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

[Maxperson]

Critical hits first appeared in 2E as an optional rule. The first option was as in 5E (double all dice, add all bonuses once), and the second was rolling additional attack rolls on each successive 20.

Personally, I've gone back and forth on the whole crtical hit thing, as in my thread about using exploding dice instead. I like the idea of a hit becoming "more", but like @Sacrosanct's thread, I like the idea of more than just doing more hp damage.

I'm pretty certain that I saw them appear in a Dragon Magazine during 1e. Just looked it up, they appeared in Dragon #39 in an article entitled Good Hits and Bad Misses.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I'm pretty certain that I saw them appear in a Dragon Magazine during 1e. Just looked it up, they appeared in Dragon #39 in an article entitled Good Hits and Bad Misses.

Not surprising they showed up in Dragon, that's probably how they made it into 2E as optional.

 

[Jd Smith1]

My two gripes with 5e are 1) the death issue; I feel like it is too easy for PCs to stay alive. I would prefer that when you hit 0 hit points, you have X rounds and then you're dead. As it is, the odds are that you are going to stabilize without help.

2) The armor system. I preferred RM's concept that the heavier the armor, the easier you were to hit, but the less damage you did, while lightly armored subjects were harder to hit (able to dodge, duck, etc) but took more damage. Or just soak damage based on type.

While I feel that with the rest system they have done a brilliant job with dungeon crawl resource management, but I am less thrilled with it for a single encounter while traveling, for example. I have no idea how to fix it, so I'm not counting that as a major issue. I have just made most travelling encounters as night attacks so I catch them out of armor, and really ramped up the danger level because I know they're going to face the full spell and special ability arsenal of the party. Hit hard and fast because they can only deploy their best at a specific pace. It's not perfect, but it works.

 

[DND_Reborn]

My two gripes with 5e are 1) the death issue; I feel like it is too easy for PCs to stay alive. I would prefer that when you hit 0 hit points, you have X rounds and then you're dead. As it is, the odds are that you are going to stabilize without help.

2) The armor system. I preferred RM's concept that the heavier the armor, the easier you were to hit, but the less damage you did, while lightly armored subjects were harder to hit (able to dodge, duck, etc) but took more damage. Or just soak damage based on type.

While I feel that with the rest system they have done a brilliant job with dungeon crawl resource management, but I am less thrilled with it for a single encounter while traveling, for example. I have no idea how to fix it, so I'm not counting that as a major issue. I have just made most travelling encounters as night attacks so I catch them out of armor, and really ramped up the danger level because I know they're going to face the full spell and special ability arsenal of the party. Hit hard and fast because they can only deploy their best at a specific pace. It's not perfect, but it works.

Yep, too easy for PCs in general once you reach 5th level IMO. A couple suggestions for fixes if you still have the same issues and haven't fixed them yourself:

1. Make it so when you are at 0 hp, they suffer a level of exhaustion and must finish a short rest before they can take any actions other than moving (no dodge, no dash, no disengage, etc.). They can only act normally if they are restored to at least half their maximum HP, requiring powerful magic or multiple spells generally. Even if restored, they still have the lingering effect of exhaustion to deal with.

2. Armors provide half their AC bonus to AC (round up) and the other half (round down) as damage reduction. Shields still are +2 AC. So, a Breastplate (AC 15) would become AC 13 with 2 DR. Leather armor would be full AC 11, but with max DEX is AC 16, max with Breastplate would be AC 15.

It might make more sense to you, maybe not.

Finally, changing short rests to 8 hours and long rests to 24 hours or even 24-hour short rests and 1-week long rests. Since overland encounters tend to happen once every couple days or so, the longer long rest reduces spell overload on every encounter. It changes the dynamic in dungeon crawls, but for the better IMO.

If you find it too limiting, you can even change some class features to refresh on a short rest instead of long, but keep spellcasting on long rests.

 

[Arnwolf666]

My two gripes with 5e are 1) the death issue; I feel like it is too easy for PCs to stay alive. I would prefer that when you hit 0 hit points, you have X rounds and then you're dead. As it is, the odds are that you are going to stabilize without help.

2) The armor system. I preferred RM's concept that the heavier the armor, the easier you were to hit, but the less damage you did, while lightly armored subjects were harder to hit (able to dodge, duck, etc) but took more damage. Or just soak damage based on type.

While I feel that with the rest system they have done a brilliant job with dungeon crawl resource management, but I am less thrilled with it for a single encounter while traveling, for example. I have no idea how to fix it, so I'm not counting that as a major issue. I have just made most travelling encounters as night attacks so I catch them out of armor, and really ramped up the danger level because I know they're going to face the full spell and special ability arsenal of the party. Hit hard and fast because they can only deploy their best at a specific pace. It's not perfect, but it works.

I disagree about that armor. The heavier armor makes it harder for you to be hit. They are more likely to hit the armor than you. That’s my opinion anyway.

 

[Maxperson]

I disagree about that armor. The heavier armor makes it harder for you to be hit. They are more likely to hit the armor than you. That’s my opinion anyway.

For games other than D&D, sure. In D&D, though, a hit doesn't equate to doing actual physical damage. Hit points are abstract and a hit to armor is sufficient to be a hit that does damage.

 

[Arnwolf666]

For games other than D&D, sure. In D&D, though, a hit doesn't equate to doing actual physical damage. Hit points are abstract and a hit to armor is sufficient to be a hit that does damage.

I don’t view the abstraction necessarily that way all the time.

 

[Maxperson]

I don’t view the abstraction necessarily that way all the time.

And you don't have to for armor as DR or partially DR to work. That is the way works by RAW, though.

 

[Arnwolf666]

And you don't have to for armor as DR or partially DR to work. That is the way works by RAW, though.

I like the RAW

 

[Oofta]

I like the RAW

I agree. Armor as DR may make sense from a certain perspective, but it messes with the math of the game. A monster that has only a single massive [attack] suddenly has a big advantage over a monster that does multiple attacks for smaller damage even if they are the same CR. Some monsters become completely ineffective against PCs with a good AC.

I'm sure there are better ways of modeling armor, but to be "realistic" would require a computer because of the complex interplay of attack, damage and HP. No thanks.