D&D 5E What are the "True Issues" with 5e?

[Parmandur]

But what if the dm doesn’t want to run a game that’s all about long days of battle? What if they want intrigue and exploration with an occasional fight?

5e doesn’t support that, nor are there easy houserule options to achieve it.

Then fights won't be as much of a challenge for the party. And that's OK, but if a challenge is desired...those resources need to be drained. Can't have your cake and eat it, too, sonthe designers set up the system to be scaleable to a maximum. Go under it, combats are easier. Get closer, they are harder.

Thing is, they seem radically uninterested in changing thst...and theybare the ones with ndrcade of playtest and market research data. I don't think thisnis a problem for most tables: most wither want a minimal challenge and a focus on RP, or want to push resource attrition.

 

[Minigiant]

I totally agree; this misconception annoys me as well.

But a lot of people don’t have more than one encounter per several in-game days, and that does mess with balance after level 6 or so. I’m not sure this is a problem so much as not realizing the Big Tent includes a large group no one expected to show up in the first place.

You are not required to have 6 encounters a day. But the game easily becomes unbalanced, anticlimatic, and unfun if you have less than 4.

And there is zero advice and zero variant rules for a single or double encounter day,

4e had a standard baseline of power with its encounter powers,healing surges, and creature roles to work with 1-10 encounters a day. Order editions would flood you with potion and give you less resources so a DM could better gauge a standard engagement.

In 5e, there is no standard engagement. And no tools, rules, or advice for a DM to gauge a group's baseline. And the game wasn't designed around the "novaline" either.

So DMs who run less than 4 encounters or more than 10 are left twisting in the wind until they TPK enough groups to learn how to make it work or watch a video on Youtube on how.

 

[cbwjm]

maybe it's because DnD is primarily at it's core a resource management game, and if your group isn't being pushed to a certain threshold of resource use then there's not exactly going to be getting to the point where your management or lack thereof starts to matter and it's consequences impact gameplay?

I don't think the resource management game is such a big deal in 5e, not like in previous editions. I feel like the vast majority of players aren't playing the game to manage resources, rather they're using it as a system to tell a story. And even if the core of dnd is resource management, 6-8 encounters per day still isn't expected/required.

 

[Clint_L]

But what if the dm doesn’t want to run a game that’s all about long days of battle? What if they want intrigue and exploration with an occasional fight?

5e doesn’t support that, nor are there easy houserule options to achieve it.

I mean, it does support that, because that's how my campaign is mostly played, but then I'm an experienced DM. I don't find this to be more of a problem in 5e than in any other edition of D&D, meaning that the game has always been heavily reliant on the DM to make it work. Encounter design is intended as an art, not a science, which has pros and cons.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Is the OP @Stalker0 tracking the consensus on this topic to deliver a summary of what has been agreed upon (perhaps nothing has!)?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

4E hybrid classes.

I liked hybrid rules, for the most part. Had they fixed the power swap feats, I’d be willing to say 4e flat out got it right.

4e.

4e multiclassing is very consistent. You should always take one multiclass feat unless you literally can't spare one. You should (almost) never paragon multiclass, because it sucks. Hybrids have a few basic rules (have at least one stat shared between your classes, pick two classes of different roles in most cases, keep in mind what benefits you can get via feats, e.g. Hybrid Paladin can take a single feat to get Plate prof.)

Taking 1 MC feat is always good. Two is a sometimes food. Three+ and PMC, inadvisable.

Plus, feat-based MC isn't too far off from 2e's Dual-Classing, just skipping the "re-level through 8 levels of the new class" part, and Hybrids are straight-up 2e dual-classing with better balance.

That doesn’t make it sound like a good system. Like if I didn’t have good experiences over several years playing 4e and seeing that MC feats are good, not mandatory (mostly green to blue, only light blue or whatever for some builds), and that PMC is fine to good depending on build, my takeaway would be that 4e has a bad MC system.

Especially since mc power swap feats do actually suck for most characters.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The encounters were supposed to be short and over 2-3 sessions.
The "issue" is 5e again did not provide the tools to convert your campaign to a 1 session = 1 adventuring day paradigm.

Let's take those scare quotes off because a one day a month campaign is something that should be prosecutable.

 

[CleverNickName]

You are not required to have 6 encounters a day. But the game easily becomes unbalanced, anticlimatic, and unfun if you have less than 4.

Pff. This doesn't match my experience, or any of the actual play channels and podcasts that I follow (Dimension20, Critical Role, Venture Maidens). They typically only have one encounter per gaming session. For all their faults they are anything but "anticlimactic and unfun."

 

[FitzTheRuke]

So if-when a spell is different level for different classes, then what?

Repeat its full write-up in each class' list? Waste of page space. Put in a "See write-up on page xxx" note"? No thanks!

I don't think that happens anymore.

 

[Minigiant]

Pff. This doesn't match my experience, or any of the actual play channels and podcasts that I follow (Dimension20, Critical Role, Venture Maidens). They typically only have one encounter per gaming session. For all their faults they are anything but "anticlimactic and unfun."

That is my point.

Many people play one encounter per gaming session.

The question are
Does the DM let them long rest at the end of the session?
if yes
Is the DM a 5+year veteran of D&D?

Because some DMs answer "Yes" to the first and "No" to the second then end up with a bad time.