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

[Rogerd1]

Boy, talk about hyperbole! A little smoldering around the edges, some light charring? Sure, I can buy that. Actual flames? I think not!

4ed suffered mostly from too many choices, and there should have been a sufficient amount, then any others should have been setting specific. So players could literally plane travel to learn from others.

There's a reason memes like this exist.

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And it is this reason fixes are required on 5ed. All across the board.

Part of the problem is that there are too many class abilities. Slim it down to the ones that actually do something that offer advantage. Remove the abilities that are pure game mechanics.

 

[delericho]

I kinda think it would feel less like D&D without at least +1 stuff.

Of course, there are an awful lot of kids on my lawn...

I agree. That said, I do wonder if maybe a weapon +X should maybe add the bonus to damage only (and armour/shields reduce damage similarly). As an added bonus, X can then go much higher than +.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, I should actually talk about stuff that I do think is wrong in 5e.

Probably my two biggest gripes are clerics and druids. Note, this is 100% just a personal thing and I know that I'm in the minority here.

1. Clerics don't know what they are supposed to be. Unless you're a war priest or something else that gets martial weapons, your cleric's cantrips are far, far better than any weapon attack you can make. There's just no real reason to use a weapon. Your cantrips will deal more damage and hit more often than any attack you make AND if you don't use weapons, you don't need to worry so much about MAD.
But, then, you've got the best armor proficiencies in the game outside of fighters. Your cleric most likely has the best AC in the game, and quite probably second best (or even best) HP in the group. But, you're better off standing in the back line pew pewing away with cantrips.
It drives me mental that clerics should be the second string or even first string tank in the group, but, if you do, then you're getting smacked fairly often, losing concentration and your weapon attacks are very, very bad.
I really think that there should be a cleric cantrip that allows a weapon attack as part of the cantrip and deals cantrip damage (d6/5 levels? something like that) on top of the weapon's damage. The cleric won't be a damage dealing star, but, at least then there'd be a reason to stand in the front line.

2. Druids bug me too. Now, I've never played a Moon Druid, nor seen one played, so, maybe that's the issue. But, I have seen a few played and played one myself for quite a while and to me, druids are just wizards with a specialized spell list. You're chucking Produce Flames every round, so, not particularly different from the wizard chucking fire bolt. Depending on which type of druid you are, you may very well be getting iconic wizard spells like invisibility or fireball as part of your spell list. AND, for some reason, druids are the summoning class while actual Conjuration wizards can't actually summon monsters.

I really, really don't like the 5e druid. I think it's too much wizard and not enough actual druid. A druid shouldn't be dropping fireballs on enemies and I hate that druids mugged conjuration from wizards. I do know that once I simply adjusted my point of view about my own druid and just started calling him a Conjurer, I was much happier.

 

[delericho]

Ah, two other things have just leapt to mind. Neither is unique to 5e:

The Wizard is just too powerful. It's not as bad as 3e, of course, but it does seem to be the best caster, where casters are better than non-casters across the board. Hard to see how to fix this one - the player base seems to object to any and all measures that reduce the power of this class (or even that reduce the power disparity).

Clerics (and Druids and Paladins) have too many spells to choose from. This one I think could be resolved reasonably easily - provide a much more limited 'core' set that all Clerics access, but move a lot more spells into the Domain (Circle, Oath) list. Or indeed make many of the spells mysteries that only some Clerics learn, either as quest rewards or from ancient tomes/scrolls/whatever (just like Wizards, in fact).

(Incidentally, on the latter point, the Essentials Set rulebook includes a fairly small subset of Cleric spells of the low levels, and I find that set much more manageable than the PHB set. Have I mentioned before that I like that Essentials Set rulebook? )

 

[glass]

I think that's a reach, honestly.

I think it was very clear that WotC/Hasbro higher ups only cared about D&D as an IP factory, so Mearls and co got a free hand to do whatever as long as it did not cost too much. The fact that D&D could be successful enough as a game to please Hasbro took everyone by surprise.

No, I think it well predated that, when it became obvious how much of the discussion of (what was it, D&D Now they called it? I've forgotten) was backing away from decisions in the 4e era. It didn't take much if you were paying attention to notice that what they were saying didn't add up (i.e. they were, in practice, lying to one group of fans or another, and people who'd payed attention toward the end of the 4e era probably could make an educated guess which one. Heck, I wasn't even involved in D&D during that period, and it looked pretty obvious to me).

That is pretty much exactly what happened. It is also pretty much exactly what I said happened, and pretty much the opposite of what you said happened in the post I responded to. Which make your first seven words rather confusing (why "no", and then go on to confirm my version of events, and what are the "it" and the "that".

It was "D&D Next".

Step 3a- Someone says something derisive about 4e mechanics.

Not just "derisive", factually inaccurate. In theory inaccurate praise would also need correcting, but I don't recall that ever happening with 4e.

I really don't want magic items baked into the math again by having the game assume PCs have them.

You cannot not assume, you either assume their absence or their presence. 5e claims to assume their absence, but someone was saying upthread they admited in a sidebar in a supplement that martials are screwed without magic items, so in practice their presence is assumed.

I wonder if I had said negative things about 3.5 when 4e was first released (there were plenty of issues with 3.x) if fans of that version would have been as prickly?

Criticism of 3e was and is often based on things that are actually problems with 3e. When that is not the case (which used to be not uncommon, but has virtually died out now), the reaction was generally similar. At least mine was, I cannot speak for everyone obviously.

_
glass.

 

[delericho]

I wonder if I had said negative things about 3.5 when 4e was first released (there were plenty of issues with 3.x) if fans of that version would have been as prickly?

Early in the 4e marketing some of the WotC designers did say some significantly negative things about 3e (many, but all, of which were entirely justified). And the fans of that version were indeed extremely prickly.

Indeed, the 4e marketing seems to be considered here to be a massive mess-up on the part of WotC, and at least partly responsible for what happened with that edition, and that's a big part of it.

Criticism of 3e was and is often based on things that are actually problems with 3e. When that is not the case (which used to be not uncommon, but has virtually died out now), the reaction was generally similar. At least mine was, I cannot speak for everyone obviously.

Yep.

 

[Hussar]

I've always been of the opinion that 4e's biggest mistake was basing the game off of organized play principles. Virtually all the things that 4e set out to fix were issues that came up in organized play. And, the reason for nearly all the design decisions for 4e was based in the idea that you would be playing with strangers a significant amount of time.

Those two things are, IMO, the primary reason for the rejection of 4e by a large segment of the fandom. People with stable groups (or even semi-stable groups) who had no experience or interest in playing with strangers couldn't begin to understand why 4e did the things that it did and explained the reasons the way they explained them. So, you had this segment of the hobby that just was not speaking the same language and it caused all sorts of misunderstandings and the whole thing just spiraled down into this never ending cycle of accusations and people getting their backs up. @glass - it's not entirely that the things that were being said about 4e were inaccurate (although, IMO, they very much were), it's just that many who were making the criticisms just weren't speaking the same language. Thus you get all the "ey" phrases - board gamey, video gamey, etc etc. The language to criticize the game just hadn't evolved to the point at that time that people could articulate the issues they were having in a way that could lead to any sort of compromise. Which just led to so much frustration and hard feelings all the way around.

I mean, all you have to do is look at how 5e borrows so many things from 4e without so much as a whimper. Mostly because WotC had 2 years to explain to everyone why they were doing the things they were doing and what they were trying to do, rather than the, what, six months of run up to 4e that was marred by all sorts of really, REALLY bad PR.

 

[delericho]

There's probably a lot of truth in that.

I think 4e possibly was also a victim of bad timing - there have clearly been three spikes in the popularity of D&D - one in the 80's, a much lesser one in the late 90's just as 3e hit, and one now. Between the spikes there have been long periods of decline leading to a near-collapse. 4e hit close to the end of one of those periods of collapse.

It may have been doomed to its fate almost regardless of the content.

(Which is, incidentally, the mirror of what I said about 5e in another thread - the circumstances right now are extremely favourable for any version of D&D, but 5e benefits from also being very good at what it does. I think that when 4e was launched the circumstances were bad for almost any version of the game, but that the edition also did itself no favours.)

 

[Minigiant]

I've always been of the opinion that 4e's biggest mistake was basing the game off of organized play principles. Virtually all the things that 4e set out to fix were issues that came up in organized play. And, the reason for nearly all the design decisions for 4e was based in the idea that you would be playing with strangers a significant amount of time.

Those two things are, IMO, the primary reason for the rejection of 4e by a large segment of the fandom. People with stable groups (or even semi-stable groups) who had no experience or interest in playing with strangers couldn't begin to understand why 4e did the things that it did and explained the reasons the way they explained them. So, you had this segment of the hobby that just was not speaking the same language and it caused all sorts of misunderstandings and the whole thing just spiraled down into this never ending cycle of accusations and people getting their backs up. @glass - it's not entirely that the things that were being said about 4e were inaccurate (although, IMO, they very much were), it's just that many who were making the criticisms just weren't speaking the same language. Thus you get all the "ey" phrases - board gamey, video gamey, etc etc. The language to criticize the game just hadn't evolved to the point at that time that people could articulate the issues they were having in a way that could lead to any sort of compromise. Which just led to so much frustration and hard feelings all the way around.

I mean, all you have to do is look at how 5e borrows so many things from 4e without so much as a whimper. Mostly because WotC had 2 years to explain to everyone why they were doing the things they were doing and what they were trying to do, rather than the, what, six months of run up to 4e that was marred by all sorts of really, REALLY bad PR.

I agree.

A lot of 4e's problems come from attempting to be based on organized play before the community and tech were there.


A lot of 5e's problems come from leaning on old groups taking in perpetual newbies.

 

[Shardstone]

Ok, I should actually talk about stuff that I do think is wrong in 5e.

Probably my two biggest gripes are clerics and druids. Note, this is 100% just a personal thing and I know that I'm in the minority here.

1. Clerics don't know what they are supposed to be. Unless you're a war priest or something else that gets martial weapons, your cleric's cantrips are far, far better than any weapon attack you can make. There's just no real reason to use a weapon. Your cantrips will deal more damage and hit more often than any attack you make AND if you don't use weapons, you don't need to worry so much about MAD.
But, then, you've got the best armor proficiencies in the game outside of fighters. Your cleric most likely has the best AC in the game, and quite probably second best (or even best) HP in the group. But, you're better off standing in the back line pew pewing away with cantrips.
It drives me mental that clerics should be the second string or even first string tank in the group, but, if you do, then you're getting smacked fairly often, losing concentration and your weapon attacks are very, very bad.
I really think that there should be a cleric cantrip that allows a weapon attack as part of the cantrip and deals cantrip damage (d6/5 levels? something like that) on top of the weapon's damage. The cleric won't be a damage dealing star, but, at least then there'd be a reason to stand in the front line.

2. Druids bug me too. Now, I've never played a Moon Druid, nor seen one played, so, maybe that's the issue. But, I have seen a few played and played one myself for quite a while and to me, druids are just wizards with a specialized spell list. You're chucking Produce Flames every round, so, not particularly different from the wizard chucking fire bolt. Depending on which type of druid you are, you may very well be getting iconic wizard spells like invisibility or fireball as part of your spell list. AND, for some reason, druids are the summoning class while actual Conjuration wizards can't actually summon monsters.

I really, really don't like the 5e druid. I think it's too much wizard and not enough actual druid. A druid shouldn't be dropping fireballs on enemies and I hate that druids mugged conjuration from wizards. I do know that once I simply adjusted my point of view about my own druid and just started calling him a Conjurer, I was much happier.

FInally being able to read Hussar's long-hidden salt is delicious. I agree with all of this. Only diff is, druid has cooler subclasses than wizard lol.