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

[Vaalingrade]

Ok, that is very true. D&D's gone into a lot of different aesthetics and themes since its original inception. I still don't think the tweet makes complete sense, because it's not obligated to represent every fantasy concept out there that exists. That's what I have beef with, I guess.

There is an Alice in Wonderland adventure. There was an adventure where gnomes built a giant mecha.

D&D has historically and forever tried to be every Fantasy while still somehow having massive blindspots based entirely on lazy design or designer fiat.

We don't have half dragon PCs because they didn't want flight and a tail meant another attack and by the time we got to an edition that had flying PCs, they had entrenched on stubby lizardmen, not because D&D can't do half dragons due to some genre limitation. That's what the tweet is calling out.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I have never been in a game or read a book where "Goblins/Orcs/etc are evil because they are green." The one origin I've seen across a vast amount of literature etc is "Evil gods made them to be evil and further the cause of evil". Which is basically questioning "A Wizard did it."

Uhhhhh, you've absolutely been in a game where Drow were "Black-skinned because they were Evil" though, if you've played D&D long enough (unless you got very lucky DM-wise). And functionally turning things dark-skinned because they're Evil is um... pretty bad. Pretty off. So off that even as a child in the '80s I was concerned by that sort of thing. But that was the default Drow lore for a very long time, before it gradually got dialed back (and any attempts to claim it never touched human ideas of "Blackness" are nuked from orbit by the covers of various 1E supplements, which TSR signed off on).

What's particularly notable is that D&D did "Dark skin = Evil" at a time when even sources it was drawing from did not. D&D's Dark Elves draw from Elric and other sources, but the Melniboneans (even more directly copied in Warhammer's Dark Elves) have pale-as-hell skin, not black skin.

Even Tolkien actually struggled with the evil-ness of his Orcs/Goblins, note. You often hear bollocks about how having hordes of purely-evil sentient beings is a "classic fantasy trope" and immune to criticism (lol) and so on, but Tolkien would definitely have been more open to discussing whether Orcs/Goblins were evil than a lot of posters, frankly. Tolkien, in his letters, tried to decide where Orcs/Goblins came from (he never came close to making up his mind - "warped elves" is Christopher Tolkien deciding for him), and why they were evil, and it was complex, and they weren't always monolithically evil, or even always sentient.

 

[theCourier]

There is an Alice in Wonderland adventure. There was an adventure where gnomes built a giant mecha.

D&D has historically and forever tried to be every Fantasy while still somehow having massive blindspots based entirely on lazy design or designer fiat.

We don't have half dragon PCs because they didn't want flight and a tail meant another attack and by the time we got to an edition that had flying PCs, they had entrenched on stubby lizardmen, not because D&D can't do half dragons due to some genre limitation. That's what the tweet is calling out.

Fair enough, I concede the point. Didn't know about the Wonderland adventure. I guess I was thinking more specifically about its pulp fiction and Tolkien origins. I did agree on the point about half-dragons before though.

 

[DEFCON 1]

is this a real thing?

If only...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

are you not aware of power dynamics? a dragon is by nature longer lived, often more intelligent, more physically powerful and even more wealthy if they want to rule a nation it does not take them long, it would be like you dating a particularly smart bee.

im not so sure... 5 well trained bees can't come track me to my house kill me and take mystuff... if anything it's more like "I was working for this company in a call center and one day the VP of accounting came down and we hit it off... now we are married" yeah the VP makes more money and has more power but isn't directly over the call center rep.

I mean if someone says "I'm the bastard of the king... my mother is the local seamstress" that is a power dynamic just as much, but I wouldn't assume a bad or icky relationship unless the Playr said so

 

[Mind of tempest]

Well, in my experience, folks want to have wings and be able to fly along with the breath weapon. How you manage these things alongside ordinary humans, elves, dorfs, etc... without limitations is beyond me?

the problem is wings will get them banned by DMs in a heartbeat you know it and I know it and the other readers do as well.

There is an Alice in Wonderland adventure. There was an adventure where gnomes built a giant mecha.

D&D has historically and forever tried to be every Fantasy while still somehow having massive blindspots based entirely on lazy design or designer fiat.

We don't have half dragon PCs because they didn't want flight and a tail meant another attack and by the time we got to an edition that had flying PCs, they had entrenched on stubby lizardmen, not because D&D can't do half dragons due to some genre limitation. That's what the tweet is calling out.

we can't have half dragons for balance reasons hence the Dragonborn who are dragons but PC sized.

Fair enough, I concede the point. Didn't know about the Wonderland adventure. I guess I was thinking more specifically about its pulp fiction and Tolkien origins. I did agree on the point about half-dragons before though.

given that true pulp fiction is long dead and Tolkien's work is like a century old adding newer stuff in sounds like good business sense.

im not so sure... 5 well trained bees can't come track me to my house kill me and take mystuff... if anything it's more like "I was working for this company in a call center and one day the VP of accounting came down and we hit it off... now we are married" yeah the VP makes more money and has more power but isn't directly over the call center rep.

I mean if someone says "I'm the bastard of the king... my mother is the local seamstress" that is a power dynamic just as much, but I wouldn't assume a bad or icky relationship unless the Playr said so

given that a dragon can kill and eat a human with bearly a thought your analogy falls short as well it seems.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

im not so sure... 5 well trained bees can't come track me to my house kill me and take mystuff...

But if we upgrade the bees to rats, they probably could. To dogs? They definitely could.

A dragon dating a human is massively screwed-up if you think about it at all. Weirdly the "we banged one time and I didn't even know they were a dragon!!!" is absolutely the cleanest, least-messed-up approach you can take to that.

It'd help if we stopped pretending dragons were smarter than humans, when in no piece of fiction ever in the history of humanity has a dragon shown itself to be well, particularly smart. And most dragons seem to be dumb as hell, absolutely including ones with like 24 INT.

if anything it's more like "I was working for this company in a call center and one day the VP of accounting came down and we hit it off... now we are married" yeah the VP makes more money and has more power but isn't directly over the call center rep.

Except the VP is nigh-immortal, nigh-invulnerable and can kill you in an eye-blink and probably has killed tons of people.

So it's actually like 50 Shades of Grey, except in fact it's like the original fanfic version of that where the CEO was Edward Cullen from Twilight.

And so you're now seeing how even your scenario is deeply messed-up?

 

[Stormonu]

For better or worse, monster lore in 5e is Nature and Arcana (or Religion, rarely). What's wrong with that in your opinion?

Some creatures (say Owlbear), can fall under multiple skills, and unless you want an either/or check, the DM has to decide which category it'd fall under. Having a dedicated skill unifies that - like not having separate Spot, Listen, Search skills and instead having Perception.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

But if we upgrade the bees to rats, they probably could. To dogs? They definitely could.

A dragon dating a human is massively screwed-up if you think about it at all. Weirdly the "we banged one time and I didn't even know they were a dragon!!!" is absolutely the cleanest, least-messed-up approach you can take to that.

It'd help if we stopped pretending dragons were smarter than humans, when in no piece of fiction ever in the history of humanity has a dragon shown itself to be well, particularly smart. And most dragons seem to be dumb as hell, absolutely including ones with like 24 INT.

well my experiences with half dragons have always been loved ones... (1 in 2e was a generational game where a PC fell in love with a silver dragon, 3 or 4 in 3e when the template made it easy, and in 4e and 5e more then once we used dragonborn as half dragons) we have never once had someone propose a back story that wasn't a happy families (although a few times it was with dead dragon parent still) so your milage may very I just don't see why a Dragon having a 24 as mommy and daddy being a wizard with a 17 is any different then mommy being an archmage with a 20 int and daddy being a farm boy with a 10 or 11,

heck the one time I remember 2 PCs hooking up was in 3e and the Int diff was like 15pts.

if Dad Dragon meets Mom Adventurer it is possible that if Mom Adventurer was a PC they could be MORE powerful then the dragon... just not seeing it

 

[BrokenTwin]

I fail to see anything "faux" about a 3D6 roll. It just doesn't tell you you should expect a 16 as often as a 12.

If 1d20 is too swingy and 3d6 is too static, split the difference with 2d10! Which does schew the numbers SLIGHTLY upward, but eh.