D&D 5E (2014) What are the "True Issues" with 5e?

[James Gasik]

That passage talks about spells and magic items. Nothing about non-magical characters.

What about the part where it explicitly says the characters are capable of superheroic feats?

 

[Gammadoodler]

Yep - fundamental difference: I expect to pretend to be a protagonistic and yet internally-realistic inhabitant of a fantasy setting. Heroism is not necessarily required or desired.

This word mincing..

“Hero” vs. “Protagonist:” What Is The Difference? | Dictionary.com

Many stories have one thing in common: a brave main character who ends up saving the day. But does slaying the dragon or defusing the bomb make this person a hero or a protagonist? And can the two words be used interchangeably? The correct answer to both is yes, with the caveat that the words […]

www.dictionary.com

And I'm pretty sure the end result is that you are agreeing with me.

In theory the DM will have taken those justifications into account when laying out the setting. How any of it interacts with any one player's conception of a character, however, is something the designers simply can't anticipate.

If the book says ...

"the background radiation of most fantasy settings is enough to alter the inhabitants' biological structure enough to enable some people (including player characters) to gain otherworldly abilities..."

Or something..

Yes, you now have an explanation that the DM can work with or around and maybe has to..at the expense of other thematic options they and their players might prefer.

OTOH...

If the book says nothing...

The DM can address it or not at their leisure and in whatever manner they and their player's find most satisfying.
.......

I find one of these options preferable to the other.

 

[mamba]

What about the part where it explicitly says the characters are capable of superheroic feats?

it says ‘have superheroic capabilities’, Iron Man has those, so it can very well come down to items and spells, those are the only examples given.

 

[Imaro]

Supernatural is somewhat in the eye of the beholder though.

Take level's up "size up" ability for fighters, which lets them determine the CR of any creature they can see within 200 feet. Honestly....that's pretty damn fantastical. I can see a little girl and go "hmm that's a CR 19 creature.....wonder if she's shapechanged or something".

I can literally get the Cr of creatures that I have never seen, heck that my world has never seen. It could be a monster of myth and legend, but the fighter can go "CR 15 looks like.... oh wait CR 17 yeah looks like its thats enhanced variety".


Its a cool ability, but it quickly strains the notion of a "mundane ability". At somet point it gets a bit fantastical. Now personally I am ok with fighters dipping their toes into the fantastical and supernatural a bit more, but some might balk at even that much.

This is literally the power level scan from Dragonball Z... whether that is a good thing or bad thing I guess depends on your playstyle.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Or rejigger the rest-and-recovery system to make it less generous.

That fact that something can be fixed doesn't mean it isn't broken. It means we've identified where it is broken.

Given how often this issue comes up on various fora, I'd say "adventuring day pacing" is a significant issue.

 

[Mannahnin]

Then the Fighter should just stop at level 10. There's no point in continuing afterwards.

and Wizards can stop right there too. As I said, the saving grace for D&D is that most campaigns end around that point anyway

I am not looking for superhero characters

Ok, then for you the game can stop advancement at 5th or 10th level or somewhere in between. You have no need or use for the high level stuff, it sounds like. You can just not use it.

hard to say, will depend on the specific giant / dragon / demon… and I am perfectly fine with that

I don't care what Gygax thought.

Maybe conan, but I'm not familiar enough with that literature to know if he has any supernatural powers. I would just say a 20th level mundane, with no supernatural assistance, cannot overcome the limitations of their own biology/nature.

One thing that Conan has in common with D&D characters is that he is capable of going toe to toe with and killing supernatural foes which possess strength beyond that of any mortal man. Conan himself is capable of wrestling with gorillas and the equivalent, and winning. He is a human being whose capabilities are heroic (in the Greek sense). Greater than ordinary men.

How MUCH greater is left ambiguous. Short stories don't quantify the way game rules do.

But we expect high level D&D fighters to be able to go toe to toe with 50 foot dragons and 20 foot tall giants and not just get squished when one of the latter hits them. That's inherent in the game and always has been.

You may not care what Gygax wrote about high level characters being imbued with divine favor and protection and durability, but that's part of the assumptions the game is based on and has been since the 70s.

I use intelligence saves. At least until the NPC/monster interacts with the illusion. But I admit I have a hard time figuring out how to run illusions, it's not mind control but it's also not creating reality.

I like using Int saves as well. That's what I do in my Five Torches Deep & B/X mashup. One article I found useful in adjudicating illusions is Dragon #130's Hold Onto Your Illusions! The mechanics in there are designed for 1E AD&D, but the conceptual framework is, I think, still useful for DMs adjudicating them in any edition.

Lol..I kinda love this approach..

"Wait..were those guys good or useful or notable for something?...shoot..gonna have to fix that.."

it's more that I just don't want to play a game of super heroes

Sure. But D&D has always been, at higher levels, a game about superheroes. "Superhero" was the level title of an 8th level Fighter from 1974-1989. And a 4th level Fighter is a Hero. Not just an ordinary man with a sword.

Even 5th edition explicitly tells us, when talking about the tiers of play. If you don't want characters to have superheroic capabilities, you can cap advancement at lower levels (like the Epic 6 variant on 3rd ed), or you can always play games more explicitly modeled on real world combat, like RuneQuest. I'm not saying you can't play D&D, but your expectations seem to be in direct conflict with it.

This is just naked question begging if you're going to preclude answers for irrelevant reasons.

A lot of people - obviously - prefer game worlds where people are people, unless the supernatural intervenes on or through them. If the fighter is billed as "Just a guy who fights well" then he ought to have the sorts of limitations that come along with that.

Notice how no one makes this argument about paladins - because they're not JUST "guys who fight well" - they are to a significant degree supernatural.

Paladins are no more physically supernatural than Fighters, except where specified (immunity to disease, for example, at the level where they get that). And it's quite clear from context that most of the same folks who argue that Fighters shouldn't be capable of physical feats beyond those of real world athletes do make the same argument about Paladins and any other human-ish character operating without the aid of a spell or magic item.

I have no problem with Gygax's statement. But they dropped any lines to that effect a while ago, and they need to put them back if they're going to add that conceit to nonmagical PCs.

I would argue that it's implicit in the retention of the concepts of hit points and saving throws. And in the design of a game in which a 6 foot tall Fighter is intended to be able to face and defeat, in direct physical combat, a 20 foot giant. Or multiple such giants, at higher levels!

My point the entire time is they cannot be both - they have to be one or the other. Either they're humans and need to be held to that standard or they're 'human' and they can be or do whatever. But they cannot be both.

And this is a challenge of D&D trying to be all things to all people. Choosing to have humans in it which ground the fiction and make it feel more relatable, but also having those humans be capable of things no real-world human could do.

Recovery has gotten progressively more ridiculous, for starters.

This is a statement of opinion, predicated on choosing to adjudicate and interpret the rules in ridiculous ways.

If the DM and players are consistent in describing hit points the way Gygax and the rulebooks have told us to, there is much less of an issue. "Your character's hit points define how tough your character is in combat and other dangerous situations", the 5E PH tells us on page 6. "Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck" it says on page 196.

Recovery has gotten faster. To better represent heroic fiction in which a character can have a deadly duel whose outcome is in doubt, then a chase, and then another deadly battle, without needing to take a week or a month to rest between them. Which was perennially an issue with D&D and its relatively slow HP recovery rules going back to the 70s. Many players were drawn in by the promise of playing characters like those they enjoy in heroic fantasy fiction, then disappointed when their characters couldn't perform the same kind of deeds at the same kind of pace. So the game has progressively sped up healing to better support player expectations and desires.

People who choose to use the hit point rules to simulate, say, stabbing yourself in the leg outside of combat (in a manner which in the real world would cause lasting injury and mobility impairment), are choosing to misapply the rules to something they were never intended to simulate.

Nah.

5e cut down on "Magic Items!" being the excuse for shenanigans and people filled the void with super heroics.

My 3e ranger had the fantasy equivalent of the top WayneCorp/StarkIndustries gear so I could always attribute half his nonsense with his gear.

Well, to be fair, the rules are also written so that non-casters get more special abilities nowadays, so they're not as dependent on gear.

the disparity between Fighter and Wizard, I would address that, but making the Fighter more like the Wizard moves further away from where I want to be.

Give the Fighter more maneuvers, and nerf the Wizard into the ground overall…

It's an interesting approach. I don't think you're going to be able to sell the majority of the D&D-playing market on nerfing wizards into the ground.

I think the better approach is just to keep everyone more mundane and mortal at lower levels, and let them get progressively more heroic and finally superheroic at higher levels. Folks who want a mundane game can stick to lower levels and optionally house rules like Epic 6, and/or simply play other games which aren't designed to be superheroic the way D&D is (and always has been).

 

[Maxperson]

Well, I do tend to run urban campaigns so mobsters do play a big part in my games.

This is D&D bud. Those aren't mobsters, they're thieves guilds that have a head thief, lieutenants, thugs, fences...

 

[M_Natas]

This issue has already been solved in several ways.

1. All the spells which require material components worth a certain amount of gp. Some of them have gp costs in the hundreds.
2. Player's Handbook pages 157-159.
3. Dungeon Master's Guide pages 126-131.
4. Dungeon Master's Guide page 257.
5. Dungeon Master's Guide page 268, if your campaign setting can bear it.
6. Dungeon Master's Guide page 119.
7. Xanathar's Guide to Everything pages 123-134.
8. Ghosts of Saltmarsh pages 196.

There is plenty to spend your money on in 5e.

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As for issues that really are systemic and most folks seem to agree upon....yeah, the whole of the encounter-building guidelines. They are somehow both too complex and not precise enough.

I think one of the biggest Issues with 5e is, that people don't play RAW and then complain, when the game is lacking.

Like, people just outright delete rules. They rip out chunks of the core game and then complain.
Like a lot ot tables play without incumberance, tracking water and food and other resources and then complain that exploration sucks. But ressource management is 50% of exploration. Without it, most of exploration boils down to "when do we finally find it?". With the RAW rules you have to make decisions. Do we take the longer safer route, but use more food? Can we get sidetracked or will we run out of food? Do we go to this possible fresh water source or press on?

Is 5e Exploration a great system? No, its not. It is an okay system. It does its job if you don't rip out rules that make it interesting.

Then a lot of tables skip the early levels and then say, 5e feels to similar. You are a super hero and nothing else. Yeah, that is true if you skip the first Levels. The first Levels feel different. Playing level 1 to 3 characters make you apprecitia the higher levels more, when you reach them. But if you skip them ... it's like just eating dessert without having the real meal before.

The same with the Gold. There are a lot of ways to spend gold in the rule books. Which are rarely used. Like no accounting for expensive spell components.
If you cut that out, of course you wizard will be swimming in money because for his class he has nothing else to spend his money on. A ranger needs arrows, fighters need weapons and armors and so on.
Could it be better? Of course it could be. But it works fine if you follow the rules RAW.

 

[mamba]

Ok, then for you the game can stop advancement at 5th or 10th level or somewhere in between. You have no need or use for the high level stuff, it sounds like. You can just not use it.

I am aware, didn’t really need you to point that out.

If you are talking about features you get at level 17+, knock yourself out, I could not care less. These things have a tendency to seep into levels way below that however

It's an interesting approach. I don't think you're going to be able to sell the majority of the D&D-playing market on nerfing wizards into the ground.

I am not sure you can sell anything that exceeds minor tweaks to the majority at this point. That doesn’t mean I cannot want it / argue for it

It all boils down to this

And this is a challenge of D&D trying to be all things to all people. Choosing to have humans in it which ground the fiction and make it feel more relatable, but also having those humans be capable of things no real-world human could do

 

[Maxperson]

Okay. The real problems with 5e.

1) Being balanced around the adventuring day.
2) Being balanced around resource attrition.(leads to the adventuring day).
3) Not enough mechanical options(feats, magic items, subclasses, classes, etc.). There's a huge middle ground in-between 5e and the 3e/4e gluts.
4) Bounded accuracy. The concept is a good one, but they over reacted and bounded things too much. Had they gone to +10 over 20 levels it would have been much better.
5) The game is too easy, but that's a result of #1 and #2. Fix those and you likely fix #5.