Wouldn't it be nice if the game worked right out of the box?
D&D 5E What (if anything) do you find "wrong" with 5E?
- Thread starter DND_Reborn
- Start date
Does for me and dozen or so groups I've played with.
Medic
Neutral Evil
This is an odd vector for the thread to take, but hey, why not? I touched on this quite some time ago, but a little elaboration is in order.
The Fighter is 5e's charop class for minmax gremlins. Action Surge is a powerful ability that shows up early on, some of the subclasses have great synergy with certain Feats, and the extra ASI/Feats that they get are a linchpin for powergamers, all this atop their steady damage. People in this thread have understandably bemoaned the disparity between martials and casters, pointing out advantages that spells like Charm Person and Fly confer, or how emaciated certain skills are. And hey, I agree, the class needs some love.
But there is a subset of the D&D player base - of which everyone has likely played with at least once - that doesn't care about the stupid elf-talky part of the game or the dumb wilderness-walky part of the game. They showed up at your table to build a jumped-up combat monster that goes to dungeons and kills stuff real good. The enjoyment is derived from crushing heads in difficult fights, the rest is secondary. The current iteration of the Fighter really speaks to this demographic.
Laurefindel
Legend
I enjoy both flowery elf-talk and the fighter as-is. I’m willing to bet this actually a popular opinion at large that may not be represented on dedicated forums like this one.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
If you make a fantasy game and try to pretend that it’s the end-all be-all of fantasy games that can do anything…people will…shock, surprise, horror…expect it to be able to do anything.
The sky’s the limit (as long as it’s one of these 13 classes)! You can play anything you can imagine (as long as it fits in these tiny boxes)!
Cool story bro
Thomas Shey
Legend
Well, the simple answer, as I do, is "play a different game". That's pretty rude when telling someone else, but its often the easiest answer to yourself.
(Of course its easy for me; I'm not overly attached to the D&D-sphere in the first place , and haven't been for decades. But it still wasn't hard to other games in that sphere I liked significantly better).
Thomas Shey
Legend
But as you say, the combination of simplicity and directness is all some people need. There were people who were perfectly okay with OD&D fighters, and they were, bluntly, as dull as dishwater; barring extra-systematic GM/player interactions, the most you did mechanically was pick your gear and then in combat, your targets.
Thomas Shey
Legend
I don't think its unreasonable to tell people that enough of the fandom is on-board the current structure that you're not going to get them to move. It doesn't say anything about good or bad, just the practical reality, and that's ones people who don't find the basic structure of D&D particularly desirable have been dealing with for decades.
Helldritch
Hero
A bit late to the party but lots of interesting posts and it kept civil for most parts. It is fun to see such diverse opinions shared with respects.
My personnal grippes with 5ed...
1) Balanced for a party of 4. Having 6 characters in a group + sidekicks make the game a bit swinging but fortunately I found ways.
2) The game is often unclear as to what to expect when running. It is not clear from the get go that classes are balanced around the 6-8 encounters per day. And around two short rests between long rests. You can't even imagine the number of young DMs that never saw or guessed that it was so.
3) Using plain language has its good sides, buy also have serious drawbacks. The least of which is interpretation.
4) The indexes are mostly a mess...
5) The DMG is good, but focuses too much on world building and not on how to run the game as intended. The math behind monster creation is obscure and not what is presented in the DMG. Someone shared a post about this in this very thread. It simply confirmed my own analysis I had made during our playtest phase with my groups. They should have been clearer, this way, adapting combat encounter difficulty to the group's size would have been way easier.
6) They should have been clearer about short rests and long rests mechanics. Each classes should have had dips in both mechanics. With the discrepancy in classes that requires one or the other, it is unclear for new players and DMs what should be done.
6) Not enough skills and too much at the same time. The skill system is wonky. Some skills are ultra good while others are meh... Classes with a weak versatility should have had a bit more skills. While casters should have had a bit less, focusing mainly on knowledge-based skills. Presently, fighters lack about 2 or 3 skills to be at the right spot. And some classes should have had some skills from the get go. A ranger without survival can happen...
6) Skills are too related to stats. How come can the rogue be better at arcane than the wizard? Or better at religion than the cleric? Or more knowledgeable in nature than the druid? Classes should have had a bonus to "class" skills.
7) The concentration mechanic is good on papers as it prevents math bloat and the piling on of defensive/offensive spells. But on practice it makes it so that caster prefer to cast concentration spells on themselves as they are either stuck to one target or that the spell takes up a vital slot that could be used for something way better. Also, the fear of losing concentration is a real thing. I have my own solution for this but this would be for another thread.
8) No save or suck. While I understand that doing nothing during a combat is boring, it also lessen the danger some monsters and spells represents. Getting a save every round is simply too strong.
9) Too many HPs... Both for the monsters and the PCs. A wee bit higher ACs would have done the job and kept HPs at manageable levels, especially near the level/CR 15+ Character feels like super heroes from the get go. I wanted zeroes to heroes... But I corrected this with gritty realism.
10) Options that are not options. How cone feats are optional? I simply do not know a single table that do not use them. And WotC acknowledged this by adding more in TCoE. And magical.items are pretty much assumed in fantasy. Saying they are optional is simply denying the facts. Game balance should have taken them into consideration.
11) What to do with money? Again, why give treasure if you have nothing to spend it on? I corrected this oversight by myself, but a lot of DMs out there have no clues on how to make treasure matter for their players. Again, I have remedied to this, but my/our solutions might not be for everyone.
12) Easy healing overnight. Who got this idea at WotC? HD healing on short rests? Come on. Short rests at one hour is breaking the narrative, 10 minutes should have the the norm (or the hybrid of gritty realism I am using). Healing outside combat is way too plentiful and too scarce in combat. This makes healers role ambiguous at best. The only good thing is that they are no longer healbots. But it could have been achieved in a much better way.
13) A lot, no all of the true optional rules are hidden in the DMG that no one but me read.... A lot of the optional rules should have been the standard. Not the other way around.
And yet, this is the edition that I prefer. Simply because for all its weak points, it is still better design than it's former iterations. It is unfortunate that the true gems were hidden in the DMG.
My personnal grippes with 5ed...
1) Balanced for a party of 4. Having 6 characters in a group + sidekicks make the game a bit swinging but fortunately I found ways.
2) The game is often unclear as to what to expect when running. It is not clear from the get go that classes are balanced around the 6-8 encounters per day. And around two short rests between long rests. You can't even imagine the number of young DMs that never saw or guessed that it was so.
3) Using plain language has its good sides, buy also have serious drawbacks. The least of which is interpretation.
4) The indexes are mostly a mess...
5) The DMG is good, but focuses too much on world building and not on how to run the game as intended. The math behind monster creation is obscure and not what is presented in the DMG. Someone shared a post about this in this very thread. It simply confirmed my own analysis I had made during our playtest phase with my groups. They should have been clearer, this way, adapting combat encounter difficulty to the group's size would have been way easier.
6) They should have been clearer about short rests and long rests mechanics. Each classes should have had dips in both mechanics. With the discrepancy in classes that requires one or the other, it is unclear for new players and DMs what should be done.
6) Not enough skills and too much at the same time. The skill system is wonky. Some skills are ultra good while others are meh... Classes with a weak versatility should have had a bit more skills. While casters should have had a bit less, focusing mainly on knowledge-based skills. Presently, fighters lack about 2 or 3 skills to be at the right spot. And some classes should have had some skills from the get go. A ranger without survival can happen...
6) Skills are too related to stats. How come can the rogue be better at arcane than the wizard? Or better at religion than the cleric? Or more knowledgeable in nature than the druid? Classes should have had a bonus to "class" skills.
7) The concentration mechanic is good on papers as it prevents math bloat and the piling on of defensive/offensive spells. But on practice it makes it so that caster prefer to cast concentration spells on themselves as they are either stuck to one target or that the spell takes up a vital slot that could be used for something way better. Also, the fear of losing concentration is a real thing. I have my own solution for this but this would be for another thread.
8) No save or suck. While I understand that doing nothing during a combat is boring, it also lessen the danger some monsters and spells represents. Getting a save every round is simply too strong.
9) Too many HPs... Both for the monsters and the PCs. A wee bit higher ACs would have done the job and kept HPs at manageable levels, especially near the level/CR 15+ Character feels like super heroes from the get go. I wanted zeroes to heroes... But I corrected this with gritty realism.
10) Options that are not options. How cone feats are optional? I simply do not know a single table that do not use them. And WotC acknowledged this by adding more in TCoE. And magical.items are pretty much assumed in fantasy. Saying they are optional is simply denying the facts. Game balance should have taken them into consideration.
11) What to do with money? Again, why give treasure if you have nothing to spend it on? I corrected this oversight by myself, but a lot of DMs out there have no clues on how to make treasure matter for their players. Again, I have remedied to this, but my/our solutions might not be for everyone.
12) Easy healing overnight. Who got this idea at WotC? HD healing on short rests? Come on. Short rests at one hour is breaking the narrative, 10 minutes should have the the norm (or the hybrid of gritty realism I am using). Healing outside combat is way too plentiful and too scarce in combat. This makes healers role ambiguous at best. The only good thing is that they are no longer healbots. But it could have been achieved in a much better way.
13) A lot, no all of the true optional rules are hidden in the DMG that no one but me read.... A lot of the optional rules should have been the standard. Not the other way around.
And yet, this is the edition that I prefer. Simply because for all its weak points, it is still better design than it's former iterations. It is unfortunate that the true gems were hidden in the DMG.
