What 5e got wrong

[Tony Vargas]

The problem is that there is nowhere to go when you start with the highest stats you can get.

There's everything else you get for leveling, feats, and secondary & tertiary stats. Yes, someone using 4d6-L might roll an 18 and choose a +2 stat race, starting with a 20. There's still plenty for him to do with his ASI's as he levels. Everyone who wasn't so lucky will catch up with him.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I suppose the other thing is that it would be nice to not have 4d6 drop lowest be the default stat method. The vast majority of balance complaints happen because people assume Max stats. The game plays much better with lower starting stats.

In a perfect world, I would have liked to see the game balanced around an ability modifier calculation of score - 10 rather than (score - 10) / 2 to make smaller differences in scores feel like they matter more.

 

[abirdcall]

There's everything else you get for leveling, feats, and secondary & tertiary stats. Yes, someone using 4d6-L might roll an 18 and choose a +2 stat race, starting with a 20. There's still plenty for him to do with his ASI's as he levels. Everyone who wasn't so lucky will catch up with him.

In this very thread and others people complain that characters don't gain enough power as they level up.

The higher your main stats are at the beginning of the game, the less room you have to gain power.

Or, if you are using feats, they become overpowered because it is no longer a tough choice whether or not to take a feat. Then you end up with characters who have tons of feats.

It is easy enough to see. If you started all characters with 20 in every stat, there would be less room for growth. The same is true if you start with 18s-20s in your primary stats. There is less room to grow.

You could, I suppose, increase the caps to 24 or 26. I think the easier thing to do is simply reduce starting stats as increasing the cap will cause other problems.

If you really want your characters to be powerful you could just decide to start the game at level 20 with 20s in all stats. That gives little room for progression though.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In this very thread and others people complain that characters don't gain enough power as they level up.

Going from 1st to 9th level spells not enough of a gain? From 10 or 15 hp to 300 not enough of a gain?

Or, if you are using feats, they become overpowered because it is no longer a tough choice whether or not to take a feat. Then you end up with characters who have tons of feats.

You'll see more feats, but that doesn't mean they're any more powerful, in fact, the last couple taken at higher level may be pretty marginal as 4th or 6th choices.

It is easy enough to see. If you started all characters with 20 in every stat, there would be less room for growth. The same is true if you start with 18s-20s in your primary stats. There is less room to grow.

It's 1/6th as true. ;P But, less room isn't no room. The guy starting with a 20 is going to get less benefit from dropping ASI's in his secondary & tertiary stats than others will by boosting their primaries to 20. That's less room to grow, but he's also starting off 'just better.' It's just like getting a magic item, in play, you're 'just better.' 5e gives characters lots of opportunities to be memorable/fun by simply being superior to the next guy. It's part of why it feels so much like classic D&D.

 

[Maxperson]

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

Yeah. I think adding +4 or so more would have been better.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, it only becomes something that is a significant concern when a party member is actively making death saves (and you're losing out on their actions in the action economy), and even then, you usually have someone who can hang on for the few rounds it might take you to mop up the enemies. And that's what healing potions - standard equipment, made by herbalists, not involving magic - are basically there for. Even without 'em, it's only slightly worse than being hit with some disabling effect (a net, hold person, whatever) for a few rounds.

I think it's worth harping on this a bit because it's very different from 4e, where the combats almost required healing to get through.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Healing in combat was pretty much part and parcel to 4e combat. That's by and large how the party could win against opponents. Not that the opponents simply didn't damage the party enough, but that the opponents could damage them fast enough that the party couldn't heal/mitigate that damage. Since monsters generally didn't have any healing, it was more about ablating the party's healing capabilities rather than their actual HP.

Does make 4e play a LOT different than 5e.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I definitely think that they didn't streamline the magic system as much as they could have. Sure, it's way more forgiving in terms of spell preparation, but not more than 3E was more forgiving than 2E.

They could have ditched spell preparation for all classes, but they didn't, and that makes me sad.

Well, I think they learned with the 4th edition that a complete redesign of the stat and spell systems didn't go over very well. The elimination of Vancian-style magic was one of their 'selling points.'

Ilbranteloth

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, I'll answer anyway - because I'm from rural East Texas, where it describes about 60% of the population. Of course, I don't still live there, so it doesn't happen as much as it used to.

As a resident of Bakersfield, CA, I feel your pain.

Bako is, if you don't know, basically a weird bubble in the Central Valley where bits of Texas and Dust Bowl refugee descendants suck oil out of the ground and grow almonds and grudgingly abide by the rules of "PC" behavior in public, and complain loudly about it whenever they can get away with it, while a minority Liberal population quietly strives to overthrow the patriarchy and maybe build an art scene that isn't a sad joke.

But we have a pretty cool Comic Con, if you're ever in the area, and hey, some pretty famous people are from here, so...it's not all bad.

And a lot of really good food. Especially Basque.

But yeah, also plenty of creationists, birthers, truthers, climate deniers, and just about everything else you can imagine people saying that would make an educated Liberal /headdesk. Not to mention positively homicidal police.
All while being noticeably less friendly than most places in Texas.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

ANyway, I don't htink I've acutally made a list of my gripes with 5e.

So, here it is. Note that most of these aren't things I think 5e got wholly wrong, and 5e is my second favorite variation of DnD.

Advantage: I like it, but I think they miss stepped by having there only be one bonus, as it were.

Trying to put "4e style" gameplay in a "tactical play" module in the DMG. It's a failure, IMO. I don't know what the numbers are, but not a single person I know who liked 4e wanted to play a game that mechanically resembles warhammer. At all. That isn't what 4e is, and while it's cool to have as an option, it is not a 4e style option. 4e's "thing" was tactical options built into class abilities. Not...facing.

The art style. The conceptopolis stuff is great, mostly. The halflings are an abomination. They look like gross cartoon people halfway turned into real people. I feel like they're going to plead with me to kill them while the artist isn't looking.
There's some great art from 4e, like this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/JonasAlbrecht/Gwenn.jpg that is vastly more interesting than most of the art in the 5e books. Or stuff like this from Jon Hodgson, who does the art for The One Ring rpg: http://jonhodgson.deviantart.com/art/Solku-119883066

Not having more "modules" for more complex play in the DMG. Bigger weapons table with more weapon properties, for instance.

Not putting out some pamphlets for the more popular non FR settings, or a book with info on multiple settings, maybe with worldbuilding advice from setting creators like Keith Baker, etc.

No digital tools. I've heard this isn't really their fault, as bad luck struck again, but they need to stop messing around with companies no one has heard of, and figure this situation out for real. Either develop a department of digital production, or work with one of the companies making DnD video games/mmos.
Maybe hire some talented app makers who have made char builders for various editions, and give them the money to do it right. Heck, allow digital tools on the DM Guild, now that that's up.

Not allowing there to be both class and subclass iterations of ideas. IMO, this would open the game up without unbalancing it, and allow certain concepts without MCing, etc. If you have to, put the class versions of things like assassin and any given summoner/pet concept in a special area of the rules called Advanced Options or something, to satisfy the grognards and the folks who hate there being more options.

Like I said, none of these is a big deal, really.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'm just idly wondering how many years into 5e will we have to get before people finally stop mischaracterizing what bounded accuracy is what it actually does...

I started posting on teh wotc forums when 4e was being previewed, and didn't stop until the closed 'em.


The answer is literally never. Even after the heat death of the universe, when only the disembodied hyperspace mind exists, contemplating the answer to the question, "How can one reverse entropy", some niggling bit of leftover individual consciousness will still refuse to admit it's a mischaracterization.