D&D 5E What are your biggest immersion breakers, rules wise?

[iserith]

It depends on your definition of "immersion." It means different things to different people.

Commonly this is taken to mean "being made to think of the game as a game" or something like that. But since I know it's a game, this doesn't bother me.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

1) Fast Healing. It's inconsistent for a wound to leave you within six seconds of bleeding to death, while also recovering naturally after a nap. You need to pick an interpretation, and stick with it.

2) Fast leveling. Training for ten years is irrelevant, next to a week spent fighting orc patrols in the field. It should take more than a month to go from Magic Missile to Meteor Swarm.

 

[Oofta]

One of the reasons I switched to the alternate rules was because healing was too easy. You can always justify it as HP being a combination of exhaustion and "aches and pains". At a certain point HP don't make a lot of sense, but I've never seen an alternative that works better that's worth the overhead.

There's still the healer feat that lets you heal X number of HP if you have the feat. I fluff that as low level magic bandages.

With 5E we've gotten rid of quite a few of the things that were immersion breakers or can be worked around. I'm not going to get into 4E too much other than to say that it constantly shoved "This is a game" rules in my face.

Some things that are immersion breakers or just don't make sense to me

Weapons

• Longbow distance and requiring only dexterity. Okay, I know you can fire an arrow for 2 football fields. But with pinpoint accuracy? Ignoring all cover? Nah. Even 50 yards is pushing it. Oh, and it takes quite a bit of muscle to pull one.
• Swords are over-used. Variations of spears and halberds were a lot more common, swords were a backup weapon and pretty useless against heavy armor.

Armor

• Armor is too good. Rather, the fact that PCs wear armor everywhere. At the tavern? Sure I've got my field plate on. Why not? Part of that is because of the next point...
• Dex is too good. Related to the previous, I get that some classes have supernatural protection (barbarians, monks). But having steel strong enough to stop any sword blow offers a lot better defense than jumping out of the way. There are a few historical instances of people not bothering with armor in combat, but it's extremely rare. Oh, and how exactly are you dodging an attack you can't see coming?
• Armor is not good enough. Hurting someone in a full suit of plate armor is really difficult. Your best bet is to bang them on the head enough times to cause a concussion or wrestle them to the ground so you can stab them in the face.

I guess I'm not too worried about some of the other things like picking up a new class. If it matters, I justify it as the fighter's been going to night school and finally picked up that second degree.

 

[Bardic Dave]

In 5e, a character is not even visibly wounded until they’re at half-HP. And at that point they’re not necessarily seriously injured, they’re just visibly battered, bruised, and bloody. It’s not until hitting 0 HP that a character takes a potentially life-threatening wound.

If that paradigm of HP breaks your immersion, I understand. Personally, the idea that a human(oid) can take six arrows to the chest and survive to even take an 8-hour rest is far more immersion-breaking than the idea that those six successful longbow attacks were not actually direct hits, but narrow grazes and glancing blows that left you harried and worn down but not injured badly enough that a night’s rest won’t have you back on your feet. But to each their own.

PCs who have been reduced to 0 HP—i.e. PCs who have taken "a potentially life threatening wound"—also recover all their hit points after 8 hours of rest, so Clever's objection stands even if we accept your reframing of the issue.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the full-hp-after-a-single-night's-rest thing, but I do think your response misses the point.

 

[Leatherhead]

The undead fortitude power that zombies have. There are very few times I remember thinking "this is stupid" while playing D&D.
I still recall the painful first encounter with it. No, the zombies didn't even knock anyone out, let alone kill anyone. What happened is they simply wouldn't die, even after we had obviously defeated them. This lead to a situation where we were honestly just considering shoving them down a well, blocking it off, and walking away.

 

[Campbell]

• Abstract Martial resources like daily rage, Second Wind, Action Surge and the like.
• Hit Dice and long rests.
• Martial characters who could not credibly fight the things they fight.
• Bounded accuracy. Regularly fighting giants, but still being scared of kobolds.

 

[Lanefan]

Add one more voice to the unrealistic resting/healing/recovery rates.

For me, immersion takes a hit pretty much any time a game rule prevents me* from doing something I should be realistically able to do, or allows me* to do something I normally wouldn't be able to do - unless a) magic is involved and-or b) the setting we're in already operates differently than reality (e.g. moon-like gravity, a warped-physics dreamworld, etc.)

* - as in, my character.

 

[darjr]

Having to constantly justify different mechanics “in fiction”. Like shoving a pit.
Once in a while or for a particular mechanic, that’s OK. But a barrage of effects and statuses and nonsensical “reskins” are not great for me. Exhausting as the DM.

 

[dave2008]

Hit point inflation. The fact that you gain HP every level used to really bother me. Fortunately we have a house rule for that.

 

[RSIxidor]

I find rolling initiative to be immensely immersion breaking. Shifting from other modes to combat always feels abrasive to me. In the games where its used, its integral and not easy to excise. A lot of people do enjoy it and I can see why. I personally don't love it.

HP out the wazoo. When 5E first announced bounded accuracy, I thought it would also have small HP numbers. I was sad to find out I was very wrong about that. I'd like a system where 2 HP a level would be significant.