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

[Micah Sweet]

Good point, I tend to forget about them even though I've gotten some stuff there as well.

I'm pretty sure they say, "Hi, Micah!" whenever I log in.

 

[Gammadoodler]

So now we have to have a chart for what kind of material your drinking containers are made of (why stop at beer steins), detailed charts on how much you can dig presumably including adjustments for soil type, details on how easy or difficult it is to get through all types of vegetation, a temperature chart for tents which includes different types of tents, detailed descriptions for all sorts of tools and miscellaneous devices. After all, how can we possibly live if we don't know how much extra weight you can cart around if you don't have rules for wheelbarrows?

I'm reminded of the 3.x climbing charts with some of this. They had a chart that gave the DC for climbing based on the type of wall. Problem is, it was still completely up to the DM what the wall was made of and how rough it was. It gave the semblance of simulation, giving DMs and players a sense of it not being DM fiat but it was all an illusion.

I remember discussions about the Wilderness Survival Guide from 2E and how useless we thought it was. Yes, you had detailed rules about things like tents, but the rules were not particularly realistic, nor were they helpful. Yes, it had (bad) rules on how strong a wind the tent could stand up against, but again it was all just an illusion because the DM had to decide how strong the wind was blowing.

If you want more equipment it always came from supplements mostly made by TSR that never really paid much attention to whether or not the supplements were profitable. The difference now is that WOTC has outsourced all those supplements and they are published on the Dmsguild. If you want more detail, it's still out there, I've purchased a few myself. This is not a "true issue". It's a problem with people not accepting that the business model has changed and that the supplements are still out there, they're just not published by WOTC.

P.S. Has there ever been a guideline for shovels?

I think different people would disagree about the level of detail needed for these activities. Some would love those charts, some would have no use for them whatsoever.

I think they would all agree that players should have some reasonable expectation for how a piece of equipment is going to help them, and/or what they miss out on if they don't have it. Basically what are they getting for their gold.

If the answer is "nothing at all" or "maybe nothing, maybe a whole bunch depending on how nice your GM is", then it either should be called out as such or it shouldn't be in the rulebook.

And as people have said repeatedly, there is a world of ground between no mechanical guidance whatsoever, and detailed soil and weather charts.

Wanting more than nothing does not mean people want everything.

 

[Cadence]

I think different people would disagree about the level of detail needed for these activities. Some would love those charts, some would have no use for them whatsoever.

I think they would all agree that players should have some reasonable expectation for how a piece of equipment is going to help them, and/or what they miss out on if they don't have it. Basically what are they getting for their gold.

If the answer is "nothing at all" or "maybe nothing, maybe a whole bunch depending on how nice your GM is", then it either should be called out as such or it shouldn't be in the rulebook.

And as people have said repeatedly, there is a world of ground between no mechanical guidance whatsoever, and detailed soil and weather charts.

Wanting more than nothing does not mean people want everything.

Strength/damage
to crush/break
thick /thin
strong metal/soft methal/hard wood/soft wood/stone/glass/leather/cloth ?

 

[Gammadoodler]

Strength/damage
to crush/break
thick /thin
strong metal/soft methal/hard wood/soft wood/stone/glass/leather/cloth ?

Sorry. Not parsing what is meant here? It reads a bit like a haiku.

 

[Oofta]

I think different people would disagree about the level of detail needed for these activities. Some would love those charts, some would have no use for them whatsoever.

I think they would all agree that players should have some reasonable expectation for how a piece of equipment is going to help them, and/or what they miss out on if they don't have it. Basically what are they getting for their gold.

If the answer is "nothing at all" or "maybe nothing, maybe a whole bunch depending on how nice your GM is", then it either should be called out as such or it shouldn't be in the rulebook.

And as people have said repeatedly, there is a world of ground between no mechanical guidance whatsoever, and detailed soil and weather charts.

Wanting more than nothing does not mean people want everything.

Has D&D ever had information on how much dirt you can move with a shovel?

EDIT: Has any TTPRG that doesn't abstract stuff out had rules for how much dirt you can move with a shovel? How did they do it?

 

[pemerton]

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.

Just that they had a chance to use an approach they'd already leveraged all over the place

I saw what you did there!

 

[Cadence]

Sorry. Not parsing what is meant here? It reads a bit like a haiku.

Sorry, it didn't format well in one line and trying to get that right I forgot to put in an explanation.

Would a nice table that said what strength or damage it took to hurt different kinds of materials be enough? It feels like you would only need it to say it was thick or thin and what the material was. So if you knew what the stein was made of you would have what you needed.

[I would not be surprised if this is in the 5e DMG already. I am the cliche in that regard.]

 

[pemerton]

Has D&D ever had information on how much dirt you can move with a shovel?

EDIT: Has any TTPRG that doesn't abstract stuff out had rules for how much dirt you can move with a shovel? How did they do it?

The AD&D DMG (p 106) has a chart for the cubic volume of rock mined, per 8 hours labour per minor. On the same page, it also has a note that "The cost of the ditch 100' in length, 10' deep, and 20' wide assumes that a crew of 3-4 men work for six weeks. If soil is heavy clay, time will be doubled." From that we can extrapolate: if 20,000 cubic feet of soil that's not heavy clay takes 147 days of work, one day of digging is about 140 cubic feet. So that's around 10 to 15 cubic feet per hour of work.

 

[Composer99]

It's fair to say the rules have to stop somewhere. The question is... where? For the designers of D&D, that's where its market position - and therefore its multiple player constituencies whose preferences are sometimes at odds with one another - becomes a "true issue" for the game. But on the whole, I agree that for many of these things, the game would be better served to "pick a lane", be upfront that that is what it is doing, and provide either an optional rules module for people who want more (or less) than the game's default or (better) guidelines for DMs on how to use the game's ostensibly extensible resolution framework (ability checks) to fill in the gap.

I feel the perceived need to be consistent with 5e's design ethos has stymied game design, in WotC and third party alike. Who said their ethos needs to be followed anyway? It's hardly Platonic design.

Who says the 5e design ethos doesn't need to be followed, and on what basis can they demonstrate that their proposed replacement is actually better?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Wanting more than nothing does not mean people want everything.

That's always the excuse, right? We can't have the bare minimum because then we'd expect literally everything.

I wish people begged of my work like that and my boss listened to them.

"If Vaal gave you a report today, you'll expect an analysis of every transaction that ever existed. So he should be able to nap and play Minecraft for this existing salary."