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

[EzekielRaiden]

5e doesn't make a stance. It's almost annoyingly wishy washy.

Sure. That's 5e's modus operandi. The DMG is littered with """helpful""" """advice""" that, in almost every case, amounts to, "You could do X. Or you could do not-X. It's up to you as DM!" Sometimes with an optional, "You could strike a middle ground, or do some third thing instead."

How many pages would it take to justify just the spells alone. I think you way underestimate how far off the rails of logic all those individual things go. Explaining every single deviation from reality in a fantasy game would be a huge undertaking.

Why would you need to do that? Why would it be necessary to explain every individual spell?

Seriously, what on Earth makes you think such ridiculous extremes could even remotely be necessary or even useful?

Not necessarily. A great amount of it could be explained in maybe two pages (or less!) that explain the basic science behind how magic works in the game and-or setting, and how - if at all - it affects the everyday lives and-or physical attributes of the world's inhabitants.

Lanefan and I may disagree on many things, but this is pithy and accurate.

 

[Vaalingrade]

which means 1000 page rule books no thanks.

5000 it is then.

 

[mamba]

And at the end of the day..what you are coming back to is game statistics..not even actual mechanics..just... statistics.

yes, because the game does not talk all that much about biology or mechanics, does it.

And if we want to use real world biology then either the question is a non-starter because most of the species do not exist, or we have to accept them as very closely related to humans to allow for the interbreeding.

So we are back to them having very similar capabilities to humans, which also is reflected in game by their attributes.

We can also turn this around and say what in the game supports them having drastically different capabilities when it comes to walk and run speed, or long and high jump.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

5000 it is then.

Go for broke.

Let's go for a nice, round 3000 volumes of 1000 pages each. 3 million pages. That way, we can exceed the total print-equivalent page count of Wikipedia. That will surely give us a truly realistic game!!!

 

[billd91]

Those older-edition MM entries for entire species, where they gave stats at all, are called out as being guidelines or averages; with the expectation that there'll be some variance among individuals. I see no such call-out in that Commoner write-up.

It doesn't need the callout any more than the general orc or other humanoid stat block needed it, so this is a pointless nitpick. But you may rest easy as the 5e Monster Manual in general explicitly says to modify stats as the needed, a point reiterated at the beginning of the section for the NPC stat blocks.

 

[mamba]

Compared to a commoner, PC's are mostly a step above in all respects

that is where being a hero comes in, they are not a different race

 

[mamba]

When you are bringing in limits and denying that something can be done or allowed, the burden of proof is on you.

then show me where the rules say that these are some magical humans that have nothing but the name in common with what we understand as humans / Homo Sapiens. The null hypothesis applies here.

 

[Mannahnin]

How many movies and TV shows do we have where the protagonist takes out a dozen or more enemies? The Witcher is another good example of a high level PC, and one that wouldn't look out of place as an eldritch knight. But Geralt, outside of a handful of thunder waves, relies almost exclusively on fairly mundane fighting. Yet he takes out plenty of large (or huge) monsters. But even more grounded ones like The Last Kingdom where Uhtred survives dozens of battles with rarely a scratch. When we see scenes where they're fighting off multiple opponents simultaneously my wife and I just look at each other and say "high level fighter".

Higher level fighters are Captain America or the Black Panther. Those are the kind of mundane fighters I want to model and that I think D&D does a decent job of. More than human standard? Maybe. But they're still running around swinging a sword most of the time. But I don't want them to be The Hulk or Superman. I certainly don't want them running around casting spells by another name, unless it's explicitly part of the subclass like my Rune Knight.

Captain America and Black Panther in MCU are explicitly superhuman. Cap was kept pretty "human PLUS" in his first solo movie and in the first Avengers movie, though that 50+ foot leap across the break in the gantry in Captain America: The First Avenger was pretty absurd and beyond anything a D&D Fighter can do. His feats in Winter Soldier and subsequent movies, though, go well beyond. Taking down an aircraft in flight, for example, with his muscles and his shield.

He usually sets it up such that high-level Fighters are taking on other high-level Fighters, one-on-one most of the time; but in the TV series there's numerous examples of people like Brienne or Jon chopping their way through lots of soldiers during the big battles (which the books never got to).

No, I'm really not sure that there actually are. I think once or twice Jon takes on multiple zombies/walkers (like the big battle at Hardhome), but his Valyrian Steel blade makes them 4E-style Minions for him. I think the most we see Brienne take on is two or three guys who try to bring her and Arya in. Can you cite any specific scenes? I think Jon kills a few or several guys in the big battle when the Wildlings assault Castle Black, but I don't think he fights more than one or two at a time. We do see Sandor Clegane take on those four Lannister soldiers at the inn all at once, right?

Those older-edition MM entries for entire species, where they gave stats at all, are called out as being guidelines or averages; with the expectation that there'll be some variance among individuals. I see no such call-out in that Commoner write-up.

Because you only looked at the stat block and didn't bother looking up the rulebook to find out that such text is indeed there.

 

[mamba]

There's some nonsense baked right into that: that every commoner everywhere will have the exact same stats (all 10s) no matter what.

that is not baked in at all, these are average stats, individual commoners vary, same as any other stat block

 

[EzekielRaiden]

then show me where the rules say that these are some magical humans that have nothing but the name in common with what we understand as humans / Homo Sapiens. The null hypothesis applies here.

Is that what I argued? Is that even remotely what I said? Go back and look again. Did I say that they have "nothing but the name in common"? Did I even imply it?

I said we cannot make assumptions. I said that presuming that all IRL human limits apply is an error.

The null hypothesis IS NOT "we have no evidence for difference, thus they are exactly the same." The null hypothesis is, "we have no evidence for difference, thus we cannot make a claim."

YOU are the one making a claim here. I'm not. I'm saying we should avoid making claims. That's a whole different beast--and is, in fact, the whole purpose of the null hypothesis.