D&D 5E Reducing Power Gaming

Monster abilities are part of that information. Descriptions of how an ability listed in the statblocks actually works is part of that information.
Actually making the statblocks functional is one of the best improvements to D&D in the past 35 years. I mean I don't think that in reality anyone wants the sheer drivel that was the 2e Monstrous Manual back however much reading it makes them feel like they are a teenager again.

I mean here's an excerpt from the Kuo-Toa section of the monstrous manual. It's not even the complete section - just me copying and pasting from the start of the combat section to the end of anything I saw with actual physical combat mechanics that might come up in play.

Combat: These creatures normally travel in well-armed bands. If more than 20 kuo-toa are encountered, it is 50% likely that they are within 1d6 miles of their lair. For every four normal warriors encountered there is an additional fighter of 3rd or 4th level. For every eight normal fighters there is an additional fighter of 5th or 6th level. For every 12 normal kuo-toa in the group there is a cleric/thief of 1d4+3 levels each. If more than 20 normal fighters are encountered, the group is a war consisting of the following:
  • One 10th-level fighter as Captain
  • Two 8th-level fighters as Lieutenants
  • Four 3rd/3rd-level fighter/thief Whips
  • One Monitor (see below)
  • One slave per four kuo-toa
The whips are fanatical devotees of the Sea Mother goddess of the kuo-toa. They inspire the troops to stand firm and fight without quarter for the glory of their ruler and their deity.
It is 50% probable that any kuo-toan priest above 6th level is armed with a pincer staff. This is a 5-foot-long pole topped by a three-foot-long claw. If the user scores a hit, the claw has closed upon the opponent, making escape impossible. The weapon can be used only on enemies with a girth range between an elf and a gnoll. It is 10% probable that both arms are pinned by the claw and 40% probable that one arm is trapped. If the victim is right handed, the claw traps the left hand 75% of the time. Trapped opponents lose shield and Dexterity bonuses. If the weapon arm is trapped, the victim cannot attack and the Dexterity bonus is lost, but the shield bonus remains.
The harpoon is mostly used only by higher level fighters. It is a wickedly barbed throwing weapon with a 30 yard range. It inflicts 2d6 points of damage, exclusive of bonuses. Victims must roll a successful saving throw of 13+ on 1d20 to avoid being snagged by the weapon. Man-sized or smaller beings who fail this saving throw are jerked off their feet and stunned for 1d4 rounds. The kuo-toan, who is attached to his weapon by a stout cord, then tries to haul in its victim and slay him with a dagger thrust.
Kuo-toan shields are made of special boiled leather and are treated with a unique glue-like substance before a battle. Anyone who attacks a kuo-toan from the front has a 25% chance of getting his weapon stuck fast. The chance of the victim freeing the weapon is the same as his chance for opening doors.
Hit probability for kuo-toa is the same as that of a human of similar level, but males also gain a +1 bonus to both attack rolls and damage rolls when using a weapon, due to Strength. When fighting with a dagger only, kuo-toa can bite, which causes 1d4+1 points of damage.
When two or more kuo-toan priests or priest/thieves operate together, they can generate a lightning stroke by joining hands. The bolt is two feet wide and hits only one target unless by mischance a second victim gets in the way. The bolt inflicts 6 points of damage per priest, half that if a saving throw vs. spell is successful. The chances of such a stroke occurring is 10% cumulative per caster per round.
The special defenses of these creatures include skin secretions, which gives attempts to grapple, grasp, tie, or web a kuo-toan only a 25% chance of success. Despite their eyes being set on the sides of their heads, they have excellent independent monocular vision, with a 180-degree field of vision and the ability to spot movement even though the subject is invisible, astral, or ethereal. Thus, by maintaining complete motionlessness, a subject can avoid detection. Kuo-toa also have 60-foot infravision and have the ability to sense vibrations up to 10 yards away. They are surprised only on a 1 on the 1d10 surprise roll.
Kuo-toa are totally immune to poison and are not affected by paralysis. Spells that generally affect only humanoid types have no effect on them. Electrical attacks cause half damage, or none if the saving throw is successful; magic missiles cause only 1 point of damage; illusions are useless against them. However, kuo-toa hate bright light and suffer a -1 penalty to their attack roll in such circumstances as daylight or light spells. They suffer full damage from fire attacks and save with a -2 penalty against them.
Sometimes kuo-toa are encountered in small bands journeying in the upper world to kidnap humans for slaves and sacrifices. Such parties are sometimes also found in dungeon labyrinths that connect to the extensive system of underworld passages and caverns that honeycomb the crust of the earth. Only far below the surface of the earth can the intrepid explorer find the caverns in which the kuo-toa build their underground communities.
Habitat/Society: Kuo-toa spawn as do fish, and hatchlings, or fingerlings as they call their young, are raised in pools until their amphibian qualities develop, about one year after hatching. The young, now a foot or so high, are then able to breathe air and they are raised in pens according to their sex and fitness. There are no families, as we know them, in kuo-toan society.
Especially fit fingerlings, usually of noble spawning, are trained for the priesthood as priests, priest/thieves, or special celibate monks. The latter are called “monitors” whose role is to control the community members who become violent or go insane. The monitor is capable of attacking to subdue or kill. A monitor has 56 hit points, attacks as a 7th-level fighter and has the following additional abilities: twice the normal movement rate, AC 1, and receives four attacks per round — two barehanded for 2d4 points of damage (double if trying to subdue) and two attacks with teeth for 1d4+1 points of damage. One hand/bite attack occurs according to the initiative roll, the other occurs at the end of the round.
Subdued creatures cannot be larger than eight feet tall and 500 pounds. Subduing attacks cause only half real damage, but when the points of damage inflicted equal the victim’s total, the creature is rendered unconscious for 3d4 rounds.

I mean what? Paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Habitat and Society section are nothing more than a statblock written out long form and buried half way down the text. Their light sensitivity, something of critical use to adventurers is half way through the ninth paragraph of the combat section.

No monster format is perfect but 5e has the second best monster manuals in the history of D&D and it's not even close. (Best was 4e - which had far more social organisation through having multiple types of monsters and had complete statblocks rather than spells as pointers). 2e gives me a lot more sympathy for "Calvinball DMs" because that mess that appears to be paid by the word is very difficult to prepare.
 

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No monster format is perfect but 5e has the second best monster manuals in the history of D&D and it's not even close. (Best was 4e - which had far more social organisation through having multiple types of monsters and had complete statblocks rather than spells as pointers). 2e gives me a lot more sympathy for "Calvinball DMs" because that mess that appears to be paid by the word is very difficult to prepare.
I liked the structural approach of 4e's monster manual. I may not have liked the choices within that system but a system is a good idea. I have not seen the 5e monster manual. I liked the rechargeable powers where you diced to determine if they are back or not.

I do though like monsters who actually are casting spells vs monsters with magical abilities to use the real spells. So a priest of some evil god is just a Cleric. I do think providing help along those lines would be good. Maybe not put them in the paper book but maybe offer a pdf with everything exploded out so DMs can cut and paste the stat blocks into a word document and print them. Or just use them in a digital situation. I use to use Excel for my 4e statblocks because Excel has tabs and I could have every encounter area be a tab.
 

Powergaming is a playstyle I thought? Players who min-max and try to play as efficient as possible? This is possible in every crunchy game.

In my experience the pacing in how fast the players grow powerful is controlled at best over XP system. What you want - the limiting of player options - is high risk IMO. Its too easy to broke the system, especially with ideas like removing reaction or bonus action as a concept. Thats like saying "I remove spell slots or HP", these are core resources. You can of course limit the spell options and only allow "simple" subclasses, nothing speaks against that.

Other than that - thats 5e. If you want to have a general more grounded less superhero game its just the wrong system.
 

I find the powers that characters have very quickly in 5e is a bit...vexing. Similarly, they just get too many powers, in my observation. So what are some ways to take some of that out? Remove bonus actions and reactions? No feats? Limit spell choice (like a ranger could only take spells like Animal Friendship)? I'm open to ideas.
I am not a fan of changing core mechanics. I would rather limit the amount of choices available, but there isn't a lot of margin for lowering the complexity just by that (I am assuming that your concern is the amount of abilities a PC can use at a given level). You could at least limit the availability of subclasses and feats (or even spells) so that those that appear to have more complex abilities are avoided, but IMHO WotC never really designed low-complexity subclasses options beyond the Champion.

What I have often done myself to keep the complexity low (for my typical players i.e. casual players and beginners) is to use pre-generated characters, where I had preselected everything to use passive abilities as much as possible, while still having 100% compliant characters. However, players who love character building are not going to be happy about it.
 

As someone not a fan of Pathfinder 2e, there is no assurance that switching to PF 2e will be greeted favorably. It might, but it might not.
I thought the original problem was that player characters gain many powers too fast. That's definitely not something P2E would fix. P2E challege ratings can easily make combats hard, 2-3 levels of difference between player and adversaries make combat a lot harder. But you still get some new ability each turn, you have to make decisions for your 3 actions each turn, your numerical values go up every level, spell lists get longer. It's not really fewer powers. It's still a lot to handle.
And if you fight challenging enemies, you really need to know your sh*t and optimize the hell out of things. 2-3 levels of difference in party level to NPC level makes a tremendous amount of difference, and the players will look for more powers and min/maxing them.

At 1st level, a Pathfinder character has 3 actions per turn, and might have powers like battle healing, intimidating people in combat, tripping or disarming people or a choice of spells they can get. That's already a large suite of powers, just from level 1, and taking a few feats (some are even just standard skill options). They get something new basically every level or two along those lines.
 

I liked the structural approach of 4e's monster manual. I may not have liked the choices within that system but a system is a good idea. I have not seen the 5e monster manual. I liked the rechargeable powers where you diced to determine if they are back or not.

I do though like monsters who actually are casting spells vs monsters with magical abilities to use the real spells. So a priest of some evil god is just a Cleric. I do think providing help along those lines would be good. Maybe not put them in the paper book but maybe offer a pdf with everything exploded out so DMs can cut and paste the stat blocks into a word document and print them. Or just use them in a digital situation. I use to use Excel for my 4e statblocks because Excel has tabs and I could have every encounter area be a tab.
My preference for spell-casting (when the fiction is spell-casting) vs. magic powers that basically do the same thing while technically not counting as spells is why I'm convinced the 5.5 MM won't be an improvement for me over the 5.0 MM.
 

Powergaming is a playstyle I thought? Players who min-max and try to play as efficient as possible? This is possible in every crunchy game.

In my experience the pacing in how fast the players grow powerful is controlled at best over XP system. What you want - the limiting of player options - is high risk IMO. Its too easy to broke the system, especially with ideas like removing reaction or bonus action as a concept. Thats like saying "I remove spell slots or HP", these are core resources. You can of course limit the spell options and only allow "simple" subclasses, nothing speaks against that.

Other than that - thats 5e. If you want to have a general more grounded less superhero game its just the wrong system.
There definitely are 5e games that feel less superhero. Level Up does that for me. Although I admit you still get a lot of powers, you don't seem to ignore logic in favor of gamist player awesomeness as much.
 

Powergaming is a playstyle I thought? Players who min-max and try to play as efficient as possible? This is possible in every crunchy game.
Yes, but how much a game caters to that playstyle, whether it rewards a high level of system mastery or not, will have a significant effect.
 

There definitely are 5e games that feel less superhero. Level Up does that for me. Although I admit you still get a lot of powers, you don't seem to ignore logic in favor of gamist player awesomeness as much.
I'm actually surprised you find Level Up to be less superhero. The numbers in it can go way higher- characters at my tables regularly have d6 or d8 expertise on their checks, so getting 25-30 as a regular result is a lot more common.

But maybe the height of the numbers isnt what says superhero to you. That's understandable.
 

I'm actually surprised you find Level Up to be less superhero. The numbers in it can go way higher- characters at my tables regularly have d6 or d8 expertise on their checks, so getting 25-30 as a regular result is a lot more common.

But maybe the height of the numbers isnt what says superhero to you. That's understandable.
To me, ignoring a lot of stuff that matters in real life (like food and shelter) through magic and soft rules in the exploration tier makes the game more superhero.

And of course that's just one example.
 

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