a regenerating ogre or an owlbear that used weapons?

I've never played Pathfinder, and only briefly dabbled in 3E, but this dissatisfaction with 5E combat and monster design is the biggest reason I'm gearing up to run PF2 for my next campaign. It looks like it makes combat much more dramatic, varied, and tense.

Seems like PF2 is quite different from PF1/3e, that way (bit like 4e, really), too - 3e, when it wasn't SoD rocket tag, was just a "static," toe-to-toe race to zero hps, just maybe a faster one than 5e.

 

[5ekyu]

I've come to the same conclusion as the OP. Combat is 5E just isn't very dramatic. It's little more than a HP reduction race. I find I'm having to try out all sorts of house rules around rests, crits, and exhaustion to inject some peril into the game. And the monster design is blah. How much different really is an ogre from an owlbear from a troll?

I've never played Pathfinder, and only briefly dabbled in 3E, but this dissatisfaction with 5E combat and monster design is the biggest reason I'm gearing up to run PF2 for my next campaign. It looks like it makes combat much more dramatic, varied, and tense.

Is it your perception that a majority of combats in PF2 do not end when HP thresholds are achieved (zero or higher if those trigger surrender or retreat events) but they end by foes defeated while still possessing significant HP?