Huh?To me that doesn't read as clear AND is also a terrible idea to make a classes " one unique thing" difficult to do!
Sorry I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
Huh?To me that doesn't read as clear AND is also a terrible idea to make a classes " one unique thing" difficult to do!
The statement made on sneak attack chances!?Huh?
Sorry I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
I almost think that the contents of the DMG could be separated into two books: (1) a basic guide for running/modifiying the game and (2) world-building and such in the D&D multiverse. But "tradition" - whether it's a consistent one or not - demands three books.I'm starting to think that if we included everything people want (including me) the book might start to look like this:
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Yeah I remember reading 5e a lot of times and thinking "just tell us what you intend here"*. A lot of forum arguments about stealth might have been avoided if they'd just had a 13th Age style sidebar which told us something like "this is how we intend to use stealth, or perhaps more importantly, this is how difficult we intend it to be to get Sneak Attack, so in the case of the Rogue and hiding err on the side of being permissive".
To say "how difficult" the designers intended it to be for the Rogue (or anyone else) to hide* would clarify how to run Stealth, but doesn't imply that the intended baseline was actually "difficult". As Mordhau indicates above when they suggest that they could have explicitly TOLD DMs to err on the side of being permissive.To me that doesn't read as clear AND is also a terrible idea to make a classes " one unique thing" difficult to do!
You and I remember Budapest very differently.You are playing the wrong edition of the game. 5e is not 3e where monsters were designed to precision
You and I remember Budapest very differently.
There could be an vast difference between a stock foe and one with the same CR enhanced with character levels. Just like a high level single class PC would be a tiny fraction of the power of a well built, mutliclassed with PrCs PC of the same level, so even if your monster CRs were properly calibrated to each other there was no way to match those to party level.
I agree and if the game was built upon Bounded Accuracy, I think a few paragraphs to explain exactly what it is and how it works would go a long way, for me at least.I think the issue is really that there is so much variety in each PC group that one static set of guidelines can't do 5e justice. So what I would like is just some explanation on how to adjust the encounter guidelines for different groups, themes, play styles, etc. I think the encounter guidelines work for a very specific group, but we need guidance on how to adjust them for groups that deviate from those assumptions. Heck, if they even gave us a clear baseline assumption it would be helpful
When people ask why I think 5e has an "old school" feel, I need to start quoting this post as an answer. Because I think this bit sums it up better than anything else could.. . . I find I don't have to worry about prepping 5e encounters at all. I can make them whatever I want and I don't have to worry. I completely abandon trying to create "balanced" encounters about 5-6 years ago. Now I just create what makes sense for the story, situation, and environment. I am confident my players can come up with a solution to anything they come across.
Especially after seen it done well in other systems. I bought Arcana of the Ancients from Monte Cooks Kickstarter for it. It's basically the Numera setting for 5e. The layout is clean, well organized with very thoughtful use of call-outs and cross references.Yeah, the content is solid, but the organization is bonkers.
I would rather have the PHP, DMG, Xanathar's, Tasha's, and some of the crunch scattered among the adventure and beastiary content put into one master reference tome. Yeah, it would be a big book, but if organized well, it would be far more useful at the table. Besides, I use D&D Beyond most of the time and currently trying to search and navigate among multiple books is inconvenient, especially as the books are not designed to facilitate quick look ups.I almost think that the contents of the DMG could be separated into two books: (1) a basic guide for running/modifiying the game and (2) world-building and such in the D&D multiverse. But "tradition" - whether it's a consistent one or not - demands three books.
I feel like this is a thread cross-over...
For myself, this was what old school was about (and what 5E does differently):
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3. Fewer HP.
5E uses larger HD and it is easy to get a CON bonus to HP. You also keep getting HD for each level.
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5. The (not-so-dreaded) Whiff-fest.
5E makes hitting in combat way too easy, with success roughly 60-65% of the time on average. Unfortunately, to try to keep things "interesting" more HP was added, but that also escalated more damage.
There's a change that, while not objectively better would impact the feel of the game: hits become more important and a big deal, rather than the expectation. This frees you to narrate them as, well, a big deal rather than needing to describe them as scratches, exhaustion, etc. Basically it lets hit points more closely resemble meat points, which is indeed easier to grok.Oversimplified? Most definitely. But, given these parameters, it strikes me as potentially adjusting HP and "to-hit" knobs down for no real benefit and, perhaps, added frustration at the table with 2x the misses. Is that really what "old school" was like? I honestly don't remember that - but, then again, it's been decades since I played in a 1e campaign, then I skipped 2-4, and started playing 5e exclusively 6 years ago.