What 5e got wrong

[Hussar]

Why should D&D well support a play style that will fully ignores half the classes and all of the magic items that are part of the core D&D experience ?

You are trying to impose huge limitations on a game that wasn't designed to accommodate them, and then complaining that it doesn't leave you many options that fit your narrow requirements.

Thing is, this was the more or less default play style for about the first twenty years of the game. In OD&D, and 1e, your "full casters" had an extremely truncated spell list, and, even with a fairly generous DM giving the Magic User a lot more spells to learn, the MU just couldn't cast that many spells in a day. Just didn't have that many spells to cast. Even at higher levels, say, 8th+ (higher in AD&D anyway), at best your MU was casting maybe one or two spells per encounter, and even then, likely only one. Clerics didn't get any direct damage spells (that I recall anyway) until FOURTH level spells. The idea of cleric as blaster simply didn't exist.

Never minding that the standard party was three fighter types, a cleric, wizard and a thief. You had four of the six characters with no spells at all (for almost the entire campaign) and the cleric mostly dealing with healing and the wizard shooting off spells at a much, much lower rate. Add to that the fact that most magic items were nowhere near as flashy as 5e items - a flame tongue, which was a major magic item, was a +1 sword most of the time. At best, it was a +4 sword. Not the 2d6 bonus fire damage every single hit of 5e. Magic armour and shields were pretty much plus items only - no other effects. By and large, there was no visual difference between a fighter with magic weapons and armour and one without.

5e is a MUCH higher magic game. Most classes can cast spells. Most encounters feature spells being cast every single round. There might be a lower expectation of the number of magic items in a given campaign, but, the items tend to be a lot flashier than in AD&D.

If the goal of 5e was to support D&D play styles, then supporting a low magic (I'd agree that a no-magic campaign is not something D&D should support) game which was a very common play style in 1e and 2e, should not be too much of a stretch.

I do agree with [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] though. The options that we do have should be able to cover things well enough. I'd like to see a few more options on the low magic end of things since the high magic end of the stick gets a ton of support, but, I don't think it's too hard to do low magic 5e. About the biggest issue would be healing and 5e doesn't really need in-combat healing that often. I mean, I've seen it done now that you can run a game without a standard healer at all - our current group is almost 9th level and the only one with any direct healing is the Paladin and that's what, 40 points per day? In a 6 PC party? Not a lot of healing there, but, it's not necessarily a bid deal.

What casters bring to 5e is breadth of options, not so much straight up depth of power.

 

[Jessica]

IMO what 5e got wrong:

1) Nerfed in-combat options for a lot of classes. I enjoy playing classes that have a variety of in-combat options and don't often end up with one dominant strategy. In 4e, I made a character based on concept and felt I could enjoy pretty much any class because they all had a good range of options. In 5e, I'm kinda stuck to full casters minus a few of those casters who often end up with a dominant strategy anyways outside of certain subclasses or feat usage(e.g. Warlocks, Clerics, and Bards often doing either basic attacks or having that one cantrip that outshines all their other damaging cantrips assuming they even have more than one damaging cantrip).

2) Making feats such a small part of the game. On top of that certain things I like in my characters(e.g. more than one damaging cantrip option, being able to cast with my hands full, being able to actually keep a target on me when I'm trying to play a Defender) often require feats which means no matter how much I want to play a certain race, I often just end up playing a Human so that I can play the character I want to play from early on instead of having to wait like 2 or 3 months or so after character creation to hit level 4.

3) Bringing back VSM components. Ugh! I hate jazz hands and jibber jabber. What was wrong with details agnosticism in how powers happened? Couldn't they leave those rules out and then just EMPOWER the DM to make RULINGS on when a given spellcaster couldn't cast?

4) The general trend towards simplifying and the resulting decrease in knobs to tweak when you are changing things around.

5) The art. I think a lot of the art has taken a sharp decrease in quality imo. It's better than 1e art, but it's definitely worse than 4e art. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but the art in 5e just bugs me. Like maybe it's starting to get into that uncanny valley area between 2e and 4e where 4e had a more "cartoon-y" feel that I loved while 2e seemed to succeed when it was trying to be "realistic". 5e is just in some painful middle ground.

6) The last one is probably more a community thing than an actual edition thing, but I feel like D&D has become more reactionary this edition. It's not so much about making new fantasy but rehashing old fantasy. I understand that getting old favorites is important, but both 3e and 4e introduced a lot of brand new things really early. 3e had the Sorcerer and put out a bunch of cool new ideas via prestige classes early on and with 4e you had Warlords, core Warlocks, and within about a year of release you had brand new classes in the form of the Avenger, Invoker, and Warden. 5e has been out for a year and a half and we got a book with some subclasses that were mostly stuff we've already had before. Oh well. I mean I guess in some ways 2e was pretty reactionary when compared to 1e. Maybe that means 6e will be crazy revolutionary when it comes out roughly when all the people who actually know what a Grey Mouser is are in retirement homes or in the ground.

 

[n0nym]

Strength (≈ Might): +2 Fortitude
Constitution (≈ Constitution): +2 Fortitude

Dexterity (≈ Dexterity): +2 Reflex
Wisdom (≈ Perception): +2 Reflex

Intelligence (≈ Intellect): +2 Will
Charisma (≈ Resolve): +2 Will

That's a great idea and a good way to solve attributes discrepancies imo. Now people have a reason not to dump Intelligence or Charisma, even if it's still not enough for my taste.

Regarding in-combat healing, I can only agree with Jester Canuck. The Dark Sun party I'm DMing doesn't have a healer, and they've reached level 10 with only a couple casualties (and both times, the player could have survived if he didn't choose to go all-out instead of retreating). 5th edition is *that* forgiving. Even if you drop to 0hp, it's highly unlikely you're going to die.

 

[Onslaught]

IMO what 5e got wrong:
1) Nerfed in-combat options for a lot of classes. I enjoy playing classes that have a variety of in-combat options and don't often end up with one dominant strategy. In 4e, I made a character based on concept and felt I could enjoy pretty much any class because they all had a good range of options. In 5e, I'm kinda stuck to full casters minus a few of those casters who often end up with a dominant strategy anyways outside of certain subclasses or feat usage(e.g. Warlocks, Clerics, and Bards often doing either basic attacks or having that one cantrip that outshines all their other damaging cantrips assuming they even have more than one damaging cantrip).

Could you give examples? Because the way you put, I get the feel that you're criticizing Bounded Accuracy. Which IMHO is one of the most "right" things in 5E - and I bet most people out there agree.

2) Making feats such a small part of the game. On top of that certain things I like in my characters(e.g. more than one damaging cantrip option, being able to cast with my hands full, being able to actually keep a target on me when I'm trying to play a Defender) often require feats which means no matter how much I want to play a certain race, I often just end up playing a Human so that I can play the character I want to play from early on instead of having to wait like 2 or 3 months or so after character creation to hit level 4.

I disagree with you. Since Feats are optional, most abilities are already within the classes and we don't have to fear system bload via feats.

The Human variant that gets a bonus feat at first level is also optional.

3) Bringing back VSM components. Ugh! I hate jazz hands and jibber jabber. What was wrong with details agnosticism in how powers happened? Couldn't they leave those rules out and then just EMPOWER the DM to make RULINGS on when a given spellcaster couldn't cast?

They empowered the DM to rule VSM components out. If you dislike that rule somuch, why not just ask your DM to don't use it in play (excluding expensive material components). I guess most DM's won't find that a problem.

5) The art. I think a lot of the art has taken a sharp decrease in quality imo. It's better than 1e art, but it's definitely worse than 4e art. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but the art in 5e just bugs me. Like maybe it's starting to get into that uncanny valley area between 2e and 4e where 4e had a more "cartoon-y" feel that I loved while 2e seemed to succeed when it was trying to be "realistic". 5e is just in some painful middle ground.

Well, that's personal taste... that said, I like most of 5E art... just hate awful halflings.

Anyway I still prefer the major artists in 3e era: loockheart, WAR, etc... but that's my personal taste.

 

[Jessica]

Could you give examples? Because the way you put, I get the feel that you're criticizing Bounded Accuracy. Which IMHO is one of the most "right" things in 5E - and I bet most people out there agree.

I love bounded accuracy. I hate classes that have a dominant strategy that often involves spamming basic attacks or one specific cantrip(e.g. Eldritch Blast for Warlocks). I like classes that have multiple at-will options that you get to decide between on a round-by-round basis(e.g. Wizard

They empowered the DM to rule VSM components out. If you dislike that rule somuch, why not just ask your DM to don't use it in play (excluding expensive material components). I guess most DM's won't find that a problem.

Because I only play AL, so I and the DMs I play with are pretty much beholden to RAW.

 

[Hussar]

On the VSM thing.

I've gamed for a long time. I can't recall, other than when the PC's may have been captured and had their equipment stripped, ever giving the slightest thought to spell components. Does anyone actually track this stuff? Has it ever come up at your table? It really hasn't at mine.

 

[Maxperson]

Could you give examples? Because the way you put, I get the feel that you're criticizing Bounded Accuracy. Which IMHO is one of the most "right" things in 5E - and I bet most people out there agree.

Bounded accuracy is good. Overbounded accuracy, which is what we got is not so good. They tightened it too much, which resulted in things like armors which are effectively the same from leather to plate.

 

[Nagol]

On the VSM thing.

I've gamed for a long time. I can't recall, other than when the PC's may have been captured and had their equipment stripped, ever giving the slightest thought to spell components. Does anyone actually track this stuff? Has it ever come up at your table? It really hasn't at mine.

Yes, it does get tracked at some (at least one) table. Verbal gets checked against environment and conditions, somatic gets checked against conditions and hand use, and materials gets checked (depending on the edition) at the time of preparation and casting.

 

[Nagol]

Bounded accuracy is good. Overbounded accuracy, which is what we got is not so good. They tightened it too much, which resulted in things like armors which are effectively the same from leather to plate.

Having played both E6 and E12, I think +10 is a better point to bind maximum proficiency.

 

[delericho]

On the VSM thing.

I've gamed for a long time. I can't recall, other than when the PC's may have been captured and had their equipment stripped, ever giving the slightest thought to spell components. Does anyone actually track this stuff? Has it ever come up at your table? It really hasn't at mine.

Verbal and Somatic matter at our table, at least they do on the occasions when the caster can't speak or doesn't have a hand free (which is not common, but not unheard-of either).

Material components are something we tracked once, in one game, for about five minutes, before we abandoned it as way too much effort for too little gain. It's one of those things that sounds quite good because of the flavour it adds to magic, but which didn't work out in practice.