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

[cbwjm]

Personally I think that's incredible, and a reason to put up with the limitations of the Sorcerer...plus, I mean, if players want to burn spell slots faster, I'll tell them not to come crying to me when they run out!

But that's really secondary to the point. I don't want to have to have 6 pages of house rules, because I know that will just confuse most players. Building a game that sometimes seems to require house rules to work* and then charging me 50 bucks a rulebook seems pretty disingenuous.

*This is just an opinion, before there's 9 posts telling me the game works just fine for the posters without any house rules whatsoever, and that I'm wrong, etc. etc.. This is thread where I'm allowed to gripe about 5e!

It was pretty cool when the sorcerer unleashed two fireballs, I think he was really looking forward to 5th level so that he could.

I'd have to check, I think I have no more than a page of houserules, mostly clarifying things that sometimes get people confused.

• Ignoring that bonus action spellcasting rule
• Focus rules. Ignore the need to have M components to use a focus, you don't need a hand free for S components if one hand holds a focus.
• Druids can wildahape into any CR 0 beast, no matter the general restrictions on swim or fly speed.
• Wizards can prepare spells from a captured spellbook rather than needing to copy the spells into their own book.

These are the only ones that spring to mind anyway, I otherwise think that the 5e rules work more or less okay and could leave these rules out of the game without any real issue, these mainly just change the game to play the way I want it to.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

~ TSR circa 1980

~WotC circa 2004

It is not going to change radically at the peak. If it shrinks sufficiently it may change quite a lot, as I stated in my post or if a rival gets big enough as I also stated but the qualifiers you ignored.

For that matter I would not regard TSR 1980 as a radical departure from the past.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Good heavens, that kind of thing happened? I consider myself a chill DM but I would throw a player out of my table if he pulled a stunt like that.

A surprising large number of module reviews in the 3.x era had pages of nitpicking of the monster builds showing where the rules were not obeyed. Which encouraged such behaviour.

 

[James Gasik]

A surprising large number of module reviews in the 3.x era had pages of nitpicking of the monster builds showing where the rules were not obeyed. Which encouraged such behaviour.

I don't remember that, but I do remember sample stat blocks for Prestige Classed characters usually being terribad, with characters taking Feats they don't qualify for- or sometimes not meeting the requirements for their own class.

And usually official NPC stat blocks were laughable, like Drizzt and others in the first Forgotten Realms hardcover for 3e.

 

[cbwjm]

Something I wish I'd realised in 3e was that you didn't need to follow the rules for building monsters. It would have been so much easier to create something like an orc assassin if I just ignored the number of skill points/feats and just gave them some hit dice, base Stealth equal to level +3, and maybe a couple of feats to help with things, like two-weapon fighting and weapon focus (dagger) though even then, all you really need is the attack bonus for their attacks, no real need to list any feats. Even saving throws could have just been Fort/Will = half their level, Ref = their level. The ease of creating NPCs/Monsters is one of the things I really liked about 4e, and to a lesser extent 5e. 4e had a lot of the calculations for hit points and things essentially done for you.

 

[Stalker0]

While its true that dnd has always allowed the DM to make rulings, I will say there is a notable cultural difference between 3e and 5e that I have noticed in both myself and my players.

3e players really got into the "look for a rule to do X" mindset. Whereas I find in 5th, people are much more likely to just try things a bit more freeform and work with the dm on how it works. Its not that you couldn't do that in 3rd, but the style of the edition and its focuses reduced that type of occurrence I found.

 

[James Gasik]

Something I wish I'd realised in 3e was that you didn't need to follow the rules for building monsters. It would have been so much easier to create something like an orc assassin if I just ignored the number of skill points/feats and just gave them some hit dice, base Stealth equal to level +3, and maybe a couple of feats to help with things, like two-weapon fighting and weapon focus (dagger) though even then, all you really need is the attack bonus for their attacks, no real need to list any feats. Even saving throws could have just been Fort/Will = half their level, Ref = their level. The ease of creating NPCs/Monsters is one of the things I really liked about 4e, and to a lesser extent 5e. 4e had a lot of the calculations for hit points and things essentially done for you.

As much as I truly enjoyed the concept of monsters using similar rules to players, and having ability scores, with humanoid monsters especially, building them and adding class levels to them became a chore, especially when you realized there was no way to give them the appropriate bonuses to compete with player characters without giving them magical loot- which would just then become property of said PC's, making it more difficult to juggle their wealth.

4e was such a breath of fresh air when I could just assign monster role and level and the calculator was like "AC this, attack bonus that" and I could whip up an encounter in a few minutes without having to carefully pore over the stat block to make sure the thing was up to snuff without modifying it.

Sadly, 5e has some monsters that punch above or below their CR, and I can't always figure out the reasons why, so once again I have to break out the magnifying glass to make sure a monster is actually able to challenge the player characters.

 

[James Gasik]

While its true that dnd has always allowed the DM to make rulings, I will say there is a notable cultural difference between 3e and 5e that I have noticed in both myself and my players.

3e players really got into the "look for a rule to do X" mindset. Whereas I find in 5th, people are much more likely to just try things a bit more freeform and work with the dm on how it works. Its not that you couldn't do that in 3rd, but the style of the edition and its focuses reduced that type of occurrence I found.

Oh it's true, there was a decided shift in how 3e groups wanted the game to be more transparent, and not put up with bad DM shenanigans that were once simply "how the game was played". But I didn't see as the fault of the edition or it's rules- but the internet.*

Suddenly players from different parts of the world were able to compare notes and discuss the game, and they really seemed to want everyone playing by the same rules to ensure the game was "fair".

A large chunk of players were no longer happy with DM's who wanted to make them scrape for every copper piece, or make them crawl to the next level, or create a lot of house rules designed to take toys away from the players. There was definitely huge pushback against adversarial DMing, as "D&D horror stories" were suddenly being spread far and wide (and continue to this very day).

*I am willing to entertain the idea that "wealth by level" might have contributed to this. But I can't see it as a bad idea- what makes D&D unique for a lot of people is the ability to go on dangerous missions to get epic swag, and building the game around the expectation this is going to happen wasn't a bad thing, though the DMG 1 probably should have had ways to adjust the flow of treasure and xp without making the game fall apart.

Then again, these systems were all brand-new, and, thanks to hindsight, we know that WotC made a few assumptions on their own that proved false. Like thinking Wizards would continue to be blasters, when they didn't make a single upgrade to most damage spells, but instead made all the other spells better...

 

[Nightfly]

3e players really got into the "look for a rule to do X" mindset. Whereas I find in 5th, people are much more likely to just try things a bit more freeform and work with the dm on how it works.

That's actually a pretty ringing endorsement for 5e.

 

[Nightfly]

Something I wish I'd realised in 3e was that you didn't need to follow the rules for building monsters.

Speaking of which, that's something I find wrong with 5e: they mostly dropped the 4e philosophy that monsters don't have to follow the same design rules as players. That was one of the best features of 4e, and I miss it.