D&D General The Beautiful Mess of 5e

[TiQuinn]

+1 for Mearls's statement of "role playing games aren't actually games, they're activities."

I heard that just after coming off the “How RPG became everything and nothing” thread and wanted to throw my phone in the garbage.

 

[Weiley31]

The link between compatibility and modularity is curious. Shea talks about combining LevelUp5e (calls out the Supply system & the exploration system) with 2014 5e with Tales of the Valiant's luck system (which he really loves) and doom points (which he also loves, as an alternative to legendary resistance, because they let you do other things). This is something I love about 5e's mess.

A perfectly good Frankenstein. Maybe I'll bite the bullet and do that one day.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Can you elaborate on both points?

What @Staffan said, basically. I'd add that Guidance/Bless create a layer of "if you're not using it, you're not really playing optimally, since they stack with advantage!" (especially Guidance -- that spell needs to be at least 1st level, using some resource) that I find particularly annoying. SOMEONE's gotta have 'em!

I like adv/disadv mechanics, but I would like if it would stack.
not a lot, maybe 2 or 3 times max, with EA adding extra d20 if you have any level of advantage.

with stacking, we can have default flanking advantage and IE barbarian is encouraged to find better position, not just "reckless attack button" and forget about anything else.

Nothing brings the game to a halt faster than the math of adding bonuses to things. Heck, I've got a fairly new player who still hasn't got a handle on Ability Modifier + Proficiency Bonus + Dice Roll. Adding ANOTHER thing to add on that (stacks of Advantage)? Yeeeeeeeesh.

No, stacking advantage would just eat up time without giving me a significant benefit. I'm absolutely fine with the barbarian hitting the reckless attack button over and over again, it is kind of on brand and it helps balance out their rage-granted resistances. Flanking has never benefitted any of my games. I do not want to add more decision points and fiddly bits to fights that already take too long. I am 100% great with advantage being a binary state.

I get that some tables seek more strategic complexity, and for those tables, I think stacking advantage could add something. More power to them. I ain't got time for that. Fighting monsters is something I want made more simple, not more complicated.

 

[TwoSix]

I agree that they aren’t games, but I don’t think they’re activities either. RPGs are game creation engines. You can use those engines to create games, or to create non-game activities, but on their own they’re not either.

Depends on the RPG, to my perspective. Various D&D versions? Sure, you can move into either a challenge-based game or narrative activity direction. But I'm not going to try to use Brindlewood Bay or Monsterhearts to try and make a challenge-based game.

 

[mamba]

I like adv/disadv mechanics, but I would like if it would stack.
not a lot, maybe 2 or 3 times max, with EA adding extra d20 if you have any level of advantage.

that stacks too high, I like the SotDL where each advantage adds 1d6 to the roll, but you only take the highest d6, not the total, keeps things from getting out of hand (apart from a roll being able to exceed 20, which might be an issue for 5e math)

 

[TwoSix]

Nothing brings the game to a halt faster than the math of adding bonuses to things. Heck, I've got a fairly new player who still hasn't got a handle on Ability Modifier + Proficiency Bonus + Dice Roll. Adding ANOTHER thing to add on that (stacks of Advantage)? Yeeeeeeeesh.

Proficiency bonus is the worst and I hate it. Outside of spells, it's easily the part of the game that confuses novices the most.

No, stacking advantage would just eat up time without giving me a significant benefit. I'm absolutely fine with the barbarian hitting the reckless attack button over and over again, it is kind of on brand and it helps balance out their rage-granted resistances. Flanking has never benefitted any of my games. I do not want to add more decision points and fiddly bits to fights that already take too long. I am 100% great with advantage being a binary state.

Personally, I've found dice additions to flow faster at the table than addition of an additional constant. As long as the core resolution is (d20 + stat mod), people adapt to "also roll another d20" quicker than "for this roll, add another +3 from this source."

 

[Pedantic]

Depends on the RPG, to my perspective. Various D&D versions? Sure, you can move into either a challenge-based game or narrative activity direction. But I'm not going to try to use Brindlewood Bay or Monsterhearts to try and make a challenge-based game.

Yeah, my problem with that was how casually Mearls threw it out as a truth of the medium, instead of a design decision. There's some truth in that RPGs tend to leave the goal open ended, either as an exercise for the GM or the players, in the form of adventure design or player directed victory in response to the conditions of play, but that doesn't wriggle RPGs out of the rest of Suits' definition. That, and it mostly reads as an excuse not to nail down the rules/means that players can use to reach those goals.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Proficiency bonus is the worst and I hate it. Outside of spells, it's easily the part of the game that confuses novices the most.

I think in this particular case, the meaning of the proficiency bonus isn't clear. Still too new to have gotten an increase. Which might point to a world where you just don't get proficiency bonus 'till 5th level or something. Not sure that would work, but it's an interesting idea...

Personally, I've found dice additions to flow faster at the table than addition of an additional constant. As long as the core resolution is (d20 + stat mod), people adapt to "also roll another d20" quicker than "for this roll, add another +3 from this source."

Yeah, this is fair. But counting stacks of advantage is still another thing to count, and the process of finding out which circumstances apply to my particular moment remind me of 3e's "oh, you had +2 from this as well!" The binary nature of advantage means that once you have it, you can stop looking. Maybe there's three or four things that apply! Welp, they provide no further benefit. Just go with the one thing that you found, it doesn't matter if there's more sources.

 

[Pedantic]

I think in this particular case, the meaning of the proficiency bonus isn't clear. Still too new to have gotten an increase. Which might point to a world where you just don't get proficiency bonus 'till 5th level or something. Not sure that would work, but it's an interesting idea...



Yeah, this is fair. But counting stacks of advantage is still another thing to count, and the process of finding out which circumstances apply to my particular moment remind me of 3e's "oh, you had +2 from this as well!" The binary nature of advantage means that once you have it, you can stop looking. Maybe there's three or four things that apply! Welp, they provide no further benefit. Just go with the one thing that you found, it doesn't matter if there's more sources.

I've found A5E's expertise die a reasonable compromise, though it didn't go as far substituting that mechanic as it could have. Restricting all the helpful type bonuses down to 1 die, that just upgrades from a d4 up to a d8 barring specific class features provides a little more design space without too much overhead.

 

[Horwath]

that stacks too high, I like the SotDL where each advantage adds 1d6 to the roll, but you only take the highest d6, not the total, keeps things from getting out of hand (apart from a roll being able to exceed 20, which might be an issue for 5e math)

actually, it stacks less and less.
only real gain is increase in crit chance.

adv gives you +3,33 on average
E.Accuracy gives you +1,66 on to of advantage. So half extra of normal advantage bonus
4d20D3 would give you +1 over 3D20D2, and
5d20D4 would give you +0,66 over 4D20D3

crit chance is;

1d20: 5%
2d20D1: 9,75%
3d20D2: 14,26%
4d20D3: 18,55%
5d20D4: 22,62%