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

[Lanefan]

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.

Have you considered going to an old-school edition or game with much more randomization in char-gen, such that players can't really come in with pre-conceived character ideas but instead have to react to what the dice give them?

Just spitballing ideas for changing or breaking that "my character concept is everything" way of thinking.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

That's just it - in the big thread on pillars of play recently, there were certainly some for whom even the concept of downtime was almost anathaema.

"Get to the action" isn't always the good advice some seem to think it is.

 

[Lanefan]

Ha! I'll tell you what happened in my 2e Spelljammer game. The Dwarf Fighter wanted to attack people in melee.

"You'll have to wait until your ship can get alongside to their ship so you can board. Why not man the catapult?"

"Catapult! Yes, that's it! I get on the catapult and launch myself at the other ship!"

Should I have made him take the hull point damage (1 hull point = 10 hp) for splattering against the side of the enemy ship? Probably. But he was having so much fun that I gave him some token damage and sat back and watched the look of pure joy on the player's face as he massacred pirates while everyone else was screwing around with the ship.

You were very nice to that Dwarf.

Were I DM I'd have brought up a few cautions first:

--- in case you miss the ship, what are you in for armour and can you swim in it, or for that matter can you swim at all? Edit: just noticed it was Spelljammer; so make that "how are you gonna stop yourself from drifting away into space?"
--- you realize if you do land on the other ship you're gonna be outnumbered about 50-to-1 with no help coming for many rounds?
--- do you have any means of slowing yourself down in flight or are you planning to land with a splat?

Then if the player had gone ahead with it anyway, I'd have had no hesitation in killing said Dwarf dead if that's what the dice decided.

 

[James Gasik]

You were very nice to that Dwarf.

Were I DM I'd have brought up a few cautions first:

--- in case you miss the ship, what are you in for armour and can you swim in it, or for that matter can you swim at all? Edit: just noticed it was Spelljammer; so make that "how are you gonna stop yourself from drifting away into space?"
--- you realize if you do land on the other ship you're gonna be outnumbered about 50-to-1 with no help coming for many rounds?
--- do you have any means of slowing yourself down in flight or are you planning to land with a splat?

Then if the player had gone ahead with it anyway, I'd have had no hesitation in killing said Dwarf dead if that's what the dice decided.

Oh I realized then that it was an insane action- if the to-hit roll went badly, he could have ended up floating off into wildspace. Even with a hit, he could have ended up, as I mentioned, splattered on the side of the hull and taken serious if not mortal damage. The chances of ending up on deck, or close enough to grab rigging (or maybe hitting a mast) were slim, and I could have asked for a Dex check to not end up orbiting the ship's gravity plane.

But none of those outcomes would have served the needs of the game. I'd have a dead player now sitting out the rest of the session until I could introduce a new PC for them. I was already certain that the players were going to win the engagement, as it was just a stepping stone to the next confrontation (I was running "Letters of Marque"). Normally, I do let the dice decide; certainly, if the player's Dwarf had died, he couldn't blame me, it was his own doing, which, in my mind, if someone is to have a character die, that's a reasonable circumstance.

But in this instance, I didn't see how it would make the game any more fun (maybe as a cautionary tale, or for people to recall "that one time Fitz committed suicide by catapult"). So instead, I gave them "that one time Fitz launched himself at an enemy ship!".

Ironically, the Dwarf didn't last until the end of the campaign; he eventually decided to go out in a blaze of glory- he'd acquired a powerful magical gauntlet that made an explosion when he punched people with it (thus with both him and the target being in the blast) and eventually decided to use it to take out a Hammership (and himself) by detonating the ship's magazine (it was stocking bombards).

Another death I can say I was satisfied with, as he was able to leave an impact (heh) on the game.

 

[overgeeked]

For me, the "true issues" with 5E largely stem from it trying to be all things to all gamers. It isn't focused on any one thing so it doesn't do anything particularly well.

It wants to be a monster beat 'em up game, but the monster and encounter design are almost universally recognized as bad. Combats drag out because most monsters are boring sacks of hit points with nothing special to do. The default assumptions of the game result in utterly boring and unchallenging fights that are cakewalks for the PCs.

It wants to be a story-focused game, but whatever focus on story you get is provided by the referee and players rather than the game itself, i.e. the game itself provides zero support for this...yet it seems to be one of the main selling points. This is compounded by the fact that support for non-combat encounters is effectively non-existent yet the game claims that social interaction and exploration are pillars of play.

It wants to be a life sim, but all the life sim elements amount to fiddly nonsense that most gamers were handwaving by 2E. It also utterly undermines most of the life sim elements by making them trivial to overcome, see the proliferation of darkvision, infinite light, wilderness navigation, foraging, etc that are so easy they might as well be automatic.

If it would pick one thing to focus on, it would be a much better game and resolve whatever "true issues" it has.

 

[Hussar]

Everyone but you.

Naw. I get it. And the boarding part is fun. And we still get all the exploration stuff and whatnot.

It’s a fairly minor price to pay really.

 

[Hussar]

I agree with most of this post except for one point:

You can actually have both. There is no reason why good, simple, and fun minigame subsystems for equipment resource tracking, exploration hazards, things to buy with gold, ship-to-ship combat, mass combat, and others that I am currently not thinking about, would make the game LESS popular. Maybe if they were all REQUIRED to play D&D, but as opt-in optional subsystems? No, they would only be good for the game as a whole. People don't HAVE to use them.

The problem now is that people who DO want to use them have to do a lot of homebrewing or turn to 3pp to get systems that are any good.

All IMHO of course!

What the difference between having sub-systems in the game or having 3pp systems that do the same thing?

 

[Hussar]

Have you considered going to an old-school edition or game with much more randomization in char-gen, such that players can't really come in with pre-conceived character ideas but instead have to react to what the dice give them?

Just spitballing ideas for changing or breaking that "my character concept is everything" way of thinking.

Sigh.

One more time.

This has been an issue since SECOND Edition. As in the time when we all rolled stats. FFS I already SOLVED the problem for my game.

I solved the problem by listening to my players and cooperating with them instead of trying yer again to force my preferences on them.

I want to run a naval based campaign because pirates and mobility and having a crew and all the things that go with that. Sacrificing ship to ship combat is relatively minor when I know no one at the table wants to do it.

Biggest problem in DND? Dms who think they have the right to ram their preferences down player’s throats.

 

[Hussar]

Oh I realized then that it was an insane action- if the to-hit roll went badly, he could have ended up floating off into wildspace. Even with a hit, he could have ended up, as I mentioned, splattered on the side of the hull and taken serious if not mortal damage. The chances of ending up on deck, or close enough to grab rigging (or maybe hitting a mast) were slim, and I could have asked for a Dex check to not end up orbiting the ship's gravity plane.

But none of those outcomes would have served the needs of the game. I'd have a dead player now sitting out the rest of the session until I could introduce a new PC for them. I was already certain that the players were going to win the engagement, as it was just a stepping stone to the next confrontation (I was running "Letters of Marque"). Normally, I do let the dice decide; certainly, if the player's Dwarf had died, he couldn't blame me, it was his own doing, which, in my mind, if someone is to have a character die, that's a reasonable circumstance.

But in this instance, I didn't see how it would make the game any more fun (maybe as a cautionary tale, or for people to recall "that one time Fitz committed suicide by catapult"). So instead, I gave them "that one time Fitz launched himself at an enemy ship!".

Ironically, the Dwarf didn't last until the end of the campaign; he eventually decided to go out in a blaze of glory- he'd acquired a powerful magical gauntlet that made an explosion when he punched people with it (thus with both him and the target being in the blast) and eventually decided to use it to take out a Hammership (and himself) by detonating the ship's magazine (it was stocking bombards).

Another death I can say I was satisfied with, as he was able to leave an impact (heh) on the game.

This is the way.

 

[Lanefan]

Oh I realized then that it was an insane action- if the to-hit roll went badly, he could have ended up floating off into wildspace. Even with a hit, he could have ended up, as I mentioned, splattered on the side of the hull and taken serious if not mortal damage. The chances of ending up on deck, or close enough to grab rigging (or maybe hitting a mast) were slim, and I could have asked for a Dex check to not end up orbiting the ship's gravity plane.

But none of those outcomes would have served the needs of the game.

And here I say the needs of the game have to take second place to the integrity of the game. Sure there's a chance the Dwarf can pull this off, but the dice have to go his way and if they don't then so be it.

And I say this as a player who has lost many a character trying gonzo moves along the same vein as this.

Ironically, the Dwarf didn't last until the end of the campaign; he eventually decided to go out in a blaze of glory- he'd acquired a powerful magical gauntlet that made an explosion when he punched people with it (thus with both him and the target being in the blast) and eventually decided to use it to take out a Hammership (and himself) by detonating the ship's magazine (it was stocking bombards).

Another death I can say I was satisfied with, as he was able to leave an impact (heh) on the game.

That's a cool one. Like it!