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

[Yaarel]

For me the experience of immersion is a vivid sense of being there, like getting lost in a book. Pretty much, immersion requires Theater of the Mind playstyle.

Something that distracts me from immersion, is the use of minis. Switching from the first-person perspective of mind style to the third-person ‘fly on the wall’ perspective of minis breaks immersion − particularly when one of those minis is supposed to be me. I guess, if they arent me, and are something that my character in first-person perspective would observe, it doesnt bother me as much. Which is why drawing out a sketch of a new room to visually understand where everything is, usually wont disrupt my immersion.

Relatedly, the micromeasurements such as specific movement, forced movement, spell effect radiuses, and especially opportunity attack distances, all of which force me to think in terms of a ‘chess game’, destroy immersion.

I do enjoy the use of minis periodically − especially for the complex big bad boss fights or similar whose many creatures require minis to keep track of them. These minis completely destroy immersion. But the tactical chess game and the beautiful artwork of the minis and sometimes the use of beautiful dungeon tiles are a joy in their own right.

My favorite play style is mind style with simpler encounters, occasionally punctuated by more complex mini style encounters.

 

[JeffB]

Cyclic Initiative, and Vancian Casting- gaming the system type mechanics.

 

[Yaarel]

There are some rules that I find absurd. They dont relate to immersion per se, but they are exasperating during gameplay.



The worst one is how Dexterity can fall really, really, well, yet has somehow never jumped or climbed a day in its life. Relatedly Strength is the best tree climber in the world, but if it tries to walk across a branch it falls and dies. The splitting up of necessarily related functions into separate ability scores is kludgy and distracting. Relatedly, Charisma is social skills, but Wisdom is the ability to understand people. When one function requires an other, for me, it is nonsense and unappealing to split them up into separate ability scores.

 

[Yaarel]

With regard to hit points, I love 5e. For me, the visualization feels realistic when hit points are stamina and luck, eventuating in superficial damage, and culminating in the ‘luck runs out’ and going down at 0 hit points. I am glad, they are called ‘hit’ points rather than ‘health’ points. I think of a reallife boxing match. At first it is all stamina, eventually they get bloodied, but press on exhausted and sloppy, until one of them goes down because of the hit at zero hit points. Totally realistic to me. (Oppositely, the idea that a hero is stabbed thru the heart 20 times is ridiculous to me.)

All of that praise said, three things bother me about the hit point system.

When a creature finally does go down, with that proverbial stab thru the heart at zero hit points, the idea of popping back up without any consequences feels impossible. Whenever a character reaches zero hit points they must incur at least a chance of lingering wounds. The Exhaustion mechanic seems designed for the Barbarian class specifically, and it is awkward but serviceable to represent a lingering condition if reaching zero hit points.

There are no broken bones in D&D. People who complain about the Warlord ‘growing back an arm’ are speaking ignorantly. Because in D&D normal combat NEVER results in a broken arm or a lost limb. There are no mechnics for something like this to happen. The Warlord is simply inspiring resolve and facilitating alertness − the way a coach does during a boxing match − and therefore refreshes hit points. The problem of healing someone at zero hit points is because of the wider problem of anyone springing back up from zero without any consequences.

This relates to the third awkwardness of the hit point system. Reaching zero hit points and going unconscious is lethal. Note, this is mitigated by the rules that have the attacker decide whether the final attack causing zero hit points will be lethal or nonlethal. In other words, the boxer could choose to kill an opponent that goes down.

But, I would rather have zero hit points be unconsciousness with a chance of serious injury, and the attack can then hit the incapacitated opponent with a coup-de-grace to kill.

Finally, I would prefer if ‘death’ at zero hit points means: the loss of ‘life or limb’. Thus reaching zero always means unconscious only, but ‘death’ from failed saving throws normally means a broken arm or broken limb or broken nose, and only possibly means the loss of a limb or death from internal bleeding.

 

[Yaarel]

During 3e, I complained bitterly about vancian casting − especially in the context of keeping nonvancian classes underpowered compared to the vancian Wizard.

For me, I find the spontaneous 5e Wizard satisfying. It is everything I asked for. And I love it.

I think of leveled spell-slots as a convenience − as amounts of arcane energy that can be harnessed. I want to give the player the option to split a high level slot into one or more low level slots or viceversa. But the 5e spell point system is kludgy and awkward to use, and doubtful in balance. An excellent spell point system that is balanced and simple would be ideal to convert spell slots up or down for those few times it might be useful.

I feel the 5e Wizard is slightly underpowered. But then again, Rogue fans feel the Rogue is underpowered, and Fighter fans feel the Fighter is underpowered. So, I want to be more cautious before getting enthusiastic about any fixes, even if a class honestly needs a boost. The thing is, each class is frustrating in a different way, and there is a feeling of comparing apples to oranges. So sobriety and clear thinking are a priority.

 

[Yaarel]

For me, ‘immersion’ and ‘suspension of disbelief’ are two different things.

Immersion refers to a vivid first-person experience of an encounter.

Suspension of disbelief is what the awkward rules might violate.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

1) "You slept...POOF! Everyone's healed". The VERY first game in the FIRST 20 MINUTES of play when we checked healing and saw this. "Nope! First house rule is...you heal 1/2 of your normal Healing HD, rounding up, for free after a nice, solid 8+ hour sleep". So a 5th level fighter would heal 'naturally' 3d10 each morning. Still fast, but not insta-heal.

2) Level Advancement Speed. TOO DANG FAST!

3) Skill + Ability Pairing. I get the reason, but a lot of the time it just makes no dang sense. In particular, Perception. Clerics? CLERICS are the most eagle-eyed, rabbit-eared masters of perception? And Fighter types can climb walls like nobody's business...but a Thief can barely get over a 3' fence. Another rule that I modified right quick (basically the listed Stats for Skills are 'defaults', but if the situation warrants it, other Stats will be used...same with if the Player gives a description of HOW they are going about doing something and/or tools and items they are using).

4) Potentially Ridiculously High HP Totals. I would have much rather WotC designers went with some sort of 'damage reduction' as the baseline. So an Ogre might still only have 30hp, but all weapon attacks against it is reduced by 5 points with 0 damage being entirely possible. Something like that

^ _^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Arnwolf666]

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.

AnyOne that takes an arrow in the chest in my game is dead barring some magical restoration.

 

[Oofta]

AnyOne that takes an arrow in the chest in my game is dead barring some magical restoration.

Do they automatically become a town guard if they take an arrow the knee?

 

[iserith]

This.

What I find either hilarious or annoying (annarious?) is the people arguing that something CAN'T break someone else's immersion, because rules, or something.

I would say that there's a part of this where the person whose "immersion is breaking" is allowing that to happen. One can change the channel, change the rules, and change oneself. Rarely do I see anyone doing the latter which is unfortunate in my view. Even more unfortunate as I see it is trying to change others because of an unwillingness to change oneself. It's very liberating in my experience to be able to just set these issues aside and never let them bother me again.