D&D 5E What (if anything) do you find "wrong" with 5E?

[GMforPowergamers]

A lot of people tell me that no magic games run perfectly fine in 5e (and I hope to one day play in such a game to see for myself). It hasn't been my experience- there's a lot of things you can encounter that the game fully expects a spellcaster to be on hand for. Which means I'd have to do extra work to make sure players can remove curses or petrification (as examples) without needing a wonder worker around (or just avoid letting them get exposed to such things).

Oh don't get me wrong there is a TON of things behind the screen I needed to do to make the game function without casters... but it wasn't that much more then I do with my almost all caster games

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Like, it would be better if, instead of just "D&D" we had "Low Magic Fantasy RPG", "Moderate Magic Fantasy RPG", "High Magic Fantasy RPG", and "What the Hell, Space Hippos with guns?! RPG".

i mean we have GURPs

 

[James Gasik]

i mean we have GURPs

shudders

 

[James Gasik]

Oh don't get me wrong there is a TON of things behind the screen I needed to do to make the game function without casters... but it wasn't that much more then I do with my almost all caster games

Really? The way 5e is going, I'm surprised you'd have to make any adjustments at all, since even full casters can get decent armor and extra attack these days.

 

[Garthanos]

A lot of people tell me that no magic games run perfectly fine in 5e (and I hope to one day play in such a game to see for myself). It hasn't been my experience- there's a lot of things you can encounter that the game fully expects a spellcaster to be on hand for. Which means I'd have to do extra work to make sure players can remove curses or petrification (as examples) without needing a wonder worker around (or just avoid letting them get exposed to such things).

The players handbook says adventuring is 10 times more difficult without magic... of course with the super useful CR system that will surely have been taken into account.

 

[Minigiant]

A lot of people tell me that no magic games run perfectly fine in 5e (and I hope to one day play in such a game to see for myself). It hasn't been my experience- there's a lot of things you can encounter that the game fully expects a spellcaster to be on hand for. Which means I'd have to do extra work to make sure players can remove curses or petrification (as examples) without needing a wonder worker around (or just avoid letting them get exposed to such things).

No magic games are usually no magic on both sides. That's why they aren't popular in 5e.

 

[James Gasik]

No magic games are usually no magic on both sides. That's why they aren't popular in 5e.

Oh so, if it's low magic, no dragons, mummies, medusas, ghouls, etc.? Only nonmagical foes? I can see that being a problem, because you'd run out of things to fight after awhile (barring custom monsters)?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Really? The way 5e is going, I'm surprised you'd have to make any adjustments at all, since even full casters can get decent armor and extra attack these days.

yeah my full casters are often as good at melee as fighters (or close enough) the problem is they hit WAY above there weight class... a group with a Hexblade, a Bladesinger, a combat cleric or druid, and a combat bard can as a 4 person party handle most adventuring days that the average 5 person fighter rogue wizard cleirc +1 can and then some...

I often throw what the DMG says is a deadly encounter at my parties and they wipe the floor with them

 

[Thomas Shey]

The Belgariad, the Elenium, The Sword of Truth, and The Codex Alara have pretty powerful magic.

Note the first two are by the same author, and commonly seen as him revisiting the same ground, and note that the only one of those that has had a book within the last decade is the Sword of Truth. (I'd also argue that the magic in Codex Alera is powerful but significantly more narrow than D&D magic, both in the case of individual mages (you almost never see someone with more than two elements) and generically (there are classes of D&D spells that have no equivalent).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Well that's just Tiers of play.

There's still stuff like Avatar, WOW, Wahammer, Dragonball, Street Fighter. Harry Potter, Demon Slayer, League or Legends, Frozen, POTC, One Piece, Black Clover, and much of the MCU that is over Tier 1 which could work in D&D.

As I alluded to before, this is not a new criticism- and yet it doesn't matter.

If you played D&D in the 70s, you tried to emulate all sorts of fiction. Tolkien. Zelazny. Donaldson. Lieber. Moorcock. Heck- maybe you wanted to make your own Luke Skywalker. Or you wanted Daredevil (we had an MCU back then, too ... except it was called "comic books").

And you know what? D&D did a TERRIBLE job at it! Because D&D didn't "emulate" any of them very well- instead, it did a great job at being D&D.

It's always been like that. You've just listed ... what ... 13 (THIRTEEN) different fantasy genres you want D&D to emulate ... and some of them aren't even really fantasy (MCU, Street Fighter, League of Legends, POTC etc.).

D&D does D&D very well. If you are inspired to make a D&D character from another source, that's great! But D&D is not made to have perfect replicas of Hermione Granger, Zangief, Kled, Olaf the Snowman, and Galactus in the same party.