I have been a DM since the 1980s, and I am thrilled with 5e. Especially the 6 saves, the spells, the lack of a christmas tree of items . . . but my players were unhappy. Below is their critique, and I am hoping to get some tips to help them like the game more as well as some validation from people in the forums that I am not crazy to be so into the new rules.
No, you're not crazy, especially if you DM. 5E is extremely friendly to the DM. Like you, I DM a lot. Though I enjoyed 3E/
Pathfinder for years, I grew extremely weary of the prep time for the game. 5E cuts that prep time down substantially, while continuing to provide a very robust and customizable rule system allowing a DM to make fun, interesting, and challenging adventures. No more writing term papers to create encounters for high level PCs. Now you can whip them up in a short time and focus more on the story/plot component of the game. No more tracking an insane number of buffs and debuffs. It's all very fluid and easy to run.
Now THE BAD: And trust me there is a lot of it. Almost everything that it’s before mentioned falls in here so I will not open my book and start going page by page. Let’s start with my biggest gripe – the lovely backgrounds. Yes you know my problems with this – “You don’t limit your player’s creativity game” Yea it’s cool that your history matters but you just don’t. At least they are easy to make, but if you have to make 100 of them why don’t they just give you – Here this is what you can pick, mix and match it until you are happy. It’s not like the special skill ever comes in handy anyways. And then they talk about personality – the fabled IBF. Here there be the basics of your character. This mechanic I’m sad to say is useless for us. I’m extremely happy that I managed to find a group with excellent gamers such as your selves as to make it obsolete. It is useful in only the most wargamy of groups, and if indeed you are playing with wargamers that just want mechanical challenge and you are trying to force RP on them, well I have to tell you are not playing the right game with the right people. Another thing that you have noticed already 4x6 makes about 24 more things the GM has to keep track, and how do you do it when everyone is bringing his A game to the table, you have to just constantly give out inspiration. “I use inspiration to kill the angle, than I mutilate his corpse and get inspiration because I have a Ideal to destroy beautiful things. I use my inspiration to persuade someone to betray his friend then I get in immediately back because I have a Personality treat that is all about making people backstab each other” When everything is working fine this system either means you constantly have inspiration, or is just forgotten. And the idea that it encourages mechanic focused gamers to RP is not true. If you are playing for the mechanics this is just one more of them to fallow, they will find the easiest bond to forfill and they will try to do it always even if the party disagrees because that is the mechanic they see. It’s just a big mess when you look into it.
Backgrounds are not required. They are customizable. I tell my players to write up their background and use the general format and limitations on additional skills and languages. This shouldn't in any way affect the game other than a chance to toss a few skills and abilities on from your background.
We reached Chapter 5 Equipment – now let’s talk of the importance of magical items in a high fantasy game, and the economy of the world of which they are an integral part. So I will just go out and say it. The 5th ed economy is broken, it is wrecked beyond repair, a problem that connects to the reward structure of the game. I will take a look at it before I talk about how it’s broken. So we are adventurers, and we adventure for glory and to improve our social status, but also to become better at adventuring and defeat greater rivals for better rewards. That is our goal. How does the game reward us and help us on the way. The first reward it could give us is inspiration, but as I said it is unclear and random and horrible. And then there is gold ad magic items that we obtain on our journey (Or have not as the case may be, because vampires usually have only scrolls in their treasure hoards). Fewer magical items you say, well that sounds good because before I used to look like a christmas tree whenever someone looked at me with detect magic. In theory it is fine, a great idea even, until you understand that you get them super rarely, thusly being unreliable reward. They are awesome indeed and the abilities associated with them are super cool but big deal because you will find only 3 such items in your 12 lvls of adventuring and that is not to say some of them will not the the usual +1. Yea the feeling of finding that holly avenger in the hoard of the dragon is unmatched, but it is somewhat downgraded by the fact that the lich before him had scrolls of 2 lvl of lower, and the mummy prince before him had a hat that looked really cool. So the designers said,” well we will reward them with more gold if we can’t do it with magical items, that will surely satisfy them” but what can I do with that gold? Buy ponies and that’s about it, can’t buy magical items, they are too rare, can’t improve myself in any way really, so I have more money than god and no way to use it. Usually you will update your magical gear but you can’t do that now so what you are left with is piles of gold. Good job you would be the happiest dragon. So all in all the reward system of 5th ed Is dysfunctional.
This is a very real problem. My players barely care about gold now. There's nothing much to do with it unless you're a caster or enjoy role-playing it's use in other ways like being a lord or a businessman. It is up to the DM to offer those opportunities. Coin feels pretty pointless and is mostly used to purchase healing potions and armor for non-casters. Casters hoard gold. Some higher level spells require a high cost to use.
Chapter 6. Customization – There be feats here, that while cool and much improved them before and too few to really make an obvious change in your play style. Yea you have what you need for your rogue to dash in and out of combat, and for your mage to be aggressive, but 40 classes, 1000 archetypes, 300 prestige classes and so on. Yea it is safe to say that it needs many more feats to compete with that.
Feat system is less robust than
Pathfinder/3E. Customization is less robust. New books might help. But five slots competing for stat points and feats means a less robust customization system. This is by design. If your characters like to customize, their only option is multiclassing along with feats. Even that isn't close to the robust system
Pathfinder. Then again it isn't necessary to play the game.
Chapter X Adventuring – goes back around to the problems with the reward system, downtime and social interactions and something that could be broth up but it has 0 mechanical support. I wish I had the DMG so I can really get to the core of these problems, but alas I have to just point some of them out.
Not much mechanical support in the DMG. 5E leaves this up to the DM. It's like 1E or 2E. You make up what you think is important and decide the rest by circumstances and role-play. The main goal is to keep the game going and use the imagination to resolve it.
Finally I will tell you what I think about “rulings not rules”. I think it is lazy and uninspired way to pander to everyone. Well we didn’t want to tell you how to run your game so you decide. Sorry, but did I but a rule system or a guideline no how to create my own. I thought that you are game designers with years of experience at making games, if I wanted to play make believe I would have done so without spending 120$ for your enlightened opinion. I don’t know if it’s a way to hide incompetence or what the hell it is. A way to pass lazily by and now make functional mechanics for the game? A great game is set apart from a mediocre game when it does something in an amazing way. Burning wheel, has the mechanics to support the kind of gameplay it provides, apocalypse world and stars without number has them, pathfinder for all its downfalls has them. Those are some games that know what they are and know how to support the experience they provide. This we are hip with the kids, so indie and casual talk doesn’t sit well with me. What the mechanics of 5th ed tell me is that I need to kill everything and never live the dungeon, because there the game is at its best. It did unique, innovated nowhere, improved some aspects at the cost of others I give it a solid 6/10 a slightly above average game that is functional until you see its faults and find out that you are actually the boss and have to fix them yourself because “rulings not rules”. It jumps to a 7,5/10 if played the way it is obviously supposed to be played – in short arcs spent mostly fighting.
I prefer a light rules system for everything but combat. I hated Intimidation, Diplomacy, and the like in 3E/
Pathfinder. I want to decide things according to the fiction. So this is a huge plus in my book. I never liked the idea of a player being able to roll a die to decide everything. I despised Knowledge checks to determine something about every creature. Absolutely hated that mechanic. Glad it's gone. As a DM, I want a player's background to determine what they may know. I want them to at least come up with a great lie or a persuasive argument rather than roll a dice and say "I tell him whatever I need to tell him to trick him." This is a role-playing game, not a roll-playing game. I want to the player to invest in being a character even if it is the player explaining in his own voice what he is doing. I don't need the player to be a thespian, but I want him to be thinking of his character as a real person within a real world. Thus I expect him to utilize that magical evolved or God-given imagination we humans possess. It works better if exercised. This game is great exercise.
Iskar brought up most of the pros and cons to 5E. 5E has a good simple system for quick runs but quickly becomes bogged down with lack of direction for a campaign. Not to mention it does not have the variety of pathfinder. All in all certain elements I like (Lair actions, simpler numbers, personality traits) with more dislikes (class variety, some feats rock others are lame, spells are too simplified and not dependent on caster level). You can migrate in the pros into pathfinder and I think the end product would be better than trying to bring the pros from pathfinder into 5E.
You can't migrate the simplicity and easy prep time into
Patfhinder. That is one of the best features of 5E is how easy it is to run and build encounters. If you're the one DMing all the time, your players may not appreciate how much less work it is for you as a DM.
I agree with the others. The lack of customization is what bugs me most of all. I felt that the classes were too similar in terms of gameplay mechanics. Having played both a spellcaster in Brom and a Melee Fighter in Zarroc. They felt suprisingly similar. Zarroc could take more hits and Brom could use a few spells but overall it was move, use similar attack action, turn over. I dont feel that way with Pathfinder, Rylius and Lishtra feel extremely different than say Smiggles or Iskar.
I dont feel as if the power scale makes a difference in 5e i felt as if my 4th level character could take on my 12th. There is no way I would feel like this in pathfinder. This is a numbers thing that I dont believe pathfinder has quite right either but I should never feel as though 8 levels doesnt make that much of a difference
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The power scale is much flatter. You can escalate it some with feats and magic items. This game is for making adventures where fighting an orc army at level 12 is still frightening and a single dragon can take on even a level 20 party. If you want characters that make such fights seem trivial, 5E is probably not the game for the group.
