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

[Micah Sweet]

Not just lack of confidence in 3pp. My point was that the vast majority of players probably don't even go online to look and just play with their friends with the official books. They won't even know about the 3pp, but would see the optional systems in their purchased WotC books.

My players tend to come up with concept first, and are never completely happy with the official offerings, so they look for 3pp. A big reason for my house rule doc is just to keep them away from the D&D Wiki.

 

[Maxperson]

My players tend to come up with concept first, and are never completely happy with the official offerings, so they look for 3pp. A big reason for my house rule doc is just to keep them away from the D&D Wiki.

I would expect many online to be open to 3pp. That's cool that you allow it.

 

[jdrakeh]

One issue I've always had is subclasses being on a differing levelling stucture for different classes. They were going to standardise them in the revision but last I recall is that they went back on that change.

That's a big one for me, too. Another one is that some subclasses are just plain ineffective (mechanically) compared to others. I hear people complain about fighter subclasses and monk subclasses most often.

 

[M_Natas]

If encumbrance is so important to exploration that a big part is 'killed' by it, then exploration needs to go back to formula.

It's always bothered me that 'exploration' is always described as 'camping, but more annoying' which loads of fiddly logistics and punishments for not doing them, but nothing in the way of exploring: finding and interacting with interesting environments that should exist in a fantasy roleplaying game, but are consistently replaced by the same Vancouver forest half of Stargate: SG1 was filmed in with wandering monsters that contribute nothing to the story but a bit more annoying, fiddly attrition pretending to be gameplay.

But that is like a 100% on to the DM to put into the world. Like in a Homebrew-World as a DM if you want fantastic locations to find, you have to put them in. And in published adventures if you find them lacking in that regard that's also the DMs job to change them how the DMs want to have it.
Having fantastic locations is 100% on the DM and not a bad rules issue. And WotC has several books with cool examples of fantastic locations. From the DMG over Ebberon to Ravenloft and Witchlight to the adventure books.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But that is like a 100% on to the DM to put into the world. Like in a Homebrew-World as a DM if you want fantastic locations to find, you have to put them in. And in published adventures if you find them lacking in that regard that's also the DMs job to change them how the DMs want to have it.
Having fantastic locations is 100% on the DM and not a bad rules issue. And WotC has several books with cool examples of fantastic locations. From the DMG over Ebberon to Ravenloft and Witchlight to the adventure books.

Yeah, I homebrew exclusively, but I pull my fantastic locations from all sorts of places, game books, literature, TV & film, my own deranged imaginings. It's the only thing I ever use published adventures for.

 

[M_Natas]

Point of order. There are ship combat rules. They’re a bit quick and dirty but they are there.

This is a piece of misinformation that keeps getting repeated and shouldn’t be used as evidence of anything.

To be fair, the Ship Combat Rules in Spelljammer (without Ghosts of Saltmarsh) are basicly: fly towards each other until you are in a range that you can do standard d&d battle and commence from there. The 5e Spelljammer Battlerules break down if you do anything else. A chase? That would take forever, because distances are big and ships are all nearly equally fast. Destroying another ship with ship board weapons from a distance? Would take forever, too. Having anything else to do than to fire ship board weapons or move the ship? Also nope.

The 5e Spelljammer Ship combat rules are literally non existent. You can incorporate the Ghosts of Saltmarsh Rules, but those I still find bad.
In order for 5e Spelljammer to work for me, I had to create a 60 Page document to have all the stuff that what I think any DM would need to run a good spelljammer campaign.
Rules foe Wildspace-System-Creation.
Shipbattle-Rules.
Rules and Stuff for Upgrading and individualising your ship.
Navigation in Wildspace and the Astral Sea.
Better rules for how long air envelopes last.
Up to the simplest stuff like how long does it take for a ship to leave an atmosphere before it can go into spelljamming speed.

And there is still more stuff missing. Do Beast's like Kindori have a spelljamming speed? If not how can they be everywhere (like was said in one of the WotC Spelljammer Videos)? Like it seems that the whole distance thing is ignored. Voice Scavvers and Space Guppys are everywhere even though no animal can spelljam.
If you create a setting like Spelljammer you need to at least make some surface level explanations on how things like the space fish ecology works or what size categories planetar objects are.
With the 5e spelljammer rules that are there (+dmg, phb and mm) you can barley run the Adventure Module that comes with the Box. But there is nothing for the DM to build a homebrew adventure or to really understand the setting.
Like if I compare that to van Richtens ...
After reading Van Richtens Guide to Ravenloft I feel pretty confident that I can create my own Domains of dread and create my own Ravenloft Campaign. I already have great ideas for that.

With the 5e spelljammer set? Not so much. I needed the 2e books and some DMs Guild Products to Frankenstein me a complete product (and if somebody wnats it, if you can read german, it is the only german spelljammer product ont je dms guild. It is pwyw).
And the same problem I have with Strixhaven. The most important part is missing (I haven't read the whole book yet, just the first chapter, but so far I didn't see anything that could help me with that): How do I make a class room scenes interesting. But that is just not there, so far. If I want to do my own magical school setting, it is easier to start from scratching that to use the strixhaven book as a guide.

 

[M_Natas]

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.

That is a great example of how it should be done.
I think one Problem is, that a lot of new players come from computer games. And they have those problems.
Like even un Baldurs Gate 3 the world is not a living thing. I can spam long rests as much as I want as long as I have the resources. The world is on hold for me until I decide to interact with that specific thing.
The goblin cave is static and the evil boss guy can be ambushed even after I cleared out all the other rooms of the dungeon. That is the expectation and reality of most Videogames and a lot of people who never played TTRPGs before DM then the same way and than feel, that the TTRPG is broken.

 

[M_Natas]

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.

Encumbrance is a limitation. Limitations by itself invite creativity and are necessary. That is the reason we are playing D&D and not "make up a story without any rules".
In the special case the limitation of how much a character can carry gives the game strategic depth, invites dilemmas and problems to solve and makes the game feel more realistic.
Now the characters have to make strategic decisions on what and how much to carry of. Or if they get like a donkey to have more carrying capacity, but which also makes them less stealthy and the donkey can't or will not go into certain areas.
It put (depending on the Game) soft and hard limits on how far and quickly you can explore or travel.
Without encumberance, the rules for eating and drinking, the tracking of resources like Torches, Rations, Arrows ... you remove the strategic game aspect of exploration.
The interaction of encumbrance rules with the rest of the world creates the exploration game itself. Without that rule, there is no exploration game. It would devolve to just "I look for that thing in area x until I find it or until random encounters kill my group".
So, let's put it in an example, because most the rules discussion are useless unless you put them into a concrete context.

Our group of adventurers (heros) is tasked with finding the lost temple of Exemplia in the jungle of Hereitcouldbia. Their is a rival group (rivals) of adventurers also looking for the temple.

Now, what will the heros do? No matter if we use encumbrance and mundane ressource teacking or not, our heros will do some research to narrow down the area they need to search in for the lost temple. They did that. Now the narrow it down to an area of like twenty 6-mile hex fields to search. 10 of those are desperate, 5 are jungle, five are swampy. The area is like a 5 day travel away trough a jungle area.


Now, without encumbrance, they just go and search every hex field until the find clues.
They will have some random encounters like hazards, monsters, the rivals, other nocs, other ruins or cool locations, that will give clues and so on ... and unless they TPK by one of those encounters, they just heal, long rest and continue until they find the temple.

Now with encumbrance and ressource tracking, how will that adventure turn out?
First of all, they have to plan the expedition. They have to gather resources. They have to plan on how much food and water they bring. Will they decide to forage? Do they have somebody with the survival skill to navigate and somebody else with the survival skill to search for food and water? If not, do they have to hire an NPC, that helps with that? Do they decide to use spell slots (ressources!) to create food and water or do they decide that that is something they will do when they run out of other resources? Do they even have those spells? So they buy a donkey, a cart or hire NPCs to increase their carry capacity?
So let's say they want to travel lite. They don't trust the Hirellings in Adventuriatown and a donkey would slow them down. So they pack what they can. Rations for 20 days, water for 5 days. They think they can find enough clean water in the jungle.
They only have on guy with a survival skill proficiency. This guy navigates. So they don't have anybody to help with foraging.
But after 5 days they arrive. The have 15 days of food left and no water.
Now the one guy with the survival skill is looking for water, while the rest searches the first hex.
He finds a stream that seems to be clean, they can refill the water. They don't find anything jn the hex. They go to next hex. Search. 14 days worth of food. Oh no, a random thing happens ... rats go I to the food. Now they only have 6 days of food left.
barley enough to travel back! The survival guy is searching for water and food. He can just find enough for one day.
They continue to search. Now they don't find anything in the lush jungles. They barley have enough food to travel home, but the lost temple must be in the desert area. But they know, in the desert they will probably don't find food. Now they have to make decisions. In the meanwhile, they also have all those other random encounters our non-rncumberance group has. Maybe they meet the rivals who have a lot of food. Do they maybe steal from them? Or do they trade with the random NPC they meet?

Because of encumberance and resource management, the game got more depth, more realism, more decision points, a heightened difficulty. It improved the same scenario tenfold.

 

[M_Natas]

And you actually play through every single moment of that stuff? Have people make checks? Force negative consequences if players improperly break down their camps?

Because that's what was said earlier. That it's not just enough to recognize that these things exist. Handwaves are unacceptable. We must, in fact, levy penalties for failing to do things correctly.

No, you don't have to play everything out in minutiae. But for example after at a long rest I tell my players to remove a days worth of food / rations / water from their inventory.

 

[M_Natas]

Or, perhaps, they are giving people what they want.

Players have zero interest in ship to ship combat where each player takes a role - navigator, pilot, gunner, etc. They don’t want it.

At least every player I’ve tried to get to do it has. So WotC listened to fans and made a system that players actually want to play.



I mean I get it. I want a more detailed system too. But I know that what I want will never fly with players.

I think because having codified ship crew roles is stupid. That's why I don't like most of the Homebrew Ship combat rules, because they are like "every character pics a ship role and now only can do these things". Except for the Spelljammer Pilot you don't need codified rules.

In my Spelljammer Homebrew Rules, I added general actions every character can try to do and also some slightly additions to make the ship fights more interesting.
- motivate and/or command the crew.
Commanding part of the crew is obvious (man the ballista!), motivate, if it succeds, gives the crew advantage on the the thing that they are commanded to do (like the next attack with the ballista).

Repair the ship (during combat that gives temp. HP to the ship).

Heal crewman.

They can try to influence ship moral.

Ship damage does things to the ship (reducing air envelope, reducing speed).

Misshaps can happen (similar to the internal machines) that need to be repaired.


Ships now have to use up speed to turn (to make fights a little more tactical). Weapons have an firing arc (so no catapults firing backwards).

Spelljammer Pilots can use spell slots to increase the speed of the ship.

Like, my additnal battle rules are just 4 pages out of 50 for my Spelljammer Rules set.
Just something to have streamlined ship to ship combat that can go fast, is not boring for most of the characters and still allows tactical decisions.