D&D 5E What D&D Does That is So Good: A Celebration of 5e's Advantages

[jayoungr]

Regardless of how I answer, that's just moving the goal posts, now isn't it?

I didn't think so; I thought I was clarifying my original question. You said 5e in general was superhero-based, which I assumed meant from the start, as something baked into the system or at least its presentation. If you are just thinking of the armorer artificer, then that would be more like "5E is becoming a superhero game," rather than "5E has always been a superhero game."

 

[Aldarc]

I didn't think so; I thought I was clarifying my original question. You said 5e in general was superhero-based, which I assumed meant from the start, as something baked into the system or at least its presentation. If you are just thinking of the armorer artificer, then that would be more like "5E is becoming a superhero game," rather than "5E has always been a superhero game."

You are welcome to infer what you want from my answer but this is undeniably you moving the goalposts regardless of what I answered.

 

[jayoungr]

You are welcome to infer what you want from my answer but this is undeniably you moving the goalposts regardless of what I answered.

I apologize, then. But I'm still curious as to whether there's anything you're thinking of that's older than the artificer or whether this is something that has crept into 5E as it's gone on. That's all. No offense is meant by it. I feel like I've caused offense, which is not in any way my intent. It's just that I have never noticed this superhero influence, and I'm wondering if I've been missing something.

 

[Reynard]

In the spirit of the OP:

I often choose 5e because I know there will be players and I know it well enough to do whatever I want with it. These are based on 5E's two greatest inherent strengths: big player base, and elegant core design. What I don't use it for speaks to where I think it could use some work. For example, I ran a super high fantasy convention campaign inspired by things like the WoW cinematic and ultimately chose to use Mutants and Masterminds instead of high level 5E because I wanted it to be pick up and play by con goers. Most of M&M's complexity is front loaded in chargen, while high level D&D characters-- even in 5E -- can be a mess to manage at the table.

Anyway, aside from particularly high or low fantasy, 5E is a familiar, good enough, fun game.and it accepts modular rules systems pretty easily, from the AiME journey rules to the BECMI Domain Management rules.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Is it just me, or does it feel like three out of the four things on this list...aren't actually characteristics of 5e itself?

Network effects are important, but they're not actually part of 5e, any more than your friend you can call on the telephone is "part of" the telephone itself. Yes, being able to call your friends is important and can be part of the value you get out of using the telephone, but the friend herself is not a virtue of the telephone.

The history....has been there all along, for every D&D. That's not unique to 5e in any way. That's something great about every edition of D&D, period, whether you like them or not, whether you consider them successful or not. I mean, even 4e, the edition almost everyone likes to poop on for being anti-traditional, had Expedition to Barrier Peaks stuff and returned to classic settings like Dark Sun that had been left behind in the previous edition (in terms of official support). Every edition has leveraged the game's history as part of its appeal. Heck, you can even argue that Pathfinder of all things leveraged this stuff, they just had to tiptoe around it because of licensing issues.

Flexibility, that I can grant you is actually a characteristic of 5e. I of course have my own feelings about the specific implementation, but this is at least something that is a virtue of 5e itself, and not a virtue of the situation surrounding 5e, nor a virtue of simply being an edition of D&D.

And...your fourth point....isn't even a point as far as I can tell? It's just "Conclusion: It's awesome." Which...I mean...it's absolutely great that you like this thing. But answering "what's great about X?" with "it's great!" is at best circular reasoning, and at worst literally just repeating yourself without even trying to say more.

As one final note: While for you it may feel like there are too many critical threads on 5e....as someone who is not exactly a fan per se, I can promise you, the number of threads containing nothing more than "gosh 5e is just, like, super great!!" VASTLY outnumbers the threads that criticize it, and bringing up criticism of any kind has a real strong tendency to get you shouted down by people who aren't interested in hearing anything even a little bit nonplussed. People have gushed about what makes 5e great. A lot. Repeatedly. For a while, it was rare for a month to go by without people posting yet another "ermahgerd it's so coooool" thread. You can imagine how tiring this gets for someone who has nothing productive to contribute to such a thread.

Now, if your goal was simply to say "these are advantages that apply to all D&Ds, 5e is just the current poster child," that's fair I suppose, but you'd still have some issues with points not lining up (2, in this case, since it is 5e-specific) or being...not really a point at all (4).

Edit: For comparison, I would argue @Azuresun gave a list that was significantly more about the actual characteristics of 5e itself. (I'd argue that "hit points" isn't really a 5e-specific thing, since they really aren't any different from how they've worked in previous editions, but 3 out of 4 points being 5e-specific is a big step up.)

 

[Plaguescarred]

I'm a big fan of how 5E handle movement. especially how you can Breaking Up Your Move between attack and actions.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm a big fan of how 5E handle movement. especially how you can Breaking Up Your Move between attack and actions.

Another great example of something that really IS special to 5e, since no other edition (as far as I know) has done this. I think whatever comes "after" 5e (be it a non-edition update ala 4e Essentials, an iterative series of updates like the gap between PF1e-at-release vs PF1e today, a "Revised Edition" update like 3.5e, or something else) will need to consider how to address certain minor issues like the "pop out of cover, attack, pop back into cover" thing, but those are understandable wrinkles of a new policy rather than fundamental issues.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I think its there to stay

 

[Garthanos]

I'm a big fan of how 5E handle movement. especially how you can Breaking Up Your Move between attack and actions.

I like that too but we seem to have sacrificed bursty attacks like a full cleave from 3e that affects all adjacent targets and things like "Rain of Steel"... ie the ingredients that invoke a feeling of the one man army in the process.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I like that too but we seem to have sacrificed bursty attacks like a full cleave from 3e that affects all adjacent targets and things like "Rain of Steel"... ie the ingredients that invoke a feeling of the one man army in the process.

That's an interesting question. Arguably, the "one man army" for martial characters goes as far back as the old rule that Fighters got to attack 1/level against critters that were less than 1hd.

Which meant that at higher levels, Fighters could effectively kill (for example) 1 kobold per level per round, every round.