I’ve noticed so many abilities now just confer advantage or disadvantage and it feels boring as a result.I probably prefer the elegance of advantage…but it’s not endless variety or anything…
I’ve noticed so many abilities now just confer advantage or disadvantage and it feels boring as a result.I probably prefer the elegance of advantage…but it’s not endless variety or anything…
Exactly.It's heavily geared to experienced DMs. The little advice and help to new DMs are so poorly organized and referenced that a new DMs' eyes will glaze over in confusion if they search for it
An experienced DM can sticky note what they know they might need. A new DM...
The greatest problems with advantage are:I probably prefer the elegance of advantage…but it’s not endless variety or anything…
I don’t know.The greatest problems with advantage are:
(a) it's MASSIVELY over-used, which means it fails to actually feel like a benefit in a lot of cases, and
(b) it's both the weapon of first resort AND the weapon of last resort, meaning trying to do anything else is...problematic.
If there had been slightly more leeway, slightly more options, and if advantage had not replaced the "DM's Best Friend" as the go-to benefit, then it would have been quite a bit less of a problem. 5e went so whole-hog for eliminating bonuses, it ended up producing something rather...flat and not particularly engaging. I have seen players basically stop caring about anything more than ultra-basic trivial strategy once they have advantage, because they know there's no point, they'll never get anything better than what they've got. As long as the plan isn't obviously bad, why bother? It just wastes everyone's time.
I mean, there are at least four things you can do which preserve most of the simplicity while still allowing greater leeway.I don’t know.
Another +x bonus is not super exciting in and of itself. In fact, the stack of bonuses really can wash out their identity too.
So our other option is to have a bunch of disparate “spell like” abilities as it were and that is not the simplicity for general actions that I want.
While I don’t think advantage is so different each time, it’s every bit as good as +4 for this or +3 for that but simpler and more parsimonious.
So while you are not flat wrong, I don’t see a lot that I like better either. I think “it works”
To be a bit pedantic, Ghosts of Saltmarsh does reference the underwater combat rules from the DMG fairly extensively, and there are other examples of the more obscure rules in the DMG being central to a campaign book, like weather effects for Icewind Dale. The Adventures don't rehash the rules, they direct the DM to the DMG.Another point.
If the DMG is so great why do we have to rely on modules for mechanics that should exist in the DMG?
Ship or vehicle combat? Ghosts of Saltmarsh has that. Mass combat? The Dragonlance module. Running a business? Dragonheist. I’m sure there are other examples.
These are all mechanics that should be in the DMG. In the past these were all in the DMG. But whenever we have a module that leans on some mechanic or other, it never references the DMG.
To be a bit pedantic, Ghosts of Saltmarsh does reference the underwater combat rules from the DMG fairly extensively, and there are other examples of the more obscure rules in the DMG being central to a campaign book, like weather effects for Icewind Dale. The Adventures don't rehash the rules, they direct the DM to the DMG.
Fair, bit those modular rules in books were always intended to be a thing, from early in Next playtesting.True but the ship combat doesn’t reference the DMG.
I don’t have Rime, so I cannot comment.
While the books might not rehash rules, they are pretty quick to fill in the very glaring holes in the DMG. Even the corruption rules in the new Phandelver module are not connected to anything in the DMG.
True but the ship combat doesn’t reference the DMG.
I don’t have Rime, so I cannot comment.
While the books might not rehash rules, they are pretty quick to fill in the very glaring holes in the DMG. Even the corruption rules in the new Phandelver module are not connected to anything in the DMG.