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

[Hussar]

I have to admit, I find the whole caster/fighter split to be rather overblown. Yes, I think casters might be a bit stronger than non-casters, but, overall? It just hasn't seemed to have much of an impact.

I do have a larger issue with the fact that 5e is just SO heavy magic. Like, spells every single round from every single spell caster. Which has meant that the players automatically default to casting spells to solve every problem rather than trying to use skills. But overall? No, I don't really see the issue in play.

Plus, from what evidence we have, fighters are by far the most popular class, but, also, none of the classes are dominating. The spread between top and bottom for what is being played is pretty small, so, I'd say that all theory crafting aside, judging from the evidence, this really isn't much of an issue.

 

[Hussar]

Dragons are shapechangers - so as far as the humanoid knows they are hooking up with another humanoid (perhaps Casanovarax likes to take human form and cruise the clubs)

also magic means conventional breeding isnt even required

Black Dragons are shapechangers? News to me. How do they manage that? But, again, we're talking about a VERY icky situation where one side is lying about their true nature. Again, I REALLY doubt that evil dragons are shapechanging enough to result in an ENTIRE RACE of people.

Now, if we go with "magical means" thing, it's STILL massively icky. Oh, your water source is polluted by the effluence and runoff from that Black Dragon's lair. It's so bad that it mutates your children.

There's far, far too many ways this is 100% icky. I mean, replace dragon with, say, Aboleth. If you banged out a Half-Aboleth race created by the polluted runoff from an Aboleth's lair, I'm thinking that's pretty icky. There's entire horror stories written about that sort of thing.

 

[Umbran]

Cool story bro

Mod Note:
This is hardly your first bit of sarcastic derision in this discussion, and it is more than enough. You are done in this thread.

 

[Scribe]

But there is a subset of the D&D player base - of which everyone has likely played with at least once - that doesn't care about the stupid elf-talky part of the game or the dumb wilderness-walky part of the game. They showed up at your table to build a jumped-up combat monster that goes to dungeons and kills stuff real good. The enjoyment is derived from crushing heads in difficult fights, the rest is secondary. The current iteration of the Fighter really speaks to this demographic.

100% fact.

 

[Hussar]

Did you ignore my other post? Fizban's introduced a bunch of new ways for half-dragons to be born, including just a dragon existing in the general area or having died somewhere. It doesn't need to be sex. Its 2022 man, get with the game.

Again, let's not lose sight of what's being talked about.

Half-dragon as a monster or a one off PC is perfectly fine. No argument from me. But as a race? Something that you're going to put in the PHB? Not happening. Dragonborn fill the niche far too well - they look like dragons, they have a breath weapon and they're very visually striking - the dragonborn art has only gotten better as time has gone on.

So, no, they're not going to add a child of rape/magical mutation race to the PHB. It's just not going to happen. Not when you have dragonborn right there, HUGELY popular (as in one of the most played races in the game) that don't have anything even remotely approaching the same sort of ick factor.

Again, do you really see entire villages, towns, hell NATIONS, of half-dragons? Because that's generally what the PHB races are used for.

 

[theCourier]

It is like most products of that time, clearly drunk. All the the denizens talk to you for five seconds, then try to kill your for no reason and there are ALL the drug references.

If I ran that I'd do it with overlapping versions of "White Rabbit" droning on in the background the whole game, lmao

 

[Shardstone]

Again, let's not lose sight of what's being talked about.

Half-dragon as a monster or a one off PC is perfectly fine. No argument from me. But as a race? Something that you're going to put in the PHB? Not happening. Dragonborn fill the niche far too well - they look like dragons, they have a breath weapon and they're very visually striking - the dragonborn art has only gotten better as time has gone on.

So, no, they're not going to add a child of rape/magical mutation race to the PHB. It's just not going to happen. Not when you have dragonborn right there, HUGELY popular (as in one of the most played races in the game) that don't have anything even remotely approaching the same sort of ick factor.

Again, do you really see entire villages, towns, hell NATIONS, of half-dragons? Because that's generally what the PHB races are used for.

Aren't Warforged a magical mutation too? And aren't Autognomes literal built robots? And Glitchlings just random spirits of order that got a body? And fairies any of the infinity of possible fairies? I think half-dragon works, and there's only an ick factor if you put it there to discount the idea.

Yes, I want an empire of half-dragons built on the corpse of a Grave Wyrm that's out here givin hands and flying around and drinking bad, bad brandy.

 

[Mecheon]

Half-dragon as a monster or a one off PC is perfectly fine. No argument from me. But as a race? Something that you're going to put in the PHB? Not happening. Dragonborn fill the niche far too well - they look like dragons, they have a breath weapon and they're very visually striking - the dragonborn art has only gotten better as time has gone on.

We've had half elves, half orcs and half dwarves long enough this long, didn't stop any of them being a race rather than one off PC. And that's before we even get to half giants

Half dragon is a popular enough idea in fantasy fiction that its stuck around for absolute yonks, and they've been in the game since 2E. Its just that, D&D always made them an absolute pain to play. 2E gave them all sorts of specific rules to get in the ways of being a half dragon, whereas 3E was. 3E and its direct "Actual half dragon" rather than just "Draconic template" were the original Dragonborn with the whole.... Dragon egg rebirth thing, Spellscales who no one remembers, and Dragon Disciples which just, wasn't a really good class even if you get dragon wings by the end

 

[p_johnston]

So a few things to note first
1) I like 5e a lot. I still run and play 5e. So everything I'm about to say comes from a place of love and wishing 5e was even better then it already is.
2) I doubt anything I say here will not have been covered somewhere in the previous 25 pages but I still wanna chime in.

Things WRONG with 5e
--- indexing, organization, and just generally finding any one specific rule or item. Just finding a specific rule in the players handbook is bad enough. When I also have to search through the DM's guide, Tasha's, and Xanathars it's just a hassle. At this point I just google rules if I have a question rather then even attempting to dive into the books.
--- A lack of clarity about what the game is designed to do and does best. ( 5e does best as a sort of dungeon crawl where you can have your 6-8 encounters a day with a couple of short rests to heal and let the short rest classes recharge. A type of game where it is mostly combat with a sprinkling of other activities to spruce up the space between. The problem is the game is does a very poor job of telling DM's that and helping them with how to adjust for other types of games.)
--- Some unclear or confusing or just plain fiddly rules. Things like the difference between and a melee weapon attack and an attack with a melee weapon, or the fact that you have a free item interaction but only one and after that it's an action to do something (and also what exactly constitutes an item interaction), or the fact that if you use a bonus action to cast a spell you can only cast a cantrip with your main action, or the entire encounter building and CR system, etc, etc.

Things that aren't necessarily wrong but still annoy me.
--- The game has bounded accuracy, except for a few spells/abilities that just choose to ignore it and give static pluses anyways.
--- 90% of monsters are boring.
--- Despite this monsters stat blocks are still somehow to big and have to much useless information.
--- The game has one dial and it's called dis/advantage. The problem being once that dial has been turned there is no use trying anything else creative at all.
--- After creation characters are largely linear with very few actually important choices when leveling up.
--- Leveling up is lackluster and boring except for a few key levels.
--- Both of the above are much worse for any non spellcasting class.
--- The six save system doesn't work very well and tends to end up "we have 3 big saves, 1 medium save, and 2 saves that get used for maybe maybe 20 things across the entire game."
--- Most of the mechanics for the social/exploration sections of the game are A) non existent B) not very (In my opinion) very good or C) Come down to a single roll.

and whole bunch of other stuff that I'm not going into because I've spent to long writing this already.

Things that are 100% just my personal preference.
--- I really dislike save or suck spells. I don't like using them on my players and I don't like when players use it on big bosses. Either way ends up with someone having less fun.
--- I'm not a huge fan of the d20 as a core dice. I prefer 3d6 or maybe some sort of dice pool system.
--- Why do we still have ability scores instead of just finding the bonus's directly? I think there are a handful of mechanics in the entire game that actually care about the score itself and none of those are player facing.

And probably some I'm forgetting.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Aren't Warforged a magical mutation too? And aren't Autognomes literal built robots? And Glitchlings just random spirits of order that got a body? And fairies any of the infinity of possible fairies? I think half-dragon works, and there's only an ick factor if you put it there to discount the idea.

Yes, I want an empire of half-dragons built on the corpse of a Grave Wyrm that's out here givin hands and flying around and drinking bad, bad brandy.

warforged and autognome are both made and have their entire basic playable arch based on being a nearly blank slate with all the robot tropes but for phb they break down as not all settings would they work.
we do not even know if glitchlings will make it to a book yet.

the problem is it does not work as phb races which given its shear popularity in 3e it was being forced to become it, they do not make sense as long-term nation builders or have a culture of their own.
hence dragonborn went from a strange mutant from a book few cared about to being re-engineered to be something that works in 4e and further to 5e.

the point of dragonborn is to be pc sized dragonkin with no level adjustments.