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

[Oofta]

So, I’m jumping back in after 40 some odd pages of comments, what did I miss?

The same things that were being argued about for the first dozen or so pages.

 

[Minigiant]

There probably is a sweet spot somewhere, if you want a lot more, maybe this is for you

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/homieandthedude/sky-zephyrs-5e

I don't think I want 250 or so pages on ship combat, that might be worse than 20

Sounds cool.

However it proves my point. Someone else is filling the void. A void left because 5e didn't go far enough.

Look at Strixhaven. It was cool.

However it didn't reach its potential.

1. The House Subclass system didn't work because 5e uses nonunifed subclass progression due to it being based on Gridfilling.
2. The setting is MTG first and not D&D first and limited its lore and mechanical design
3. The Magic School barely integrated non-full casters
4. The Magic School setting didn't offer new ways to be magical or to turn nonmagical classes magical

The TWO Magical schools in my homebrew setting incorporate D&D elements into it better. The Houses are of one school is aligned to the magics of D&D: Arcane, Divine, Primal, Psionic. The other school is based on founding and adventurer origins: the Nobles, the Poors, the Church, the Military, the Adventurers. The 3rd villainous school is tied to D&D enemies like fiends, mind flayers, and liches. The area is more linked to D&D elements and allows for better relationships between member of different groups.

Is Syonia controlled by illithids or is Poveratti? Which house has a cult of wizard supremacists?

We going a friendship sim because subclass design was not forward thinking at all.

 

[Deekin]

fundamentally if you take a guy whose idea of the fantasy genre is game of thrones and berserk, a guy whose idea of the fantasy genre is discworld and earthsea, and a guy whose idea of the fantasy genre is skyrim and dragon age, and you sit them down to play the game made by people whose idea of the fantasy genre was conan and lord of the rings and dying earth, and you aren't constantly talking to each other about what your genre, setting, and tone expectations are, you're going to have a bad time playing your fantasy roleplaying game.

 

[Minigiant]

fundamentally if you take a guy whose idea of the fantasy genre is game of thrones and berserk, a guy whose idea of the fantasy genre is discworld and earthsea, and a guy whose idea of the fantasy genre is skyrim and dragon age, and you sit them down to play the game made by people whose idea of the fantasy genre was conan and lord of the rings and dying earth, and you aren't constantly talking to each other about what your genre, setting, and tone expectations are, you're going to have a bad time playing your fantasy roleplaying game.

That's the fundamentally issue.

Like the 4 elements monk was bad because you had people who either didn't get ATLA or TLOK or wasn't enamored with it creating something based on a trend just for hype. And said "I did something. The DM can fix the rest."

You can't tell me a big Avatar fan made the Way of 4 Elements Monk.

 

[jgsugden]

... that is not a proof of it being an issue with others ignoring story

Care to give some examples?

I already did, but to cover it again:

First 'issue' raised in this thread: The books do not provide the players anything to do with their gold. The OP argued that gold "has no purpose". This seems to refer to the lack of a clear price tag for magic items to be bought (although there are rough guidelines), and minimal guidance on things like building a stronghold, running a business, etc... In the eyes of the OP, and in the eyes of many players (but not all as the OP suggests), money is pointless. The PCs get the money ... and it sits on their character sheet and never does anything.

So, how does story solve this? Think about what happens in real life when someone suddenly has a lot more money.

The church comes to you and asks you to donate so that they can build a new church in a neighboring town. You have a lot of people that suddenly want to be your friend, or that want you to invest in their business. Someone will come to you with something 'of great value' that only someone like you would appreciate. The local official comes to you to collect 'taxes'. You're the target of the thieves guild. A real estate agent contacts you to offer to sell you a property in the elite part of town - which means the PCs will have access to new opportunities.

And you might just say, "So what? That just takes the money away and the PC doesn't really get anything out of it!" In each of those situations, the money gave the PC power to direct the storyline. Do they support the church or buy their own manor? Each has ramifications. A PC without the money doesn't get to make those choices. It deepens the game, and the worldbuilding, around the PCs.

Second issue: 6 to 8 encounter expectation per adventuring day / long rest. Many DMs struggle because their PCs rest after every battle and always seem to be facing enemies when fully rested.

How does story solve this problem? Usually, the world is too complex to sit back and wait it out and take rests constantly.

Let's say that the brand new PCs encounter a goblin ambush along the road and then track the goblins back to their crag of a home that looks like a maw. There are two goblins at the cave entrance, some wolves penned up just inside the cave and then four more chambers with goblins inside of them within the cavern.

One group of PCs might take out the guards at the door, rest, take out the wolves, rest, take out one chamber of goblins, rest, take out more goblins in another chamber, rest, hit the next goblins in the next chamber, rest and then go after the boss goblins in the final chamber. That is something like 5 hours to 5 days in which none of the goblins left their rooms, discovered anything was wrong, etc... The adventure even assumes that the final leader might be ambushed with no idea anything is wrong ...

Another DM might run it with more of a real story to be told. That DM would sit down before the adventure and ask what these goblins do with their lives. Do they hunt for food? When? Do they do anything for fun? Do they have relationships? Why are they there? Just as a camp for ambushing the road, or is there another purpose? The module from which this is taken may provide some of these types of answers - but it takes all of 2 or 3 minutes to build it out much deeper. Then, with those answers in mind, you can decide how the place will operate in the absence of the PCs being caught so that you can have the goblins react more naturally. As a DM, I have a rough schedule for how the situation might unfold with goblins moving between rooms for natural purposes.

So how does this relate to the 6 to 8 encounters per day?

The PCs have a time limit when there is a story unfolding. From the moment they engage the guards there is a risk of being discovered. If they're discovered, the enemies will start to come at them. Will they come in waves if discovered or will they get organized and come in bulk?
The last PCs to go through this for me took out the goblins at the gate, but the snarling of the wolves and the rattling of chains drew the attention of two different groups of goblins that were 30 to 50 feet away. They dispatched the wolves but had to deal with a couple new problems (one 'environmental', another real combat) while an alarm was raised. They had just enough time to finish the combat before a larger group of enemies set upon them. That group saw that the PCs were slaughtering the goblins, so they did what goblins do best: Run! The PCs realized the fleeing goblins might raise an alarm so they tried to catch them before they could flee the caves.

Encounter 1: Road Ambush
Short Rest
Encounter 2: Guards at the door
Encounter 3: Wolves
Encounter 4: Environment situatrion and investigating creature (technically 2 encounters)
Encounter 5: The goblins trying to "break the line of the PCs and flee"
Encounter 6: PCs hunting down the goblins that escaped and finishing them off
Short Rest
Long Rest

This is what the designers intended. This is similar to how D&D has worked for dungeon exploration for decades in many games (although not all - many classic adventures are a hodgepodge of nonsensical adjacent threats). In general, when you're telling a story, it is more natural to see encounters flow together with short breaks, and that tends to result in the 6 to 8 encounter day working naturally.

I can go on with more examples ... but a lot of them boil down to what I said: A lot of these perceived problems just don't exist when the world is given the 'story' elements to make sure it feels lived in and real.

 

[Minigiant]

I can go on with more examples ... but a lot of them boil down to what I said: A lot of these perceived problems just don't exist when the world is given the 'story' elements to make sure it feels lived in and real.

The point I keep raising is.

5e doesn't teach DMs any of that while giving PCs more power.

In older editions you had stuff to do with your gold and had less ability to rest-nova a cave of goblins down.

That's the issue. 5e created a problem but didn't teach the solution. 5e relied on your DM having the experience to create the solution.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think part of the point is that it's supposed to be frustrating, in that it limits what the player can do in the game. This would put it in the same category as just about every other game rule. What encombrance does above and beyond this, however, is force not-always-welcome choices on the player as to what gear/loot/etc. should be kept vs what has to be left behind; and I posit choices like this are both realistic and worthwhile.

Why? You have simply said that you posit they are so, but not why they are so. What makes them worthwhile? Why is it good to have annoying tedium and bookkeeping?

And a minor point in favour of encumbrance is that it gives Strength - an otherwise secondary stat in 5e - something to do.

I mean, the issue here is that stats are stupidly designed, not that we should invent annoying systems to punish people for ignoring stats that were designed without a function.

In many sports and games the point of rules is to prevent bad (or foul) play, and the enforcement system is punishment-based: break a rule, you'll get a penalty of some sort; don't break any rules and you won't get any penalties.

But these exist in order to simply disengage players from, as you say, "foul" behaviors. They are not punished so long as they simply don't do certain things. That is quite a bit different from being punished for failing to do certain things, particularly when those things are mostly bookkeeping.

People deride this sort of stuff as "filling out your taxes" for a reason.

Encumbrance is kind of the same. Stay within the limits and the reward is that there's no penalties. Go beyond the limits and penalties will start to accrue, as enforced by the DM-as-referee.

Yes...I don't question any of that.

I'm asking what value that gives. Why this enhances the experience of play. Boiling down your post to its core points, you have simply said, "Yes, it is annoying, but it it still valuable." But I was asking why and how it is valuable, questions you never answered. Well, apart from the "it gives Strength value," which as I said is really a condemnation of how bad D&D stats are, not how encumbrance adds value to the experience. We tolerate rules that pose negative impositions because they do something worthwhile beyond the frustration. What is that, for encumbrance? Because the value gained from the price paid looks ever more dubious to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why? You have simply said that you posit they are so, but not why they are so. What makes them worthwhile? Why is it good to have annoying tedium and bookkeeping?


I mean, the issue here is that stats are stupidly designed, not that we should invent annoying systems to punish people for ignoring stats that were designed without a function.


But these exist in order to simply disengage players from, as you say, "foul" behaviors. They are not punished so long as they simply don't do certain things. That is quite a bit different from being punished for failing to do certain things, particularly when those things are mostly bookkeeping.

People deride this sort of stuff as "filling out your taxes" for a reason.


Yes...I don't question any of that.

I'm asking what value that gives. Why this enhances the experience of play. Boiling down your post to its core points, you have simply said, "Yes, it is annoying, but it it still valuable." But I was asking why and how it is valuable, questions you never answered. Well, apart from the "it gives Strength value," which as I said is really a condemnation of how bad D&D stats are, not how encumbrance adds value to the experience. We tolerate rules that pose negative impositions because they do something worthwhile beyond the frustration. What is that, for encumbrance? Because the value gained from the price paid looks ever more dubious to me.

Verisimilitude. These are problems that should exist in the imaginary world, so having to deal with makes that world more real.

 

[mamba]

However it proves my point. Someone else is filling the void. A void left because 5e didn't go far enough.

not sure, WotC would never release a 250 page book on this, just not worth their time. They go for the common denominator and rely on someone else filling in the gaps / going for the crumbs - and unlike any other RPG someone almost always will

Given that there are 400 backers, the demand is nowhere close to what it would need to be for WotC to care

 

[Minigiant]

not sure, WotC would never release a 250 page book on this, just not worth their time. They go for the common denominator and rely on someone else filling in the gaps / going for the crumbs - and unlike any other RPG someone almost always will

Given that there are 400 backers, the demand is nowhere close to what it would need to be for WotC to care

There is a medium 1.5 pages and 50 pages of combat rules that would have sold better than Spelljammer AAG.

5e provides the minimum. Kickbacker campaigns provide the maximum.
No one is providing the middle.

Note: I bought neither.