D&D 5E The problem with 5e

[Morrus]

it’s a long post. If TLDR, whatevs. If interested read on.

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The problem with 5e….is me.

I played a little redbox as a kid with the older kids on the street and later my lifelong pal. And by Jr High, we started playing some AD&D.
In High School we were joined by a few other guys that we went to grade school with. It was game on! Lots and lots of AD&D 1e. We did not like 2e for various reasons and skipped it. Fast forward to grad school and when I was home on break we kept playing….all summer long. All-nighters. It was glorious. None of us had serious relationships at that time so it was possible.

3e hit while I was working on a doctorate. I was far from home but my mind was blown when I saw half-orc paladins. Fresh from 1e, this was a revelation. Skipped 3.5 and 4e and fell into a black hole with little D&D. Our kids, marriages etc. took precedence but being back home and my lifelong buddies is a blessing. Now grizzled family dudes, the call of 5e was strong…our lives permitted at least monthly play. A new fantastic era!

So where is the problem?

I have loved 5e. I think much of it is brilliant. Not in the sense that it has revolutionary mechanics or some trendy elegance but in that it is easier to DM (I refused to DM 3e) and because it has inspired so much character development. We did what we could in 1e, but I have found the choices in 5e (backgrounds and subclasses) has been a goldmine of inspiration. I don’t mean to say that they have it all covered, but with some of my own ideas, they have it all covered. I have developed some novel stories and personalities.

My problem comes in with occasional
dissatisfaction about the level of danger in the game. It seems like people are healed quickly and unless it’s a TPK, it’s not as dangerous and getting beat down lasts a round or two max.
I also have some nostalgia for the logistics of old….worrying about running out of things like torches and food. Some things just seem easier now.

But that is when reality hits me. When we were younger, the way we really got far was by DM fiat. Sure, you could get level drained and miss a death save but more broadly, the DM moderated some consequences so we could have a longer term meaningful story vs. a meatgrinder of anonymous jerks. In short, 5e has merely codified this fiat into the rules. It may not be that different, really.

In terms of moving forward I need to alter my expectations and be clear about what changes might give us a little more sense of danger. For one, it would not take much to make healing a little less automatic. Maybe long rests don’t take care of everything. Perhaps, long rests allow us to expend hit dice…or something. I have to think that through.

The other thing that can at times be frustrating is the power of missile weapons. We don’t tend to favor them as a group but I know the issue exists. In this context, we need to make sure we are not the problem. I think it makes sense to count arrows and make sure what is carried is reasonable and not just “OK” handwaving generous encumbrance rules.

Additionally, I think very careful application of cover rules need to be applied. Firing past a rank of friendlies actively fighting should lead to some penalty if the enemy is in their face. I would want to see partial cover etc. applied routinely here.

In a like vein, the ubiquity of dex builds, if they bother you, are mitigated by actually looking at encumbrance and ammunition accounting (IMHO, to an extent).

In short, for me to get the most enjoyment out of 5e I believe a little stricter approach to the rules that exist, the application of common sense (e.g. encumbrance) and so forth. But ultimately, I need to change my expectations.

I look back fondly at AD&D 1e since it seems to have been grittier and more dangerous. Maybe it was. But the truth is that we house ruled and DMed way into a game with consequences but only occasional death. We made some bad decisions and died more than a few times. Saving or trying to save a friend from tunnels full of ghouls is admirable but perhaps not always doable (found out the hard way). And playing with an evil party and experimenting with a deck of many things after the players (the real people!) have been drinking beers to early morning hours will do that as well!

Ultimately the problem with my enjoyment at times (not too frequent) I think is due to nostalgia and fairy tales I tell myself about older editions. Having said this “out loud” I am very ready to get back to playing with less negative self-talk to get in the way. Our characters are probably going to survive. And its OK.

Yeah, I feel that too.

But I suspect a lot of that is like how I feel about movies and the like -- it's inextricably bound up in nostalgia, and the sense of wonder dissipates as the years pass. I imagine a new player today will say the same thing in 20 or 30 years about the current edition.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Another option is Dungeon Crawl Classics!

 

[DnD Warlord]

I have a lot of issues with 5e (It is still my second favorite edition of my favorite system for TTRPG)

I wish we had more nobs and levers... but I make up my own to suit the games. I just wish we had a little better Martial Support.

 

[Nefermandias]

It was needed to a degree yes but they went overboard time again. take how bulls strength & such went from great buff spells that made the party want something cool the caster could do to something pretty awful and saddled it with concentration. To add insult to injury they bumped the duration on the resulting awful concentration spell. You can see them nerf the payload, add concentration, & bump the generally less important value to put a "we didn't even consider how this gets used" cherry on top tie & again with spells (ie web & others)

View attachment 129700
If only the DMG healing surges were complete with this limitation rather than simply being an Avenue to keep the healing a trivial thing to not consider before a fight.

This optional rule has nothing to do with 4e Healing Surge. It's more akin to a Second Wind, in which the character could once per encounter, as a Minor Action spend a Healing Surge to heal itself and gain a +2 to all defenses until the start of it's next turn.

 

[nevin]

D&D has had this problem since the beginning. The Problem with modern D&D IMHO is that we've also hit this point in Game design where a lot of Devs are trying to make GM's as bound by the rules as the Players.
Back in 1st edition I played with groups that played nitty gritty you die a lot games. it was fun at first but then it just kind've sucked.
Ever since we've bounced back and forth with ideas that minimized danger, made it worse. Good hit's and Bad misses was an early attempt to make the game grittier. things like Sucking chest wound death in 1d4 round on a crit.
But newer players who only read the stuff by the new guys seem to have never learned the GM is supposed to adjust things to be at the appropriate level of fun, danger, reward etc. That's why all the old guys usually have at least a house rule or two. If you think missiles don't do enough damage, fix it in your games. But be careful. There are games out there that are build to make things realistic. Where a gunshot or an arrow can kill a high level character. Those games are better if that's the kind of game you and your players are looking for.

The Devs will never give you a perfect game. Tweak it twist it. and play it they way you want.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Catching up on this thread reminds me of my first attempt at making my own RPG about twenty years ago. My friend, Joe, and I spent about a year working on it, having finished abilities, races, combat, magic, and a few other systems. The game was called "The New Game" at first, but once we worked on it for a while the final name became obvious to us: "Mortality."

Any good attack or spell could kill you at any moment. The better your skills/experience, the less likely this will happen, but it can still happen. We also balanced it so weapons not normally used in games like D&D, such as the whip, actually had a place in our game and were effective.

Anyway, I brought it up because I remember a time play testing it with one of my old D&D group members, and a heavy crossbow critical hit killed his PC outright. He looked at me and was stunned. "What the... how did that happen?" he asked. "Your character did something stupid and got killed when he should have looked for another solution." I shrugged, "Welcome to Mortality." and I grinned.

The point a lot of people are making (myself included) about 5E is the default design is pretty easy to survive, especially once you reach tier 2. But, the game is designed so a DM can very easily ramp up the difficulty/lethality if they want to.

We've just started a new Shadowrun 2E game, and as DM I was pleasantly reminded of a section in the DM part about simple adjustments you could make as DM to make the game more lethal or less lethal or keep it at its default.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Catching up on this thread reminds me of my first attempt at making my own RPG about twenty years ago. My friend, Joe, and I spent about a year working on it, having finished abilities, races, combat, magic, and a few other systems. The game was called "The New Game" at first, but once we worked on it for a while the final name became obvious to us: "Mortality."

Any good attack or spell could kill you at any moment. The better your skills/experience, the less likely this will happen, but it can still happen. We also balanced it so weapons not normally used in games like D&D, such as the whip, actually had a place in our game and were effective.

Anyway, I brought it up because I remember a time play testing it with one of my old D&D group members, and a heavy crossbow critical hit killed his PC outright. He looked at me and was stunned. "What the... how did that happen?" he asked. "Your character did something stupid and got killed when he should have looked for another solution." I shrugged, "Welcome to Mortality." and I grinned.

The point a lot of people are making (myself included) about 5E is the default design is pretty easy to survive, especially once you reach tier 2. But, the game is designed so a DM can very easily ramp up the difficulty/lethality if they want to.

We've just started a new Shadowrun 2E game, and as DM I was pleasantly reminded of a section in the DM part about simple adjustments you could make as DM to make the game more lethal or less lethal or keep it at its default.

So much of this is also about honesty in our goals. We pour time into developing g and building a character. Do we really want a high probability of death?

more to my point, did we ever? The dms in our group have usually reluctantly killed characters when the players felt a rescue would be too contrived or whatever.

but generally we just want the threat to exist with bad decision making to create a pleasant level of oh “sh*t!” Tension.

some of the old modules were meant to have more of the gotcha stuff but usually by mid levels 5-8? We usually had friends at a temple and funds to pay for raise dead anyway. I don’t know if that has changed much for me except in memory.

but your efforts are not misguided. I read about healing and rest variants and like the decision making they impose. Do we push on or lick our wounds? Do we gamble or not?

If we gamble let the dice fall where they may just like the old days.

 

[jasper]

To the OP I have a pc kill rate of one every three sessions. Is this a deadly enough rate? Oh I using Adventure League rules and adventures.

 

[Helldritch]

So much of this is also about honesty in our goals. We pour time into developing g and building a character. Do we really want a high probability of death?

more to my point, did we ever? The dms in our group have usually reluctantly killed characters when the players felt a rescue would be too contrived or whatever.

but generally we just want the threat to exist with bad decision making to create a pleasant level of oh “sh*t!” Tension.

some of the old modules were meant to have more of the gotcha stuff but usually by mid levels 5-8? We usually had friends at a temple and funds to pay for raise dead anyway. I don’t know if that has changed much for me except in memory.

but your efforts are not misguided. I read about healing and rest variants and like the decision making they impose. Do we push on or lick our wounds? Do we gamble or not?

If we gamble let the dice fall where they may just like the old days.

Exactly my thoughts. I want the decision to have real and potentially deadly consequences. What I do not want is that through no fault of their own, a group TPK simply because the the game became so swingy that a simple critical could kill a mid to high level character in one shot.

I played Role Master enough to understand that players want a challenge but do not like to die through extreme bad luck. Dying because you made poor decisions is quite ok. Dying because the DM got an incredibly lucky roll... not so.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

To the OP I have a pc kill rate of one every three sessions. Is this a deadly enough rate? Oh I using Adventure League rules and adventures.

Damn. Sounds pretty tough!

Early levels?