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

[mamba]

When you are coming in and telling others they can't have their fun because it's unrealistic, it's on you to show why their fun is wrong.

works both ways, except for the justification…

 

[mamba]

Is that what I argued?

pretty much…

Humans having such mixed ancestry--with genuinely fantastical beings that couldn't possibly live in our universe--is a pretty clear reason for saying that they may LOOK like IRL humans, but they are not actually IRL humans. Their limitations should be different. Perhaps not radically different, but different nonetheless.

and then your 'not radically different' was still always 'drastically different'...

I said we cannot make assumptions.

and then went right on to say that in most worlds they are not restricted to earthly limitations

This is an assumption on your part not actually supported by either the text or the world-building of most games

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."

the null hypothesis is we have no evidence for difference, therefore we should not assume any

 

[Undrave]

Agreed, but unfortunately we're kinda stuck with a numerical abstraction for encumbrance (which even then only ever looks at weight, not bulk) and so having precise weights for everything at least allows a player (or DM) to roughly eyeball it and realize they're carrying too much, while still allowing those who want to track it to the ounce to do so.

Maybe use a more abstract system with like 'stones' as weight?

The biggest food-water headaches I ever see come when PCs rescue a whole bunch of prisoners or slaves who have no resources of their own, and have to find a way to feed them for the two weeks it'll take to get back to town.

Oh now that's an interesting application.

There are other mechanical options, though. Slot-based encumbrance systems have gotten a ton of play in the OSR space in the last fifteen years. The Usage Die from The Black Hack allows for abstracted depletion of resources and the possibility of them running out at an unexpected or inopportune time, which is the sort of thing which happens in heroic fiction and provides dramatic complications.

I don't think we're "stuck" with encumbrance by weight (which so many people find tedious) unless the designers just refuse to try something else.

Slots could be interesting. You'd need a bit more tactile elements to make tracking easier but it's the sort of thing that could let you check your encumbrance at a glance.

Those usage die sounds interesting. I'm imagining a thing where every time you use food, water or ammunition you roll the die and if you roll low it goes down a step in size and once it's a d4 and you roll 1 on it you've run out. Something like that could work no?

 

[Minigiant]

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."

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?

Because the DMG is not a Dungeon Masters guide. It's a Conversion Manual.

"You can roll for everything, roleplay out everything, or something in the middle"

Does it explain how 5e works if you roll for everything?
Does it describe what changes the game has if you roleplay out actions instead of using character features and modifiers?
Does it give a clear example of the middle path of rolling and rolling?

Nah. Because the DMG was written just as quick examples of converted content of older editions and a validation for DMs to run whatever way they want. That's why it has pages and pages of Planes content

It's just there to remind DMs of what the FR planes are.

 

[Oofta]

When you are coming in and telling others they can't have their fun because it's unrealistic, it's on you to show why their fun is wrong.

If you don't want that in your game, that's fine. Do what you like. But when we start designing games around this need for "realism" that doesn't even actually reflect reality--let alone the clear requirements of the fictional space in question!--the burden is upon those who want to put in limits, not on those who want to reserve judgment and let each group make up their own mind.

Which is, and remains, the huge problem. One set of character options is adamantly required to remain bound beneath an incredibly strict, unrealistically weak set of limitations, while the other is given carte blanche to warp reality nearly as they see fit.

Or, and this is crazy talk I know, he's just expressing his opinion on what he wants. Just like I do. It has nothing to do with telling you that your preferences are wrong, it's just that a game can only support so many things.

I prefer the option for grounded fighters. If I want spellcasters or supernatural fighters there are plenty of options.

 

[Oofta]

Captain America and Black Panther are both enhanced beyond biological normal standards.

Now if 5e says a 10th level fighter chugged enough magic potions that they are magic, that would be 5e making a stance.

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

Most people have a 10 or 11 on their ability scores, an 18 is the highest most people could obtain so a 20 in any ability is borderline supernatural. Many high level fighters have magic items that enhance their abilities. I guess I just don't see the issue. High level martial types in D&D are a bit supernatural, they just still primarily rely on weapons for attacking.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

pretty much…

No. Not even a little. Again, read what I said. I repeatedly said we couldn't make assumptions, that we had to avoid claims.

and then went right on to say that in most worlds they are not restricted to earthly limitations

No! That's not at all what I said!

I said that we couldn't assume that they ARE so limited. That is completely different. It is the difference between the following two statements:

(1) "Because we do not know what color the car is, we can be certain that it is not blue unless told otherwise."
(2) "Because we do not know what color the car is, we cannot assume that it is red unless told otherwise."

The two statements are completely different claims. Your assertion is that we can (indeed, that we should) assume the car IS red until told otherwise ("nothing contradicts...") That is false. We cannot assume any color. We can assume that there is SOME color, but not anything about what that color is. Likewise, we can assume that some kind of limits exist for these fictional humans. But we cannot assume that those limits are identical to IRL human limits simply because that assumption isn't trivially false.

the null hypothesis is we have no evidence for difference, therefore we should not assume any

No. That is flatly, absolutely wrong. Look it up.

When you do hypothesis testing, you DO NOT "prove" the null hypothesis. Instead, you formulate the null and alternative hypotheses, and then perform the test. This generates a probability estimate for the chance of a type 1 error. A type 1 error is when you reject the null hypothesis incorrectly (a "false positive," though that term can be misleading, so be careful.) Before doing the test, you set a threshold level where if the probability of a type 1 error is low enough, you're willing to accept that risk. Generally, the typical chosen value is p=0.05, a 1 in 20 chance of committing a type 1 error (though in some places it's much stricter, particle physics for example has notoriously high standards.)

But all you can do is either reject or not reject. You cannot actually "prove" the null hypothesis. All you can do is say that the evidence does not compel you to reject the null. You never actually know if the null hypothesis is true! You just don't know that it is false. Which is exactly what I have been saying.

We don't know what the limits of these fantasy humans are. Thus, any claim, any design, which is dependent on assuming that they definitely do have the limits IRL humans have unless we are explicitly told otherwise, is not kosher.

You must, in fact, actually show that something is true first. Not merely claim that, because we haven't shown it to be false, it must be true.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because the DMG is not a Dungeon Masters guide. It's a Conversion Manual.

"You can roll for everything, roleplay out everything, or something in the middle"

Does it explain how 5e works if you roll for everything?
Does it describe what changes the game has if you roleplay out actions instead of using character features and modifiers?
Does it give a clear example of the middle path of rolling and rolling?

Nah. Because the DMG was written just as quick examples of converted content of older editions and a validation for DMs to run whatever way they want. That's why it has pages and pages of Planes content

It's just there to remind DMs of what the FR planes are.

This is...genuinely kind of depressing. But you're right.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Because you can't have fantastical things that look exactly like non-fantastical ones without calling out that point, in my view.

I just don't agree and tons of fantasy doesn't agree. Huge amounts of heroic fantasy and myth and legend doesn't give any particular reason that heroic (Greek sense) characters are heroic. If they like have weird-ass special powers, like Achilles being literally immune to damage, sure. But if they're just exceptionally fast, strong, brave, intelligent, quick-healing (but not regenerating), lucky, wise etc. it's just very often just put down to them being who they are.

There's this big problem with RPGs which is that a lot of players, especially older ones, actually want some sort of science-y "sim" where everything is elaborately explained, rather than a more myth/legend-oriented game. But what Gygax actually designed was something more myth/legend-oriented, not a science-y sim.

where so much of the most well-known work in the genre (@Ruin Explorer 's modern list not withstanding) does call out the supernatural?

So much of it doesn't.

Look at Lord of the Rings - Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli run for literally days on end to catch up with the hobbits who'd been taken. Obviously physically impossible. Why can they do it? It's not explained. It's never explained. Tolkien doesn't take us aside and explain the biological reasons why, because he's not thinking about that and doesn't care about that. They're heroic characters from a myth he's creating

Why? Because Tolkien very consciously and intentionally wrote myths and legends, not facts, not science or some sort of rationalized and well-explained saga - and remember he repeated called LotR a myth - this isn't my projection, it's his own words and clear intention.

And he's the founder of the entire modern genre.

I really don't get where this resistance is coming from.

Because you want science-fantasy or ultra-grounded fantasy to be the only things allowable for D&D, you want A Princess of Mars or maybe at most The Name of the Wind or A Game of Thrones, and a lot of people want fantasy - which includes elements of myth and legend, elements of mystery and the unknowable and the truly supernatural, not merely "super-measurable and well-defined magic powers that might as well be science", they want Lord of the Rings, Earthsea, the Greek myths, the Arthurian legends, Conan the Barbarian, Tigana, The Last Unicorn, The Princess Bride, Circe, The Dark Tower and so on - stuff where people with no identifiable magic powers do things which are impossible or near to it, where magic isn't just science, where people sometimes go beyond what anyone thought they could do.

That's why people are resistant. You're basically saying "Screw Tolkien, it's only Game of Thrones for me!", whether you're thinking that way or not, that's what you're de facto advocating.

(Part of the problem here, if we're real, is Vance's baleful influence. I like a lot of elements of Vance's work (not the misogyny!), but it's essentially closer to science-fantasy than heroic or epic fantasy, and he likes to give things rational reasons, even if they're sort of dashed off, and unfortunately because it provided an easy model for the early game to ape re: magic, it gave early D&D a slightly confused and science-y vibe - and some people in early D&D days clearly wanted to be running something more science-y. But none of that is true today - just look at the big podcasts like Critical Role - even when modern or steampunk trappings are involved, they're not treated in a science-y way. The guns don't work in a science-y way. They're as mystical and metaphysical as everything else. Even D&D's spells, once quasi-science-y have regained an element of mysticism for the people playing in and watching those games. The same is true of most D&D podcasts, I note, especially ones with people in their 20s and early 30s, I note.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Because the DMG is not a Dungeon Masters guide. It's a Conversion Manual.

"You can roll for everything, roleplay out everything, or something in the middle"

Does it explain how 5e works if you roll for everything?
Does it describe what changes the game has if you roleplay out actions instead of using character features and modifiers?
Does it give a clear example of the middle path of rolling and rolling?

Nah. Because the DMG was written just as quick examples of converted content of older editions and a validation for DMs to run whatever way they want. That's why it has pages and pages of Planes content

It's just there to remind DMs of what the FR planes are.

This is why the DMG has been so roundly criticised, though. It's absolute trash. Easily and by far the worst DMG D&D has ever had (note 4E, whatever else you think of it, had a pretty great DMG, and amazing DMG2, a couple of pages re: Sigil aside). Notably even Crawford criticised it, IIRC, which I don't think he's really ever done before re: a 5E product. Honestly it would have doomed new players playing 5E if it wasn't for the fact that Critical Role etc. got big, and essentially taught people how to DM at a very high level (one nearly impossible to fully emulate, but you can still learn from it) in a way that the DMG utterly failed to do.

So I do hope 2024 is going to do a lot better in terms of making a DMG that's actually a DMG.

I just hope people don't get so blinded that that minimum standard is passed that they become uncritical of the 2024 DMG.