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

[Lanefan]

Isn't this WotC telling people how to play the game - as in, in this game light and darkness matter more than digging and burying?

But obviously in a pirate-themed game, digging and burying probably matter more than the radius of torch or lantern light.

And in a game of grave-robbing it's likely that both* matter equally.

* - though here it'd be digging and unearthing rather than burying...

 

[Hussar]

Why would a stein be made of wood and not ceramic or leather?

And, this, boys and girls, is why having a bit more information in the PHB is a good thing. I've never heard of a wooden stein before. Steins are made of ceramic, AFAIK. Now, I'm probably 100% wrong. There are very likely wooden steins. It never occured to me to think of that. And, this is where things get ... dicey at the table. When the DM is thinking X and the player is thinking Y and miscommunication hijinks ensue.

 

[pemerton]

Why would a stein be made of wood and not ceramic or leather?

And, this, boys and girls, is why having a bit more information in the PHB is a good thing. I've never heard of a wooden stein before. Steins are made of ceramic, AFAIK. Now, I'm probably 100% wrong. There are very likely wooden steins. It never occured to me to think of that. And, this is where things get ... dicey at the table. When the DM is thinking X and the player is thinking Y and miscommunication hijinks ensue.

Wikipedia to the rescue! Beer stein - Wikipedia says it's stoneware. Though it goes on to mention "pewter, porcelain or even silver, wood or crystal glass".

We need a random stein composition table!

 

[M_Natas]

Honestly?

Better than the Dm just deciding it shatters because they want that damn door closed.

If we're going to us Rulings Not Rules to continue D&D's history of fostering toxic DM behavior, well time to take something back for the people.

I think that is a big issue. People playing with DMs they don't trust and think are toxic.

 

[M_Natas]

I guarantee you that, if a DM declared that the closing doors would crush the stein, even if there's every reason in the narrative to believe that's true based on how strong the doors are vs. the stein, without hard rules, many players would pitch a fit.

Sounds like horrible players. Unless the Stein is magical in nature or made oyt of steel, it could be destroyed by a mere wooden door.
As a German I consider myself an expert in all beer related topics ^^

 

[Hussar]

I think that is a big issue. People playing with DMs they don't trust and think are toxic.

See, but that's the thing. It doesn't even have to be that extreme.

Take the silly example of the beer stein. Now, I've never heard of a wooden beer stein. To me, it's ceramic (or stoneware, according to Wikipedia). So, when the DM tells me that my wooden stein is crushed by the door, it's not unreasonable for me to say, "Hang, on. Wooden? Since when is a beer stein made of wood?" Which, honestly, can sideline a game for far, far too long as people start digging out their phones to google beer steins, which inevitably turns into a discussion about that great brew pub Dave went to last weekend and have you been there yet? No? Oh, you really have to go. Yah, it's good, but I like that other one better. It's got pewter steins.

So on and so forth.

I remember one DM telling me that my path was blocked by thorns. Not magical. Just thorn bushes. I said, hang on, I'm in full plate mail. Why would I care about thorns? I'll just bull my way through. Which turned into a whole thing, mostly because the DM just didn't want us to go in that direction.

Guidelines in the game can really help nip that sort of thing in the bud before it turns into an issue.

 

[M_Natas]

But that IS kind of what this industry has always been. And not just D&D. We’re always making up worlds, antagonists, dungeons, supervillains, planetary systems, friendly NPCs, horrific conspiracies of cultists, etc etc.

Yeah, making up the fun stuff. I pay a RPG producing company the bucks to create the rules and mundane stuff that is not so fun to create or to hard to create.
Like I could definitely create by myself a description on every mundane item in the PHB that incorporates how it interacts with the existing rules.

Shovel - with this standard shovel you can dig up a 5 feet cube of loose earth or sand in an hour. You can dig up a two feet cube of clay in an hour.

Tent - a 2 Person tent that protects people inside from light rain and light snowfall and light to strong winds. It isolates against cold weather.

(aside from the problem that all the weather phenomena with the tent actually don’t do anything to the players, that should exist, too).

I could do that for any equipment. But that is not a really fun thing to do. That's one of the reasons I pay 50 bucks for a book.

 

[M_Natas]

Why would a stein be made of wood and not ceramic or leather?

And, this, boys and girls, is why having a bit more information in the PHB is a good thing. I've never heard of a wooden stein before. Steins are made of ceramic, AFAIK. Now, I'm probably 100% wrong. There are very likely wooden steins. It never occured to me to think of that. And, this is where things get ... dicey at the table. When the DM is thinking X and the player is thinking Y and miscommunication hijinks ensue.

Yeah, and the different assumptions on what X is if it is not defined in the rulebook is probably one of the things that leads to most fights on the tables between players and dms.

Like, early on in my first campaign I played in (Lost Mines) the group was camping and resting in the wild. My cleric was in heavy armor. I assumed she would be sleeping in armor (or more to the point, I wasn't thinking about it until it came up) , my DM assumed she took of the armor.

Which, because of a Dex of 8 meant an AC difference of like 9. From 18 to 9 AC.

That led to a discussion ...

Because I wouldn't have build my character in a way that made her totally helpless in her sleep.

So this different assumptions of non defined rules have a direct impact on play and survivability.

And we didn't had Xanathar yet back then which had rules for sleeping in armor.

 

[Aldarc]

I understand that some people want equipment lists to matter for the game, but I also would suggest that it's fairly clear that they don't matter to most tables of 5e D&D.

I also think that it's fairly telling that a lot of game designers and games even in the OSR scene are shifting to more abstract equipment/loadout/encumbrance systems or choosing to focus on particular items for the survival/exploration mini-game.

I think that there are more elegant, simpler ways to handle equipment than simply giant lists of things that rarely come up in play. I think that there are easier ways to make equipment matter.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Yeah, making up the fun stuff. I pay a RPG producing company the bucks to create the rules and mundane stuff that is not so fun to create or to hard to create.
Like I could definitely create by myself a description on every mundane item in the PHB that incorporates how it interacts with the existing rules.

Shovel - with this standard shovel you can dig up a 5 feet cube of loose earth or sand in an hour. You can dig up a two feet cube of clay in an hour.

Tent - a 2 Person tent that protects people inside from light rain and light snowfall and light to strong winds. It isolates against cold weather.

(aside from the problem that all the weather phenomena with the tent actually don’t do anything to the players, that should exist, too).

I could do that for any equipment. But that is not a really fun thing to do. That's one of the reasons I pay 50 bucks for a book.

The hell of it is, they could have gone super simple..x equipment gives advantage on y skill checks for z type of activity

They already do this for the crowbar. There are still ways that'd likely be unsatisfactory, but it'd at least be consistent with a lot of the 5e design ethos.