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

[James Gasik]

The only thing I've really seen out of Tier 1 Monks is that they get beat up a little more often due to softer AC and average hit points. They can occasionally have bursts of awesome, when they spend Ki, but without it, they really don't shine at all.

Martial/Caster isn't an issue in low Tier play. It's not until casters can reliably solve problems or radically alter encounters that you start to notice any issues.

I want to say Tier 3 is probably where it's noticeable. I had an interesting experience in Tier 2 when I started using things like sleet storm regularly in AL; apparently, up til that point, most casters were only concerned with dealing damage in my area, by all accounts.

Once I started making combats dramatically easier, the AL model of short adventures was pretty much broken in half, especially when other casters started seeing what I was doing, and piggy backing off of me to drop damage dealing zones as well.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Given that DDB data also shows most characters never make it past 5, which is where Fighters shine, this is perhaps unsurprising.

Re: Monks etc. I think part of the issue is that how much a class is played has relatively little bearing on whether class is particularly well-designed.

This is easily demonstrated with MMORPGs. Very often classes that are poor performers on metrics and have serious design flaws are actually extremely popular with people playing more casually (which is typically "the majority". That doesn't mean that the design flaws don't exist or don't matter though - just that they don't seriously and immediately impact play. What is notable is that if they do get improved, their numbers do go up - but only a little bit.

You seem to be trying to say "If people don't think they're flawed they're not flawed". That's obviously irrational and non-factual. Especially as you're going with "people play them" as proof they're not flawed. Again, easily demonstrated by MMORPGs and the like. Hell, I've seen MMORPGs where the most well-designed classes barely got played compared to some of the worse ones!

Hell, 2E is a great example. Thieves were a total disaster of a class in 2E, a real mother-may-I nightmare. But loads of people played them!

A better argument would be "It doesn't matter if they're inferior, people play them anyway!". I mean let's all be real, in 5E, below level 10, the difference between the most effective classes and least is like 40%, at most (barring serious optimization). That's amazing. Only 4E did better. Again this doesn't mean the flaws aren't real, shouldn't be addressed, just that their impact is limited.

(And with Monks btw I'd love to see how popular they became if they stopped them being Shaolin Monks and basically made the Mystical Martial Artists - they'd probably become the most popular class!)

I actually wonder how much most players even care about the Shaolin thing. How do we know that's a worse problem in player's eyes than the monk's other issues?

 

[Nightfly]

Do you let popularity and the lowest common denominator dominate all your decision-making though? Chasing favor is a losing game eventually, imo.

That's an awfully negative way of thinking about it.

I agree that popularity doesn't equal quality, but longevity generally does. Did thousands of shrieking girls prove that the Beatles were a great band? No, but the fact that "Let It Be" was a top five album last year -- more than half a century after its release -- kind of does. Fads don't last fifty years.

The fact that 5e sold well on release might not mean anything. The fact the latest 5e book sells well might not either. But when the Player's Handbook has continuously been in the top 100 bestselling books on Amazon for eight years (and counting), it should be beyond debate that 5e is doing a lot right. And yeah, some stuff wrong, hence this thread, but a lot more right than wrong.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's an awfully negative way of thinking about it.

I agree that popularity doesn't equal quality, but longevity generally does. Did thousands of shrieking girls prove that the Beatles were a great band? No, but the fact that "Let It Be" was a top five album last year -- more than half a century after its release -- kind of does. Fads don't last fifty years.

The fact that 5e sold well on release might not mean anything. The fact the latest 5e book sells well might not either. But when the Player's Handbook has continuously been in the top 100 bestselling books on Amazon for eight years (and counting), it should be beyond debate that 5e is doing a lot right. And yeah, some stuff wrong, hence this thread, but a lot more right than wrong.

I've said before, 5th ed is the best official version of D&D (rules-wise only) in my opinion. However, it has quite a number of glaring flaws, some of which are obvious even to its fans once they give it some thought; see the thread above. The fact that WotC has allowed the general popularity of the game to be an excuse not to attempt to fix those errors is what I consider lazy design and catering to the lowest common denominator.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It’s why I try very hard to only reference the actual game and not my own personal preferences. Saying 5e is very caster heavy is an easily supportable point. It is. That’s a fact.

Saying monks suck and are unplayable is not easily supptable nor anything remotely approaching a fact.

Honestly, its one of those things that by its nature almost has to be taken as either hyperbole or a very personal definition of "unplayable" anyway. All that's required to prove it untrue in a literal sense is to show, well, someone plays them. That's arguably a low bar (as I've noted, people will play classes that don't bring much of anything to the table and have active problems if they like them), but it still means a different term needs to be used at the least.

 

[Hussar]

Thirded. I liked the UA ranger. Tons of fun.

 

[Hussar]

Note there is a world of difference between “this class might be better if…” and “this class is so sucktastic that it’s unplayable “

 

[Thomas Shey]

I agree that popularity doesn't equal quality, but longevity generally does. Did thousands of shrieking girls prove that the Beatles were a great band? No, but the fact that "Let It Be" was a top five album last year -- more than half a century after its release -- kind of does. Fads don't last fifty years.

Uhm. I think there's an unexplored gap here, however. Once a thing has first-entry advantage, it doesn't really need to be good; just competent. It needs to not actively upset its user base, because a lot of people will stick with the well-known thing or the thing they're familiar with even when things that are (in a way that a game can't be shown to be) objectively better by discernible metrics, simply because of familiarity and market presence.

Its to be noted that the least successful incarnation of D&D was so not because it was badly designed, but because it violated the expectations of its extent base too much. That's not an atypical situation.

 

[Oofta]

Given that DDB data also shows most characters never make it past 5, which is where Fighters shine, this is perhaps unsurprising.

Re: Monks etc. I think part of the issue is that how much a class is played has relatively little bearing on whether class is particularly well-designed.

This is easily demonstrated with MMORPGs. Very often classes that are poor performers on metrics and have serious design flaws are actually extremely popular with people playing more casually (which is typically "the majority". That doesn't mean that the design flaws don't exist or don't matter though - just that they don't seriously and immediately impact play. What is notable is that if they do get improved, their numbers do go up - but only a little bit.

You seem to be trying to say "If people don't think they're flawed they're not flawed". That's obviously irrational and non-factual. Especially as you're going with "people play them" as proof they're not flawed. Again, easily demonstrated by MMORPGs and the like. Hell, I've seen MMORPGs where the most well-designed classes barely got played compared to some of the worse ones!

Hell, 2E is a great example. Thieves were a total disaster of a class in 2E, a real mother-may-I nightmare. But loads of people played them!

A better argument would be "It doesn't matter if they're inferior, people play them anyway!". I mean let's all be real, in 5E, below level 10, the difference between the most effective classes and least is like 40%, at most (barring serious optimization). That's amazing. Only 4E did better. Again this doesn't mean the flaws aren't real, shouldn't be addressed, just that their impact is limited.

(And with Monks btw I'd love to see how popular they became if they stopped them being Shaolin Monks and basically made the Mystical Martial Artists - they'd probably become the most popular class!)

One of the strengths of D&D is that every campaign is different. It's also one of the greatest weaknesses. Because there are so many variables I don't see an easy way to compare. DPR is easy to calculate on a spreadsheet, but it's not the only factor that matters and frequently doesn't match the real world.

So we're left looking at what people play. Based on personal experience and the stats we have, I think Monks are OK.

 

[tetrasodium]

re: classes that are unplayable, martial-caster disparity, or other similar problems

At what level do these show up for you all? Is there a level range where the game works fine, and then a point where it starts to break down? I ask because I've played 5e entirely in the level 1-7 range, and I've yet to see any class imbalance or things that were unplayable. The only thing I noticed were encounters that I made that were accidentally too difficult, but that was more due to lack of player tactics than anything else.

My games tend to run into low to mid teens barring the one covid killed & AL stuff. tier 2-3 are ok but goes downhill the further into tier3+ you get. Starts to jump the shark at 11 & completely flies off the rails soon after. Fighter warlock and monk players all dig in demanding a short rest every fight or two & just nova down anything shy of2-3x++ lethal encounters with zero risk thanks to healing word/1hp/LoH/etc unless the gm sets up a situation where the monsters take bob from full to 3x failed death saves before alice has a turn.

Edit: AL being mostly adventures in the tier1/tier2/barely tier3 ho doubt influences DDB's numbers quite a bit too