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

[Vaalingrade]

In the grant tradition of the brilliant class naming of D&D, might I suggest 'Puncher'?

 

[James Gasik]

Pugilist? Brawler? Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy?

 

[Rogerd1]

Yeah I mean that's the issue. If the flavour was on, rather than seriously off, Monk would be drastically more popular, I would confidently suggest. Especially if it wasn't called Monk.

It is likely why A5E called them Adepts.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No. Game designers design classes based on actual play testing and feedback. As in not just mechanics in a vacuum.

Assessment based on theory Carrie’s pretty much no water when the actual real world evidence that we have appears to contradict your conclusions.

If you want an example of an unplayable class take the adnd illusionist. Virtually never played. By far the least played class in the game despite being in the phb.

But then in 2e we get specialist mu’s and now illusionists get played. Because now they are actually playable.

Presuming that the majority of people who don’t agree with your interpretation are either too “casual” or too stupid to see the problem is not really helping your point.

This isn't a reasonable argument, and the last lines show bad faith on your part, frankly. I've never suggested either.

 

[Nightfly]

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.

I assume it's not "lowest common denominator", but that WotC learned a lesson from how angry everyone got about 3.5e. If that's true, that actually commendable! But it means we've had to wait an awful long time for some sprucing-up to 5e. Tasha's was sort of a 5.1, and it helped, but it was just a band-aid. I am very ready for 5.5e now, and I think most us are.

To be fair though, for people picking up the game, you have to buy the books before you can find fault with the books?

If all your friends were telling you, "I really liked 5e for a while, but the all the flaws made me stop playing" I'm thinking you wouldn't be buying the books. General word of mouth about 5e appears to still be highly positive.

 

[Helldritch]

No. Game designers design classes based on actual play testing and feedback. As in not just mechanics in a vacuum.

Assessment based on theory Carrie’s pretty much no water when the actual real world evidence that we have appears to contradict your conclusions.

If you want an example of an unplayable class take the adnd illusionist. Virtually never played. By far the least played class in the game despite being in the phb.

But then in 2e we get specialist mu’s and now illusionists get played. Because now they are actually playable.

Presuming that the majority of people who don’t agree with your interpretation are either too “casual” or too stupid to see the problem is not really helping your point.

The AD&D illusionnist was a beast of a class. It's only weakness was how willing was the DM to see his monsters being bullied around. You would not get a save against illusion unless you actively acted to disbelief. Many DMs would just say ok, roll a save while it was not so.
An illusionnist could "summon" an Ogre. That Ogre strikes you and deals damage (illusory, but the player and character do not know). So it must be an illusion! Guess what? To be rid of the illusion, you had to actually spend a round and risk being hit once more. And if the save failed... that Ogres would stay for 3 rounds after concentration. (Yep the illusionist had to concentrate on the phantasmal force). But at higher level, that would not be an ogre, it could be a demon. And that demon might come from demi-shadow monster which were partially real and unlike summon monsters would be entirely chosen by the illusionist.

The risk in using lower illusions to have monster to attack would simply be a bonus to disbelief as the character would start "seeing" that the "monster" was too good to be true. Not so with higher level spells such as Phantasmal killers and demi-shadow monsters (and shadow monsters) where the spells were fire and forget. Illusions would affect undead and even blind monsters as illusions had a sensory component to them. The only real problem of the illusionist was that the spells he could use would effectively shut down the precious BBEG and a lot of DM did not appreciated that. So they would gutter the power of illusions in the hands of the players (but not when it was in theirs).

Also, Demi-shadow monsters would only inflict a % of real damage. That did not mean that they would inflict that % only. Only after the fight would the faked loss HP would come back. Many DM would simply have an ogre dealing normally 10 points of damage dealing only 4. Which was not what it was supposed to be. Illusions were hard to track on the DM side has he had to actually note how much damage was caused by illusion and to which player(s) in addition to his monsters. And remember, one round of doing nothing but disbelieving was required to even get a save... Something that many people would simply not do. It was dropped in 2nd edition for obvious reasons.

 

[Shardstone]

Yeah I mean that's the issue. If the flavour was on, rather than seriously off, Monk would be drastically more popular, I would confidently suggest. Especially if it wasn't called Monk.

I think Monk can work, even if it feels a bit silly. For the most part, I have seen people understand the monk pretty well, and embrace its wuxia-esque mechanics...its just those mechanics fall off a cliff every level after 7.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think Monk can work, even if it feels a bit silly. For the most part, I have seen people understand the monk pretty well, and embrace its wuxia-esque mechanics...its just those mechanics fall off a cliff every level after 7.

Yeah I actually think Monks could stand to be more Wuxia/Anime/Manga-ish, just in a more flexible way.

If we ignore the Shaolin-specific angle, there's actually a much larger issue that there's simply too much of the Monk in the chassis (and the chassis stuff is pretty powerful, and thus the subclasses can't do enough. Like, I think you could at the very least ditch (as part of the chassis):

Unarmoured movement (it has four levels and "improved unarmoured movement" - I think drop to two levels as part of the chassis, and just make it so "improved unarmoured movement" is on the subclasses it needs to be on - which is not all of them)
Slow Fall (again, specific subclasses only)
Stunning Strike
Stillness of Mind
Purity of Body
Tongue of the Sun and Moon
Diamond Soul
Timeless Body
Empty Body

The last six are all Shaolin mythology-type stuff, which don't fit with most Wuxia, let alone Anime/Manga/etc.

You could also probably re-work the base Ki skills, though maybe they're fine.

Actually looking at this, you know what they should do? Make a system like the Warlock Invocation system (i.e. the special abilities they get).

All of the stuff I've listed above essentially Invocation-like. So turn it into that and make it optional. Particularly as a lot of Wuxia/Anime characters have 2-4 abilities from there, but pretty much none aside from Shaolin Monks have all of them (I daresay a sufficient Anime expert could give me at least one counterexample but I bet that character has a million more abilities too!)

 

[TwoSix]

Actually looking at this, you know what they should do? Make a system like the Warlock Invocation system (i.e. the special abilities they get).

All of the stuff I've listed above essentially Invocation-like. So turn it into that and make it optional. Particularly as a lot of Wuxia/Anime characters have 2-4 abilities from there, but pretty much none aside from Shaolin Monks have all of them (I daresay a sufficient Anime expert could give me at least one counterexample but I bet that character has a million more abilities too!)

Alternate Monk by laserllama

Alternate Monk by laserllama - Created with GM Binder.

www.gmbinder.com

 

[Shardstone]

Yeah I actually think Monks could stand to be more Wuxia/Anime/Manga-ish, just in a more flexible way.

If we ignore the Shaolin-specific angle, there's actually a much larger issue that there's simply too much of the Monk in the chassis (and the chassis stuff is pretty powerful, and thus the subclasses can't do enough. Like, I think you could at the very least ditch (as part of the chassis):

Unarmoured movement (it has four levels and "improved unarmoured movement" - I think drop to two levels as part of the chassis, and just make it so "improved unarmoured movement" is on the subclasses it needs to be on - which is not all of them)
Slow Fall (again, specific subclasses only)
Stunning Strike
Stillness of Mind
Purity of Body
Tongue of the Sun and Moon
Diamond Soul
Timeless Body
Empty Body

The last six are all Shaolin mythology-type stuff, which don't fit with most Wuxia, let alone Anime/Manga/etc.

You could also probably re-work the base Ki skills, though maybe they're fine.

Actually looking at this, you know what they should do? Make a system like the Warlock Invocation system (i.e. the special abilities they get).

All of the stuff I've listed above essentially Invocation-like. So turn it into that and make it optional. Particularly as a lot of Wuxia/Anime characters have 2-4 abilities from there, but pretty much none aside from Shaolin Monks have all of them (I daresay a sufficient Anime expert could give me at least one counterexample but I bet that character has a million more abilities too!)

Also, double the monk's ki points. Seriously. They don't provide that much to be as limited and in-demand as they are by various class features.