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

[Warpiglet-7]

My biggest issue with 5e, which I do enjoy, Is pew! Pew!

Magic in some ways trivializes survival. Food is easy, light is easy, doing damage with cantrips means not having to always use spells.

There are perhaps too many spell slots for this reason. Either cut down the spell slots and keep rituals and cantrips, or reduce and limit them.

The quest to make “every round fun” has meant things are a bit too easy for wizards and others.

If some of the cantrips were level one spells for example, wizards and spellcasters would have to make more decisions and not have too many spell slots. I also think hand management matters and should generally be enforced but often is not.

It would also mean that survival skill and the like (mundane skills) might be a little more meaningful.

If you had a tougher mechanism for interrupting spells—-made it easier to stop them—-all spell, even non concentration ones—-the fighter and pure weapon users gain some prominence. They become essential even.

All of that said…

My group has been tested by our dm—-some fights drain us. But that requires the DM to crank it up. SomeTimes way up. We have found it really satisfying and have been playing most weekS. Something these working parents would not have dared to hope for!

I give 5e an A- or B+. And yet we have no desire to go back to our once favorite edition. But if I was in a critical mood I would vote for less pew pew

 

[Maxperson]

I actually asked a player today:

Do you think Captain America could defeat a T-Rex?

His answer was "Hell, yes!"

 

[Cadence]

And 3e was the best edition for letting you do it. Between the dozens of classes, hundreds of prestige classes, hundreds of feats and myriad of skills, you could make almost any concept you could think of.

Especially if 3e includes PF and all the other 3rd party creators!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You cannot have what you want. I feel like you're at a Baskin Robbins, and instead of asking for a flavor, you keep saying, "I want all your flavors together, right now! Why won't you do that for me! Why can't you put all your flavors into a blender so I can drink it down."

Mod Note:

I think your critique in the rest of the post this excerpt comes from is accurate. But this quoted portion makes it personal. Leave out clauses like this, next time.

 

[Oofta]

I actually don't want to add more subgenres to D&D, just to make serious attempts at the genres it claims to incorporate and allow.

The point was that D&D was always about dipping its toe into other forms, styles,and genres of fantasy. Not go fully into it but sprinkle a bit here and there. Dip a foot into the pool to pull out new monsters, races, and PC options.

5th edition is just the first edition to be officially squeamish about the pool and shove 90% of wetness to 3PP.

Then you get what the nice percentage of the Spelljammer: AoS reviews state "It's nice but plays too safe and has too little content"

So 5e is not flooding the market with product like previous editions. It seems to be working out fairly well for them. I don't think that makes them "squeamish", it's just that they realize a better ROI by not flooding the market and diluting their brand.

There are a ton of alternatives and variants available nowadays such as level up. Why not let those others take the risks while they get a steady return? WOTC is willing to make the risky investments in things like movies an TV shows because those have potentially huge profits, not the pennies they could squeeze out of The Complete Book of [insert topic of the month].

 

[Shardstone]

So 5e is not flooding the market with product like previous editions. It seems to be working out fairly well for them. I don't think that makes them "squeamish", it's just that they realize a better ROI by not flooding the market and diluting their brand.

There are a ton of alternatives and variants available nowadays such as level up. Why not let those others take the risks while they get a steady return? WOTC is willing to make the risky investments in things like movies an TV shows because those have potentially huge profits, not the pennies they could squeeze out of The Complete Book of [insert topic of the month].

I mean, tbh, the reason a lot of these third parties seem like risks and don't do big numbers is because they don't have the money to get a lot of eyes on their content. When Electrum is selling a thousand copies, and Wizards is regularly selling hundreds of thousands, if not millions of copies, then clearly one publisher has more resources for netting an audience. We don't actually know if "The Complete Book of Hyperbole Argument" would be popular or not, because WotC hasn't done it, and no one else who has done it a way to get the audience WotC does.

Like seriously. The popularity argument just doesn't make any logical sense. I'm pretty sure 5E selling the Tyranny of Dragons back to back with a different cover and slight changes pretty much explains the situation pretty well. There's tons of better written third party adventures than Tyranny of Dragons, but none of them will ever, ever, ever see the numbers ToD does.

We need to abandon the idea that success is the only indicator of quality. I like a lot of what WotC puts out, but they have proven they can put out just about ANYTHING and make huge bank off of it.

 

[Garthanos]

While D&D is bad at modeling anything that isn't D&D, it's history is littered with attempts to do so, and further, the Players Handbook usually tells people "you can make any kind of hero you want". 2e was notorious in this respect, since the beginning of each class description offered up literary and mythological characters as being represented by that class. Most of whom the class utterly failed at representing.

For me 4th edition followed through on those a lot, it let me evoke/play the heroic defender that Gygax mentioned in 1e and the demigods and legendary figures and strategist/tacticians from the 2e phb. It was very much about fulfilling promises.

 

[Hussar]

I mean, tbh, the reason a lot of these third parties seem like risks and don't do big numbers is because they don't have the money to get a lot of eyes on their content. When Electrum is selling a thousand copies, and Wizards is regularly selling hundreds of thousands, if not millions of copies, then clearly one publisher has more resources for netting an audience. We don't actually know if "The Complete Book of Hyperbole Argument" would be popular or not, because WotC hasn't done it, and no one else who has done it a way to get the audience WotC does.

Like seriously. The popularity argument just doesn't make any logical sense. I'm pretty sure 5E selling the Tyranny of Dragons back to back with a different cover and slight changes pretty much explains the situation pretty well. There's tons of better written third party adventures than Tyranny of Dragons, but none of them will ever, ever, ever see the numbers ToD does.

We need to abandon the idea that success is the only indicator of quality. I like a lot of what WotC puts out, but they have proven they can put out just about ANYTHING and make huge bank off of it.

but, again, there's something to be kept in mind. Tyranny of Dragons is certainly not the greatest adventure any written, totally agree. But, then again, previously, the best selling module of all time was Keep on the Borderlands, one of the worst written adventures of all time. It's a terrible adventure. It's basically what you get when you run a random dungeon generator. Here is the cave of kobolds, here is the cave of orcs, here is the cave of goblins. Why are they there? What are they doing? Who cares?

Keep on the Borderlands has sold more copies than every single one of your favorite modules, probably every single one of your favorite modules combined. Does that make it the greatest module of all time? Of course not.

But, what it is is good enough for the time. It did what it was supposed to do - get people playing and keep them interested enough that they kept playing. Tyranny of Dragons fits the same mould. It was the first 5e module. It got people interested. It got people playing. It showcased the edition and made money. It was good enough.

Selling well means one thing. It sold well. It does also mean that it was good enough. It doesn't mean that it's great or beyond criticism.

 

[Shardstone]

but, again, there's something to be kept in mind. Tyranny of Dragons is certainly not the greatest adventure any written, totally agree. But, then again, previously, the best selling module of all time was Keep on the Borderlands, one of the worst written adventures of all time. It's a terrible adventure. It's basically what you get when you run a random dungeon generator. Here is the cave of kobolds, here is the cave of orcs, here is the cave of goblins. Why are they there? What are they doing? Who cares?

Keep on the Borderlands has sold more copies than every single one of your favorite modules, probably every single one of your favorite modules combined. Does that make it the greatest module of all time? Of course not.

But, what it is is good enough for the time. It did what it was supposed to do - get people playing and keep them interested enough that they kept playing. Tyranny of Dragons fits the same mould. It was the first 5e module. It got people interested. It got people playing. It showcased the edition and made money. It was good enough.

Selling well means one thing. It sold well. It does also mean that it was good enough. It doesn't mean that it's great or beyond criticism.

This is exactly what I'm saying!

 

[Ixal]

Its focus on combat, how any non combat action is linked to the same proficiency value which is mainly affected by your level (and thus combat power) and, by now, the class and level system itself.

In 5E its impossible to make a character which is good at non combat skills but bad at combat nor is it possible to make an expert for one skill but bad at every other skills.
I think that modular systems like the one from Shadowun, Traveller or DSA are vastly superior to restrictive class/level system like in D&D.

And more recently (and also in the next edition according to the rumor mill) the complete disregard for biology and races instead of having fixed biological differences like it would make sense having variable attribute bonuses to cater to players who are unwillig to start with anything less than an 18.