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

[Vaalingrade]

I absolutely do not respect whatever purpose might be served by needless beancounting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You say "be deathly afraid of", reality says "find it tedious and without purpose."

It amounts to the same thing. The second phrasing just sounds more palatable.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yea because opening a door takes up an hour or more of play time.

Repeatedly.

Look I’m just the messenger here. I agree with you. But I’m telling you that we’re very much the minority here.

I fixed the problem in Spelljammer. Nothing can cross gravity planes. So spell effects no ranged weaponry.

So encounters always start at the point of boarding. Everyone is happy.

Everyone but you.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The biggest problem is scale. DnD is terrible when you have 20-30 combatants. Over 100? Sure that’s not too bad. You can abstract a lot into mass combat rules. But 20-60? It just doesn’t work worth’s damn.

Yet another problem that 4e solved that 5e backtracked on. You can use "swarm" style rules to create units (groups) of 5-10 people that act like a single creature and run combat normally. When they're "bloodies" they're considered to have around half their numbers, and when they're dead, they can (or not, depending on build) drop down to a single surviving creature (which can be fun).

It's too gamist for some people, I expect, but it works well. I once ran a party defending a fort with ~40 "followers" fight against a horde of ~200 skeletal warriors using these rules, and it was awesome (and not at all cumbersome). It was a BIG fight - bigger than most - and took up most of a session, but it was pretty epic.

 

[Parmandur]

Yet another problem that 4e solved that 5e backtracked on. You can use "swarm" style rules to create units (groups) of 5-10 people that act like a single creature and run combat normally. When they're "bloodies" they're considered to have around half their numbers, and when they're dead, they can (or not, depending on build) drop down to a single surviving creature (which can be fun).

It's too gamist for some people, I expect, but it works well. I once ran a party defending a fort with ~40 "followers" fight against a horde of ~200 skeletal warriors using these rules, and it was awesome (and not at all cumbersome). It was a BIG fight - bigger than most - and took up most of a session, but it was pretty epic.

Sooo...Chainmail?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

That's a point that I hadn't actually considered. I imagine that that might have some impact as well. Although, that being said, every single AL adventure is 3rd party. WotC doesn't actually make any AL adventures anymore, I don't think. But, on the player's side, you are absolutely right.

Your last sentence is exactly right. Weirdly, the very same players who play "WotC or Bust!" don't usually care if the ADVENTURE is produced by WotC. Only the RULES.

Which usually means character-building rules, but also any major sub-system. Most of them also don't care if you use 3PP monsters, especially once they get to understand that 3PP monsters are often more fun to fight!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yet another problem that 4e solved that 5e backtracked on. You can use "swarm" style rules to create units (groups) of 5-10 people that act like a single creature and run combat normally. When they're "bloodies" they're considered to have around half their numbers, and when they're dead, they can (or not, depending on build) drop down to a single surviving creature (which can be fun).

It's too gamist for some people, I expect, but it works well. I once ran a party defending a fort with ~40 "followers" fight against a horde of ~200 skeletal warriors using these rules, and it was awesome (and not at all cumbersome). It was a BIG fight - bigger than most - and took up most of a session, but it was pretty epic.

Level Up has statblocks for similar large swarms.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Again, I want to stress that this is literally dozens of players, different groups, three or four different editions, and multiple countries.

This isn’t just one group. This is what happens every single time I try. Players want to play their characters. Spending an hour or more, multiple time over a campaign, playing something that isn’t their character is a non-starter for a lot of players IME.

If it was one time in a campaign that’s one thing. But we’re talking about something that’s going to happen repeatedly.

I feel you. I'm a big fan of Naval History and I've had a similar experience to you. Not quite as bad, as I have often been able to manage to run 2-5 rounds of ship-to-ship combat while closing for a boarding action with success when I have a good rules subsystem (most of which I've always had to modify - they're always either too complicated or too simple).

The current WotC rules (both Saltmarsh AND Spelljammer) don't really work at all, without a LOT of banging them into shape. I can't imagine that anyone can run them RAW.

But I can make them work for a couple of rounds that players enjoy. It's work though!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Level Up has statblocks for similar large swarms.

Yes they do! That's because it's a good idea!

And it's not like they can't be done in 5e. The rules set doesn't prohibit them - they just didn't make any beyond the old "pile of rats" and "swarm of scarabs" and such.

 

[Scott Christian]

I know I am really late to the thread, but is gold an actual problem for people? We use it all the time. It works just fine. The only time I've not seen it work is when people assume their PCs are adventuring non-stop for years on end or for DMs that do nothing with downtime.
And everyone knows I think the DM's Guide was very well done. I am sorry that it wasn't great for beginners. But even for the tiny-bit-experienced, it worked well.