D&D 5E The DMG: Has it lived up to the hype?

[trentonjoe]

They included a lot, but it'a closer to 50%. And they omitted some biggies. Like critical fumbles. Quicker/slower levelling. Or advice on making your own house rules.
It's a good book and a decent guide for DMing but trying to be a hacker's guide and DMG led to some comprehensive comprises.

Why do you need rules for faster/slower leveling? Just do it!

Or critical fumbles? There are like a gazillion tables available. It's a fumble.....

 

[Fralex]

Isn't "advice on making your own house rules" sort of the whole book, though? The variants and optional rules are pre-made house rules. The things about making your own race, class, spell, monster, etc. are each advice about making specific kinds of houserules. There's not much general advice you can give someone about making a house rule they haven't told you, so there's some pieces of advice for the sorts of things that get commonly house ruled.

 

[guachi]

Looking at that list, let's see what they accomplished in the 18 months since that and the printing in August -

Tactical combat rules - in the DMG. full credit.
Refreshing resources by encounter - in the DMG as you can reduce a short rest to 5 minutes. full credit.
Mechanical weight to character motivation, traits - in the PHB with backgrounds. full credit
Provide a more story-based approach - Ummm... this is subjective. I'll give half credit.
Action points/fate points - In the PHB as inspiration. full credit
Variant XP rules - in the modules but not really in the books. quarter credit as it's there but only sorta.
Firearms - in the DMG. full credit
Mass combat - not anywhere but definitely promised as one of the first free add ons. half credit.
Speeding battles - sort of in the DMG but I don't find it very thorough. half credit
Sea battles - None. zero credit.
Realm management and strongholds - It's sort of there in the DMG but barely. Quarter credit.
Finding reagents for magical items - not that I saw. zero credit.
Critical hit and critical failure tables - no (thank god). zero credit
Armor as damage reduction and hit location tables - no (thank god) but we do have a feat that does DR and some armor can grant resistance. quarter credit.
Lingering wounds - in the DMG. full credit
Alternative magic systems - in the DMG. full credit.
Horror and Sanity - in the DMG along with Honor. full credit.

Let's see how we did. 17 points maximum and I count 10.25 for a 60% completion. And considering the referenced article outright says the list is probably too long, 60% of a wish list isn't too bad 18 months before publication.

 

[Jester David]

Why do you need rules for faster/slower leveling? Just do it!

Why do I need a book at all then? I could just make everything up.

But it would be nice to have the math all done, with experience per day, adjusting treasure, etc.

Just like low/high magic. Yeah, I can give out less treasure but some guidelines would be awesome.

 

[Mr0wlington]

I don't have the DMG, but based on what I saw when I skimmed one in a bookstore more than half the things on the list I was able to find in it. So it included at the very least 10.5 out of the 17 list items. Maybe someone who has the book can find more that I missed?
(snip for brevity)

Create rules for giving mechanical weight to character motivation, personality traits, and so on.
Use action points, fate points, or a similar meta-mechanic as a reward or a way to give players a mechanical option to boost their power for a specific moment.
> There's sections on creating backgrounds and using "narrative points" that allow you to change the narrative as part of play. It also gives a number of options for using and gaining inspiration points.

Create variant XP rules, using XP as a way for a DM to place the emphasis on fighting, interaction, exploration, finding treasure, and so on
> Not very apparent, but there are some fuzzy guidelines about XP.

Provide rules for sea battles.
> The basics are there, there are AC and HP values for ships, which are easily usable, but I would have liked to of seen rules for more in depth naval combat.

 

[RotGrub]

I agree that they failed to provide a healing/hp module.

I also think the DMG should have more information on how to run villains (how to introduce them, how to run them, how to make the PCs hate them, avoid cliches etc)

 

[trentonjoe]

Why do I need a book at all then? I could just make everything up.

But it would be nice to have the math all done, with experience per day, adjusting treasure, etc.

Just like low/high magic. Yeah, I can give out less treasure but some guidelines would be awesome.

I am not trying to be a jerk but I really don't understand what it is you are looking for in reference to leveling. What math is required?

This is for selfish reasons, I haven't used experience points in years and want to make sure there isn't some unintended consequence I haven't noticed.

 

[Jester David]

I am not trying to be a jerk but I really don't understand what it is you are looking for in reference to leveling. What math is required?

This is for selfish reasons, I haven't used experience points in years and want to make sure there isn't some unintended consequence I haven't noticed.

If you stick with the same amount of treasure given in each encounter but slow advancement in half, you'll award twice as much treasure. But, with twice as many encounters more consumables might be a good idea. And longer campaigns will have more upkeep so a little more gold wouldn't hurt either.

Ostensibly you could just double the xp per level, but that might mean you have to fight an uneven number of monsters.
And not every level progresses at the same rate. Things slow down after 4 and speed up at higher levels, so a chart that doesn't quite double things for levels 1-4 and 12-20 but more than doubles xp for 5-11 might allow the most play at the preferred level band.
Alternatively, all levels could be the same pace, with the increase in xp for levels 5-11 being less, and the other levels having more of a bump.