D&D General Stuff 5E Did Right

[Oofta]

There is no such thing as a perfect game, nor can any game be the right one for everyone. But I like the balance between simplicity and complexity that 5E ha given us, along with rulings over rules along with the ability to tweak and adjust the game to suit the need of the DM and group. We now have the cleaned up math for rolling that 3E brought us, and they stopped trying to force a restrictive structure where every table played the same game like 3E and 4E.

I enjoyed previous versions of the game as well, but for me 5E strikes the right balance between evolving the system while not throwing out everything that I've enjoyed about the game. Considering the number of new players who started with 5E, those things that have worked for me also resonate with a whole lot of people. Which has the nice added benefit that I can find plenty of people to play with and there's not any significant social stigma to playing the game any more. Popularity is a tangential benefit of course, and "more popular" doesn't mean "better". Then again, I dislike calling games "better" because it's always going to obviously be a subjective judgment after a certain level of competency of design and presentation.

In any case I agree with the OP. I like the simplification from things like advantage/disadvantage. It's a simple mechanic that feels impactful when you get it, perhaps even more than the actual impact on the game. But it's certainly better than the list of half a dozen modifiers I applied on a regular basis in 3.x. We've also got rid of a lot of finicky rules from previous editions that just make the game run more smoothly, even if it's not perfect because nothing is.

I don't play a game for it's mechanical complexity. One of my favorite PCs to play was a champion fighter. I play to get together with friends, tell a few bad puns and a joke or three, to get together to envision a fantasy story emerging from play. But I've also never felt like any class or build was completely overshadowed by another in our games, the different classes have different roles and different times to shine. The game still works for us at levels up to 20th in ways previous editions did not. Tactics and approach to overcoming obstacles still matter, but there is no consistent "I win" button. The button is still there once in a while, but that can be fun as well as long as it's not always the answer.

So for me 5E is the best version ever. No, I will never replace the first time I plunged into a hidden dungeon, I will always have fond memories of games long past. But I'm having just as much fun playing as ever and I don't see myself burning out on this version of the game any time soon.

 

[Oofta]

I don't like official D&D as much as I like Level Up and other 5e games and supplements. Official D&D and Level Up et al are all 5e. Even then I liked D&D fine until about Tasha's or so, mostly. Everything official has been going downhill for me faster and faster ever since.

Yeah, we know.

I also believe that a game should be judged and valued based on what it does for all the people who play it, not just on how well it gets new players on board.

The posts you have been responding to and what you were stating said nothing about popularity. It was a person explaining why they happen to like the game and you just had to s**t on their post for no reason. To me it makes you sound like a bit of a bully telling people they're wrong to like something because you do not.

 

[FrogReaver]

Did it stay the same in 5.5?

No!

• Level 3 In addition to the expanded crit range you now get advantage on initiative and athletics. You also can move up to half your speed after scoring a critical hit.
• Level 7 Additional Fighting Style
  Level 10 You get Heroic Inspiration when you start your turn without it
• Level 15 18-20 crit range
• Level 18 5+Con Mod hp when below bloodied (half hp), advantage on death saves, treat 18-20 as a 20 on a death save (gives you 1 hp).

Note

• that vex/nick giving you alot of attacks with lots of advantage is an implicit buff to the champion (more attacks, more advantage = more crits). Also for Great Weapon Users the expanded crit range still helps the Great Weapon Master feat generate more bonus action attacks (feats are much easier to justify in 2024 since they give +1 Stat).
• as always any magic weapons with dice damage also benefit from the expanded crit range (a benefit that virtually no one considers)
• battlemaster reaction attacks got reigned in a little (no damage bonus from stuff like GWM because that only applies to attack action attacks).

All in all, I could easily see playing 2024 champion over say a battlemaster in 2024. I think they are overall very balanced classes now.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, we know.



The posts you have been responding to and what you were stating said nothing about popularity. It was a person explaining why they happen to like the game and you just had to s**t on their post for no reason. To me it makes you sound like a bit of a bully telling people they're wrong to like something because you do not.

There's nothing wrong with liking 5e; as I've said, I like the 5e base system just fine (even if it's not my favorite). My objection was presenting subjective opinion of why a particular person likes it as objective fact. That's why I "liked" your post, because you didn't do that.

And I wouldn't have had to explain my feelings for 5e (which was clearly quite boring to you) if you hadn't decided to broad stroke my opinions as "I hate 5e". You know that's not the case, so why say that other than to be inflammatory?

For the record, I like the ad/disad mechanic (although I feel it's overused and like more variety than that in modifying rolls). I like the subclass concept and the room for expansion to the game it provides. In general and with some exceptions it's a better core system for me than 3e was, certainly better than 4e for me (I still prefer the mechanical underpinnings and design philosophy of the TSR editions). Thise things it doesn't do to my satisfaction in the WotC books are admirably corrected IMO in Level Up. I just feel 5e's core ruleset is better realized for my purposes in Level Up than it is in WotC D&D, and that feeling is just as subjective as everyone else's.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No!

• Level 3 In addition to the expanded crit range you now get advantage on initiative and athletics. You also can move up to half your speed after scoring a critical hit.
• Level 7 Additional Fighting Style
  Level 10 You get Heroic Inspiration when you start your turn without it
• Level 15 18-20 crit range
• Level 18 5+Con Mod hp when below bloodied (half hp), advantage on death saves, treat 18-20 as a 20 on a death save (gives you 1 hp).

Note

• that vex/nick giving you alot of attacks with lots of advantage is an implicit buff to the champion (more attacks, more advantage = more crits). Also for Great Weapon Users the expanded crit range still helps the Great Weapon Master feat generate more bonus action attacks (feats are much easier to justify in 2024 since they give +1 Stat).
• as always any magic weapons with dice damage also benefit from the expanded crit range (a benefit that virtually no one considers)
• battlemaster reaction attacks got reigned in a little (no damage bonus from stuff like GWM because that only applies to attack action attacks).

All in all, I could easily see playing 2024 champion over say a battlemaster in 2024. I think they are overall very balanced classes now.

It does seem better. From what I've heard, there are several things in 5.5 that I would consider improvements. Just not enough to make it worth spending money on, especially since I already have Level Up.

 

[GrimCo]

Same here. I quite like the balance between simple and complex. Like my friend said " 5e is good mix of 2ed ad&d and 3.x". You can make solid party using fairly simpe and straight forward classes, or you can make it more complex by choosing others and multiclassing. Life cleric, wizard ( evoker or abjurer), champion fighter and thief rogue and you have perfectly good party to tackle the game. There are enough of classes and subclass and multi classing to mix and match to your hearts desire if you want more complex characters, but still enough easy straight forward options if you want just hop in.

I like 3.x. I played it for years. It was edition i started with. But you couldn't pay me to run it these days. Nor would i play in 3.x/PF1 game (declined invitiation to PF1 game recently). I just don't have patience and processing power for it. Was it a bad game though? No, it was good game. But for me and my group, in this stage of our lives, 5e is best there is.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

it's training wheel as your characters have very few options to pick from and what to do from round to round.
when you have 3 spells vs 12 spells prepared, that is training.

and it's good for new players.
for not so new it's either 3rd or 6th level for starters.

Then calling it "training wheels" is a completely misplaced metaphor. Training wheels don't limit where you can go on your bicycle, they just make it much less likely that an unskilled rider will fall and get hurt.

So completely the opposite of what level 1-2 in 5e is like.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Same here. I quite like the balance between simple and complex. Like my friend said " 5e is good mix of 2ed ad&d and 3.x". You can make solid party using fairly simpe and straight forward classes, or you can make it more complex by choosing others and multiclassing. Life cleric, wizard ( evoker or abjurer), champion fighter and thief rogue and you have perfectly good party to tackle the game. There are enough of classes and subclass and multi classing to mix and match to your hearts desire if you want more complex characters, but still enough easy straight forward options if you want just hop in.

I like 3.x. I played it for years. It was edition i started with. But you couldn't pay me to run it these days. Nor would i play in 3.x/PF1 game (declined invitiation to PF1 game recently). I just don't have patience and processing power for it. Was it a bad game though? No, it was good game. But for me and my group, in this stage of our lives, 5e is best there is.

I declined a PF2 game recently, but less due to complexity and more due to the rampant gamism (my point of view) blasting out from every page. It leans hard into the aspects of 4e I liked the least.

 

[TiQuinn]

4. Bounded accuracy. Didn't work as intended but smaller numbers are good. Think I would personally prefer stretching +6 over 20 levels to +10 a'la 4E but use B/X stat array (18's capped at +3).

Another point for bounded accuracy - it allowed the game to stay playable up to Tier 4, which is something I think the other versions really fell down on, largely because the game became plodding, character vs. monster imbalance became way too out of whack, or disparity in characters (casters vs. martials) meant some of the group were second class to other characters.

It's not to say that it was perfect, as you mention. I would say around level 17, it became more of a struggle for our DM to use the core MM monsters and produce challenging fights for us, but third party products helped close that gap.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Another point for bounded accuracy - it allowed the game to stay playable up to Tier 4, which is something I think the other versions really fell down on, largely because the game became plodding, character vs. monster imbalance became way too out of whack, or disparity in characters (casters vs. martials) meant some of the group were second class to other characters.

It's not to say that it was perfect, as you mention. I would say around level 17, it became more of a struggle for our DM to use the core MM monsters and produce challenging fights for us, but third party products helped close that gap.

BA did a decent job with that IMO, certainly. I just think a better way to handle the issue is to drop the maximum level of PCs to something like 12-14. IMO higher levels mostly exist as a place for higher level spells to go, and there are I think better ways to model those kinds of magics. But I suppose something like that wasn't really in the cards for WotC.