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

[Undrave]

Sure, but your statement here does not imply that you have to make changes for "simplicity and streamlining". There are any number of reasons that a proposed rule doesn't work out.

Sure, and simplicity is one of those reason. Spells being different Level (thus requiring different level slots etc) per class doesn’t strike me as simple or streamlined so that sounds like a probably reason for a designer to cut it. You might not think the sacrifice is worth it, but that's beside the point.

 

[Parmandur]

Which is my point. I was responding to someone saying “what support is needed if you want to run less encounters, you can just ‘do it’

The game doesn’t really offer an elegant way to maintain a certain class balance and challenge for people that want their 1-2 encounters per day type games. Sure you can wing it, but if a sizable part of your player base plays that way (and I suspect they do), that’s a gap

The bolded part is the thing: I doubt thst we are talking about a significant portion of the playerbase. The games difficulty is on a sliding scale, and I would wager that 90%+ of tables actually fall on the scale, hence why they have no move to acknowledge an issue let alone propose a fix.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, and simplicity is one of those reason. Spells being different Level (thus requiring different level slots etc) per class doesn’t strike me as simple or streamlined so that sounds like a probably reason for a designer to cut it. You might to think the sacrifice is worth it, but that's beside the point.

I absolutely don't think the sacrifice was worth it, and I don't think "simplicity and streamlining" should be anyone's top priority in game design.

 

[Parmandur]

So there's my problem: I don't want to alter story structure, the setting, or genre in order to add challenge. I don't see why I have to choose between "dungeon crawl" and "unbalanced."

The game has a sliding scale of challenge: setting the scale to "not challenging" means that there won't be a challenge. WAD, frankly, this just isn't a "true ussue."

 

[SteveC]

I think this thread has shown that you can never get 100% consensus on anything in terms of D&D. I'm having difficulty thinking about anything in gaming you could really do that with. What we can do at this point in 2023 is have this conversation. For much of the 5E era, I don't think you could even really have this discussion without the signal to noise ratio being too high. And I think that's a good thing.

Different folks have mentioned things that I agree with and don't, but I think it's been a great opportunity to see what people's opinions are as we close in on the final 2024 rules. I wonder how many of the commonly discussed issues here will be addressed?

 

[Clint_L]

Of course a 1-2 Encounter day is totally playable, and can be fun: but that's on easy mode.

That's just not true. Those of us who run fewer encounters tune them accordingly.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I think this thread has shown that you can never get 100% consensus on anything in terms of D&D.

I disagree.

 

[AnotherGuy]

1) No it isn't. Please stop putting words in my mouth.

2) We are talking about problems with the game, not my game.

The game doesn't have rules for making illusions work, they depend on the DM to make constant spot rulings to the point that whether there's even a point to taking illusion spells varies from table to table. And it isn't just illusions. that's the problem. That's the discussion. No one is trapped in a dungeon, or on the supreme court, or in a bad social circle, or any thing else used to distract from the actual issue.

Yeah but you mentioned a DM who has city guards that recognise every alleyway and thus able to see through/past the illusions.
That's not a problem with the game. That is a problem with that DM.

And that is specifically why I endorse a 1/2 page on illusions which teaches DMs how to be better DMs than suffocating the game with wisdom saves which weakens the School of Illusion. IMO.

 

[mamba]

Class balance that supports a 1-2 encounter per day

So basically considerably weaker classes, as I assume you want to challenge them with say two medium or one hard encounter per day (rather than two deadly+ ones, you can do the latter already...).

 

[mamba]

Not sure what you were referring to here, but I was referring more to Spell slot and other PC power resource attrition (which is where the challenge is to be found).

yeah, different things then. You basically have to exhaust all their spells with a large enough number of encounters. I was more talking about resources in general, starting with food and water to short rests. Spells make all of this trivial pretty much right from the start.