Gradine
🏳️⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
That is excellent news to hear; thank you!
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Single mechanics that hurt an otherwise good game
- Thread starter Ratskinner
- Start date
That is excellent news to hear; thank you!
Hmmm...
Most systems to me had flaws (internal inconsistencies) that went beyond the "need to change this to better fit setting" issues.
I would say the biggest flaw in 5e that actually affects play is the long and short rest. Specifically the decision to make classes balance in play mix and match between short and long rest so that some classes are very keyed power wise to how often long rests happen while others are intentionally hinged on short rests.
Because a design goal of 5e is focused on new players, taking a large chunk of that balance and hinging it on DM scripting considerations is just plain poor planning and inconsistent.
It also adds a level of complexity for even experienced GMs and scripting for balance in play.
They should have IMO went with all classes being mostly LR focused (traditional) or mostly SR focused to syreamline a lot of encounter design and campaign design concerns.
For IIRC Serenity/Cortex and now it seems Star Trek Adventures, the "flows like rain" plot points mechanic really fails with me. (Momentum in STA) The idea is they built a meta-game) mechanic into the basic scene and skill operation with the expectation that it is a major part of the resolution system. The problem I have is it drives the actual play too far away from character vs scene "in game" processes to hinge very,much on the plot point economy. Saw it in Serenity and you can watch just one episode of Shield of Tomorrow and see how much the momentum economy gets screen time in resolution and dialog between players during scenes. It feels to me that it diminishes the attention paid to the "my character is good at that" towards "can we afford to spend mo" as well as making the "yay" or "reward" for an exceptional result be more about the extra momentum gained and mostly eclipse the actual gains from the task in game in scene.
These are of course somewhat subjective but at least for the 5E rest balance classes it seems to clash with design intentions.
Most systems to me had flaws (internal inconsistencies) that went beyond the "need to change this to better fit setting" issues.
I would say the biggest flaw in 5e that actually affects play is the long and short rest. Specifically the decision to make classes balance in play mix and match between short and long rest so that some classes are very keyed power wise to how often long rests happen while others are intentionally hinged on short rests.
Because a design goal of 5e is focused on new players, taking a large chunk of that balance and hinging it on DM scripting considerations is just plain poor planning and inconsistent.
It also adds a level of complexity for even experienced GMs and scripting for balance in play.
They should have IMO went with all classes being mostly LR focused (traditional) or mostly SR focused to syreamline a lot of encounter design and campaign design concerns.
For IIRC Serenity/Cortex and now it seems Star Trek Adventures, the "flows like rain" plot points mechanic really fails with me. (Momentum in STA) The idea is they built a meta-game) mechanic into the basic scene and skill operation with the expectation that it is a major part of the resolution system. The problem I have is it drives the actual play too far away from character vs scene "in game" processes to hinge very,much on the plot point economy. Saw it in Serenity and you can watch just one episode of Shield of Tomorrow and see how much the momentum economy gets screen time in resolution and dialog between players during scenes. It feels to me that it diminishes the attention paid to the "my character is good at that" towards "can we afford to spend mo" as well as making the "yay" or "reward" for an exceptional result be more about the extra momentum gained and mostly eclipse the actual gains from the task in game in scene.
These are of course somewhat subjective but at least for the 5E rest balance classes it seems to clash with design intentions.
Aldarc
Legend
Technically the pdf is already available if you pre-order. It contains no new classes, but there are new races, new talents, new specializations, new spells for old arcana, new arcana, and expanding GM options for Fantasy Age play.
CubicsRube
Hero
With 5e? Most spells. Particularly those overriding mundane skills.
Why climb when you can levitate, or jump when you can fly? Etc.
Its not so much the spells, but that they are autosuccesses. Id prefer them if they enhanced natural abilities, or if they had failure chances, even if they were small. E.g, you had to succeed a simple dex check in order to fly if you wanted to do a difficult maneuver.
I realise i may be of a minority opinion on the above.
Otherwise for me it comes down to unnecessary complexity, i.e, complexity that doesn't add any value but increases the mental load of playing the game, a la feat taxes and long feat chains in pathfinder.
Why climb when you can levitate, or jump when you can fly? Etc.
Its not so much the spells, but that they are autosuccesses. Id prefer them if they enhanced natural abilities, or if they had failure chances, even if they were small. E.g, you had to succeed a simple dex check in order to fly if you wanted to do a difficult maneuver.
I realise i may be of a minority opinion on the above.
Otherwise for me it comes down to unnecessary complexity, i.e, complexity that doesn't add any value but increases the mental load of playing the game, a la feat taxes and long feat chains in pathfinder.
Rod Staffwand
aka Ermlaspur Flormbator
Dungeon Crawl Classic's funky dice. d5? d7? d27? Nope. Get over yourselves.
Actually, any game that goes with an outlandish die mechanic or resolution system just for the sake of being different.
Actually, any game that goes with an outlandish die mechanic or resolution system just for the sake of being different.
The last one is a big one for me. Designers don’t pay enough attention to the cumulative mental load of their systems. So you’ll find games with a bunch of mechanics that look cool when taken in isolation, but when you put everything together the system as a whole becomes unwieldy in play.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
To echo one or two above, and add a few more (all regarding D&D):
1-2e - race-class level restrictions. Unnecessary. If you can be a class (and I've no issue with some races being unable to be some classes at all e.g. Dwarven Magic Users) you should be able to advance as far as your abilities can take you.
1-2e - psionics. One of those things that looks like a good idea in theory but is nearly impossible to functionally put in to the game without breaking things. (subsequent editions haven't done much better)
All editions - spell pre-memorization. The 3e Sorcerer mechanics got it right - you have the slot, you have the spell, so cast away. IMO all casters should use something like this.
All editions - multiclassing. Each edition has tried something different, none yet has come close to achieving the goal of making mixed-class characters workable without opening the door to optimizers/powergamers and-or jack-of-all-trades characters who don't need a party.
All editions: Bards. 1e made them a prestige class - bad idea. Since then they've been made just another type of caster, and it doesn't work. Better to give them their own set of casting mechanics based on sonic energy rather than magic, to make them different.
All editions: dying and near-death mechanics. Before 5e there really aren't any - you're fully functional at 1 h.p. and dead (or unconscious) at 0. There's no in-between state where you're wounded but still sort-of able to function; this would really need some sort of wound-vitality system which D&D has so far resolutely refused to implement even though to do so would be very easy. 5e has death saves etc. but the implementation still has a host of problems.
3-4-5e - "shoehorning". This is my own term, roughly defined as "Taking a (usually new) mechanic that is useful in some situations and then stuffing (or shoehorning) it into far too many other situations across the game's design where it's not so useful". In 3e the d20 was shoehorned; in 4e it was AEDU, in 5e it's dis/advantage. There's nothing wrong with having different things in the game use different mechanics!
4-5e - hit point recovery is too easy. This includes both healing-at-distance during combat (and by non healers!) and overly generous rest rates afterwards.
Note that most* of the above are quite fixable by a kitbash-happy DM; but it's all work that shouldn't have to be done.
* - multiclassing and Bards are IME the glaring exceptions.
Lanefan
1-2e - race-class level restrictions. Unnecessary. If you can be a class (and I've no issue with some races being unable to be some classes at all e.g. Dwarven Magic Users) you should be able to advance as far as your abilities can take you.
1-2e - psionics. One of those things that looks like a good idea in theory but is nearly impossible to functionally put in to the game without breaking things. (subsequent editions haven't done much better)
All editions - spell pre-memorization. The 3e Sorcerer mechanics got it right - you have the slot, you have the spell, so cast away. IMO all casters should use something like this.
All editions - multiclassing. Each edition has tried something different, none yet has come close to achieving the goal of making mixed-class characters workable without opening the door to optimizers/powergamers and-or jack-of-all-trades characters who don't need a party.
All editions: Bards. 1e made them a prestige class - bad idea. Since then they've been made just another type of caster, and it doesn't work. Better to give them their own set of casting mechanics based on sonic energy rather than magic, to make them different.
All editions: dying and near-death mechanics. Before 5e there really aren't any - you're fully functional at 1 h.p. and dead (or unconscious) at 0. There's no in-between state where you're wounded but still sort-of able to function; this would really need some sort of wound-vitality system which D&D has so far resolutely refused to implement even though to do so would be very easy. 5e has death saves etc. but the implementation still has a host of problems.
3-4-5e - "shoehorning". This is my own term, roughly defined as "Taking a (usually new) mechanic that is useful in some situations and then stuffing (or shoehorning) it into far too many other situations across the game's design where it's not so useful". In 3e the d20 was shoehorned; in 4e it was AEDU, in 5e it's dis/advantage. There's nothing wrong with having different things in the game use different mechanics!
4-5e - hit point recovery is too easy. This includes both healing-at-distance during combat (and by non healers!) and overly generous rest rates afterwards.
Note that most* of the above are quite fixable by a kitbash-happy DM; but it's all work that shouldn't have to be done.
* - multiclassing and Bards are IME the glaring exceptions.
Lanefan
CubicsRube
Hero
[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - one of the things that appealed to me about shadow of the demon lord is when you learn a spell you get x number of castings per long rest of that spell. No prep, no "if only i had chosen this spell in the morning". If you're in combat and youve only got utility spells left, its on you to make it work
MarkB
Legend
4e went some distance in this direction, with the Bloodied condition, and certain game-mechanics that were tied to it. There just weren't a lot of them.
Star Wars Saga Edition had a condition track that served the purpose reasonably well, with cumulative penalties. It strongly resembled 5e's Exhaustion track, so that might be one direction to take a Wounds system.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Yes - I forgot about bloodied; which does at least wave in the general direction of what I'm talking about. Thanks!
SWSE also had a wound-vitality system, didn't it?
