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

[UngainlyTitan]

I shouldn't even say improve. I just like to see D&D change. I'm not interested in having one edition of rules to last me a lifetime; I'm interested in an evolving game, even if the evolution comes in minor steps.

D&D is not going to change in any radical or major way. It is too successful to do that. If it ever declines in popularity in a major way we may see major experimentation again. Or if another game threatens it dominance. But major change is major risk and rocking the boat now is very unlikely.

 

[Vaalingrade]

D&D is not going to change in any radical or major way. It is too successful to do that.

~ TSR circa 1980

~WotC circa 2004

 

[overgeeked]

Specificity is frequently just an illusion that makes the DM's life more difficult. Have a chart that gives you specific numbers for 10 scenarios? Guess what? If the DM thought the scenario was going to come up, they probably looked at the chart to find the difficulty they wanted so they could describe the scene correctly. What's even worse, and can bring the flow of the game to a screeching halt, is when the DM describes a scene and somebody* says "There's a chart for that!" Then you have to dig through page after page, often in different books, trying to find the correct chart.

That wall Grognard the Barbarian needs to climb to rescue the prince? By the time you look it up, you've lost momentum and flow. Not only that, but the wall is completely made up, the numbers on the chart are arbitrary. Specificity only gives the illusion of accuracy.

*Usually Bob, because that's just the way Bob rolls.

Exactly. The good rulebooks give guidelines not hard-and-fast rules for everything, they trust the referee to run the game. The player in this case doesn't trust the referee enough to run the game so they thump the rulebook, thinking there's somehow "reality" or "authority" to be found between those covers. There's no "reality" or "authority" there, only guidelines. The referee's in charge of the game, not the rulebook. Relax and trust the referee. It'll be okay.

Edit: all the charts in the world will never cover all the options anyway.

This is exactly the draw of looser, more free-form games and playstyles like FKR. At the end of the day the referee has to make things up. They have to improvise and adjudicate. Use their judgement and make rulings. The referee running the game is the killer app of RPGs. It's the feature, not a bug. Instead of shying away from that and being afraid of it, lean into it and embrace it. It makes for much less stress all around (except for the rules lawyers) and is a much smaller cognitive load...with the perk of not having any charts to look up.

If you're going to try to codify things, give general terms and leave it at that because you cannot possibly give the specifics on every possible instance. That's literally the fun of RPGs. Shenanigans. If you think that adding a rule for everything the PCs try over the course of a campaign is a good idea, you're going to have a mountain of house rules, rulings, and edge cases to deal with. Run two campaigns and suddenly your mountain of paperwork is bigger than the actual books with the rules for the game. That's an utterly untenable way to run games.

 

[Medic]

"Rulings, not rules" does not grant DM's any freedom they didn't already have. Every. Single. Edition. Of this game, has had a large swathe of DM's (if not, eventually, all of them) who have made their own house rules to modify the game.

The DM never had their power taken away by the rules of the game. Never. Not once. 5e doesn't empower the DM any more than any other edition of the game ever has.

You might say "well, other editions have had complex, interwoven rules that made it difficult to change any one thing without causing other problems". To which I reply, yes, and?

To make good house rules, one must understand the purpose of the rules they are changing in the first place.

5e does not make this task any easier. Does anyone really understand why, if I cast a spell as a bonus action, I cannot cast another leveled spell with my action on my turn? When an Eldritch Knight can cast two leveled spells via Action Surge and cast Shield without incident?

If you do, congratulations. I don't! So as much as I'd dearly love to take that rule and strangle it to death, I don't, because I don't understand what it's there to prevent!

As near as I can tell, it exists to hamstring Clerics for no reason, and to keep Sorcerers from being as good as Wizards.

There are many rules like this, not even picking on the optional ones, where playing the game without intending to make a single house rule, but completely by the rules as written, eventually becomes a Sisyphean task!

The only thing that is empowered by this is my headaches.

Protection from Evil and Good has a material component, which the spell consumes.

It's never specified how much material the spell requires, or even the cost of it.

You can't use a component pouch for it. In other words, there's no telling how much you actually need.

Okay, I get it, "rulings, not rules," the DM has the final say. But they can alleviate the confusion by just... tacking "5 gp of holy water or powdered silver and iron, which the spell consumes" to the spell, or something

 

[overgeeked]

Excellent point. It also makes me wonder what 5e would be like if they made it in 2022 and not in 2014. Assuming the player base WotC is trying to court now. Would you like it better as a ground up new game conforming to today's desires, or the modified 5e we're going to get in a couple years?

I hope they actually court the current fanbase harder. If they want story over everything else, give it to them. But that's going the opposite direction from their apparent trajectory. They're going back to the overly-designed and rules, rules, and more rules approach of 3X and 4E. Feat chains, infinite subclasses, more feats, more spells, more mechanics...more, more, more. If they wanted to court the story-first people, they'd focus less on the mechanics and more on personality traits, bonds, flaws...inspiration...social interactions...etc. Integrating backstory into the game. Collaborative storytelling. But they're putting out a miniatures battle game instead. The story people got Witchlight (wow! one module where you don't have to murder everything to win), and some from Strixhaven's Harry Potter knock-off.

 

[Shardstone]

"Rulings, not rules" does not grant DM's any freedom they didn't already have. Every. Single. Edition. Of this game, has had a large swathe of DM's (if not, eventually, all of them) who have made their own house rules to modify the game.

The DM never had their power taken away by the rules of the game. Never. Not once. 5e doesn't empower the DM any more than any other edition of the game ever has.

You might say "well, other editions have had complex, interwoven rules that made it difficult to change any one thing without causing other problems". To which I reply, yes, and?

To make good house rules, one must understand the purpose of the rules they are changing in the first place.

5e does not make this task any easier. Does anyone really understand why, if I cast a spell as a bonus action, I cannot cast another leveled spell with my action on my turn? When an Eldritch Knight can cast two leveled spells via Action Surge and cast Shield without incident?

If you do, congratulations. I don't! So as much as I'd dearly love to take that rule and strangle it to death, I don't, because I don't understand what it's there to prevent!

As near as I can tell, it exists to hamstring Clerics for no reason, and to keep Sorcerers from being as good as Wizards.

There are many rules like this, not even picking on the optional ones, where playing the game without intending to make a single house rule, but completely by the rules as written, eventually becomes a Sisyphean task!

The only thing that is empowered by this is my headaches.

Crawford said in an interview this is because they didn't want players to have to slow down their turns trying to figure out spell combos. It has no actual mechanical effect imo.

 

[Shardstone]

I hope they actually court the current fanbase harder. If they want story over everything else, give it to them. But that's going the opposite direction from their apparent trajectory. They're going back to the overly-designed and rules, rules, and more rules approach of 3X and 4E. Feat chains, infinite subclasses, more feats, more spells, more mechanics...more, more, more. If they wanted to court the story-first people, they'd focus less on the mechanics and more on personality traits, bonds, flaws...inspiration...social interactions...etc. Integrating backstory into the game. Collaborative storytelling. But they're putting out a miniatures battle game instead. The story people got Witchlight (wow! one module where you don't have to murder everything to win), and some from Strixhaven's Harry Potter knock-off.

I normally agree with you, but this is an overreaction.

Two feats does not make a chain. Infinite subclasses does not exist. Having more mechanical options does not mean story-first people arne't getting what they want. I play with a community of around 25 players total who are all hardcore RPers, some of them actual actors and what not, and they love the storytelling aspects the most...and love it when crunch makes the storytelling real. You see, the reality is, most players want storytelling tools and crunch. The binary that you and a lot of others proport to exist are not the average D&D player.

5e post-Tasha's isn't even half as mechanical as PF2E, and still isn't as mechanical as Level Up. Let's not exaggerate this direction into something it isn't.

 

[Vaalingrade]

They're going back to the overly-designed and rules, rules, and more rules approach of 3X and 4E. Feat chains, infinite subclasses, more feats, more spells, more mechanics...more, more, more.

I would love to play the game you're proposing is coming into being and am sad it doesn't exist.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why does this matter?

Some people don't like big linear swings in resolution. I'm often not a fan myself.

 

[Malmuria]

I would love to see wotc make an opinionated game, not one trying to make a specific audience happy. What kind of game do the designers themselves want to play?

Other than that, I’ll just put this here

D&D General - Rant: Sometimes I Hate the D&D Community