D&D 5E Rate Your 5E Rules Expertise

[CleverNickName]

How familiar are you with 5th Edition D&D's rules?
How comfortable are you with tinkering around with them?
Rank yourself on a scale of zero (never played 5E) to ten (I created 5E).

 

[CleverNickName]

I put myself at a 5...I'm familiar with the rules and the supplements, and I'll tinker around with them a little bit, but I'm not proficient enough to come up with an entire new game mechanic. For example, I'll tweak things for flavor and ease of use--let the sorcerer pick spells off of the druid list so the player can avoid multiclassing, for example--but I can't design a whole new multiclassing system.

(I mean...I could, but it would be a horrible broken mess.)

 

[J-H]

I've done some of my own rules, but I've also had to look up edge cases. My players have come up with a few that don't even have a Stackexchange thread!

 

[Zardnaar]

About a 7 on that scale. I make a lit of custom monsters, sometimes spells and class design.

I don't know Xanathars cover to cover as such but generally know the ood spelks, feats and archetypes.

I know most typically used spells off the top of my head but maybe not finer details like range.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Publishing your own rules in no way means you've mastered the existing ones.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yesterday I made a mistake. Other than that I am very proficient. I am also very comfortable overruling things that don't work for our table and change it accordingly (but I am very cautious when doing so). I am good at doing quick math and analyzing the impact of rules (changes) for our playstyle.

 

[schneeland]

Not sure, maybe 2. It's not like the 5e rules are super complicated, but it's been 2 years since I last played, and there's a fair chance that I have forgotten some of the less frequently invoked rules. Plus, there's also the element that I sometimes think something is in 5e, when it is actually coming from 3e (which I played a lot longer than 5e).

 

[CleverNickName]

Publishing your own rules in no way means you've mastered the existing ones.

This is a good point. Or that you've even read them: one of my players wrote a spell point system, not realizing that one had already been written in the DMG. And in the other direction, I imagine a lot of people would be thinking "I consider myself a TEN because I wrote some house rules," and that's not very realistic either.

At the end of the day, this is a self-rated system and the goal is to have an interesting discussion. The best we can do is pick the number between 0 and 10 that best describes our position.

 

[GnomeWorks]

I don't know how to answer this.

I essentially treat 5e as a lighter, leaner version of 3e. Most of the adventures I've run in 5e so far have been converted from PF, with monsters redesigned according to an approach that tries to port 4e monster design concepts into 5e.

I don't use any core classes, all of the classes I use are homebrew written by me; I only use two core races, and homebrewed the rest (and even then I've tinkered with both said core races). A good percentage of my spell and various other power lists come from 5e, but a notable number are homebrew or converted from other editions (forex, one of my power source's power list is basically just a conversion of 3e ToM's shadow magic with a few extras sprinkled in). While I occasionally run into balance issues, for the most part my players haven't had any objections or concerns.

If there are mechanical "holes" in 5e, I'm probably blind to them because in my mind I'm just using 3e, adjusting numbers as necessary to account for bounded accuracy.

I couldn't tell you what's in the various 5e splats. I have no idea, and honestly I probably don't care: not because they're bad, but simply because the majority of the content isn't going to be relevant for me or my table. Similarly I have no idea what monsters come from what books, because I find 5e monster design uninspired ("claw claw bite" is boring, sorry not sorry).

Put me down as 6i, I guess.

 

[plecostomus]

I thought I was pretty slick, and then during the last session my character was trying to break open a magic glass pod (with a person inside!) and my DM said to me, "We'll use the rules for damage to objects."

And I said, "The what?"

After a couple attacks my cleric's feeble little mace did break the pod, so I guess in some manner I do know how to break an object. Do I know what my DM was talking about? No.