D&D General What Is D&D Generally Bad At That You Wish It Was Better At?

[Reynard]

Mass Combat

I think War Machine from the BECMI Companion Set did mass combat about as well as one can expect a tabletop RPG to do it.

 

[Reynard]

What do you mean by "courtly intrigue"? Talking to the nobles? How was D&D bad at that?

"Courtly intrigue" is more than just "talking to nobles." It is a game of favors and alliances. D&D does not have any system built into it that help with this sort of thing, so the GM is left to reward player (rather than character) charisma -- which I think is a weakness of the game.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Anything that's not some form of D&D? A bit tautological, yes, but the game has always had certain strong flavors built into it that channel it in certain directions. What those flavors are change from edition to edition, but it's never (with the possible exceptions of OD&D, which was little more than a framework, and 2E, which was rich with variations and degrees of options and allowed a high level of looseness) been 'generic fantasy', much less 'generic roleplaying.'

 

[CleverNickName]

The three things that D&D has historically never been good at, from my point of view, are:

Multiclassing: it has been either completely non-existent in some editions, or game-breakingly bad in others. I would rather write a brand new character class called SwordMageRogue, or have some kind of feat tree.

Mass Combat: I enjoyed the Siege Engine rules from the 1980s, but even back then, I felt they were too sparse and hand-wavy. They didn't really improve with age. (That said, there are some good third-party systems out there that are pretty fun.)

Magic Item Crafting: like multiclassing, it has always been either non-existent or game-breaking. The item creation feats of 3.X Edition were a good idea; I would have liked to see them improved and expanded upon in 5E but alas.

 

[Piperken]

What is reflected on the character sheet, does not translate quickly for what a player (esp. a player who is new or not experienced) may want to do in the fiction of the moment.

Depending on edition, there is a tendency to have to shove ideas into particular boxes, that don't necessarily fit the idea well; sometimes quite forcefully.

 

[Reynard]

What is reflected on the character sheet, does not translate quickly for what a player (esp. a player who is new or not experienced) may want to do in the fiction of the moment.

This is a good observation. What do you think would be a good solution?

 

[Theory of Games]

"Courtly intrigue" is more than just "talking to nobles." It is a game of favors and alliances. D&D does not have any system built into it that help with this sort of thing, so the GM is left to reward player (rather than character) charisma -- which I think is a weakness of the game.

I still don't understand what you're talking about here. What is a system of favors and alliances do exactly? Something like a set of rules that mechanize social interaction where, instead of roleplaying, the group just rolls dice to resolve conversations between PCs and NPCs?

 

[Reynard]

I still don't understand what you're talking about here. What is a system of favors and alliances do exactly? Something like a set of rules that mechanize social interaction where, instead of roleplaying, the group just rolls dice to resolve conversations between PCs and NPCs?

Have you never seen a game that uses social interaction rules before? I'm not sure how to explain it beyond what I have already said.

 

[Steampunkette]

Horror.

D&D doesn't handle real horror well because after 5th level, everyone D&D is a Big Damn Hero. D&D handles action-movie horror like Castlevania, but not real horror unless you are house rulling it into oblivion.

This is ... kinda true.

It certainly doesn't work for "Slasher Horror" after 5th level, but that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what a slasher -is-, in the end. Sort of the same with Creature Feature horror after level 2-3. Fighting "One Vampire" is either devastatingly implausible when you're too low level, a single combat encounter when you're near the right level, and a speedbump thereafter. Because if you're dealing with a monster, or a singular human or whatever then it's just another combat encounter.

But horror isn't in the monsters or the dice rolls or the amount of HP you have left. It's in the narrative and the delivery.

You -can- tell a good horror story in D&D... It just requires buy-in from the players and the knowledge that combat is going to largely step on the atmospheric and narrative elements of horror as people roll nat 1s and play it as comedic or get frustrated by them.

 

[Theory of Games]

Have you never seen a game that uses social interaction rules before? I'm not sure how to explain it beyond what I have already said.

I mean. I was hoping you could provide an example of what you meant, but nevermind