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

[Micah Sweet]

(5e)
High level.
guidance for DM's on things to do with treasure
rules for player advancement in the world at large not just in thier classes.
Guidance for new DM's on anything.
Guidance specifically in campaign settings say Forgotten Realms as an example of types of consequences for players when messing with the world power players, thieves guilds, rulers, magic academies, gods etc.
Magic Items.
crafting rules
Trying to make magic items useless by giving out special powers to everyone. (if we are all special then no one is special)
Magic in general. So far every fix has made it worse in some other way.

This is why I lean so heavily into 3pp. Most if not all of these issues are addressed there in one way or another (usually many different ways).

 

[nevin]

This is why I lean so heavily into 3pp. Most if not all of these issues are addressed there in one way or another (usually many different ways).

me too, but 3rd edition is such an unwieldy nightmare once you pass 8th level or so. Not sure there's a way to fix that and still have decent options though.

 

[Lanefan]

You can't decapitate yourself by default with a fumble in either RM2 or RMSS Arms Law. To get a death result, you'd have to

• roll a fumble;
• roll a natural 100 on the fumble table while using a one-handed, mounted, or thrown weapon, which triggers a "D" level critical of varying types
• roll 86+ on the critical table (this is constant across all three weapon critical types).

Pretty long odds.

It only needs to happen once...

 

[Lanefan]

me too, but 3rd edition is such an unwieldy nightmare once you pass 8th level or so. Not sure there's a way to fix that and still have decent options though.

I think by "3pp" he means 3rd-party publishers, not 3rd edition.

 

[Lanefan]

One thing that occurs to me that D&D was never all that good at - and has become steadily worse at over the years - is replicating the whole "fog of war" piece and the chaos of battle. Melee combat (other than simple one-on-one) is chaotic and unpredictable, but D&D has always assumed each individual combatant - PC and NPC alike - to have much more control over the situation that would likely be the case.

 

[Theory of Games]

One thing that occurs to me that D&D was never all that good at - and has become steadily worse at over the years - is replicating the whole "fog of war" piece and the chaos of battle. Melee combat (other than simple one-on-one) is chaotic and unpredictable, but D&D has always assumed each individual combatant - PC and NPC alike - to have much more control over the situation that would likely be the case.

Which is weird because so many people call D&D a wargame. Wargames focus on eliminating or at least minimizing FoW as early as possible via counter-intelligence and combat tactics. With D&D, it's rare groups that are even interested in FoW and how it impacts combat.

Most groups just want to PEW!PEW! with their weapons & spells, and that's fine.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

One thing that occurs to me that D&D was never all that good at - and has become steadily worse at over the years - is replicating the whole "fog of war" piece and the chaos of battle. Melee combat (other than simple one-on-one) is chaotic and unpredictable, but D&D has always assumed each individual combatant - PC and NPC alike - to have much more control over the situation that would likely be the case.

In fairness, I think this is kind of the point?

That is, D&D is to its bones heroic fantasy, not in the "best kind of person" sense but in the "person doing amazing deeds" sense. Gygax pretty much spelled that out in detail with his discussion of the nature of hit points; a high level Fighter being more durable than a trained warhorse is incompatible with the idea that these are perfectly, absolutely mundane people with zero deviation from ordinary Joe Shmoe (or would that be J'eaux Schmeaux? OD&D players loved their silly names.) Heroic luck is and has always been something captured within the D&D play experience.

So...is the fog of war something D&D has faltered on? Or is this complaining that cupcakes are bad sheet cakes because they're small and round rather than large and rectangular? That dogs are bad cats because they bark and slobber and get all up in your business?

More or less, I think there's an important distinction to be made between things that D&D clearly wants to do, or has attempted to do, or has claimed to do, but doesn't actually do (or does very poorly), vs things that D&D both isn't trying to do and that are opposite to things it actually is trying to do. Fog of war and melee combat being messy and wildly unpredictable seem to fall into the latter category.

 

[payn]

In fairness, I think this is kind of the point?

That is, D&D is to its bones heroic fantasy, not in the "best kind of person" sense but in the "person doing amazing deeds" sense. Gygax pretty much spelled that out in detail with his discussion of the nature of hit points; a high level Fighter being more durable than a trained warhorse is incompatible with the idea that these are perfectly, absolutely mundane people with zero deviation from ordinary Joe Shmoe (or would that be J'eaux Schmeaux? OD&D players loved their silly names.) Heroic luck is and has always been something captured within the D&D play experience.

So...is the fog of war something D&D has faltered on? Or is this complaining that cupcakes are bad sheet cakes because they're small and round rather than large and rectangular? That dogs are bad cats because they bark and slobber and get all up in your business?

More or less, I think there's an important distinction to be made between things that D&D clearly wants to do, or has attempted to do, or has claimed to do, but doesn't actually do (or does very poorly), vs things that D&D both isn't trying to do and that are opposite to things it actually is trying to do. Fog of war and melee combat being messy and wildly unpredictable seem to fall into the latter category.

Which is interesting with the "combat is fail state" thread. The more chaos fog of war, the less you want to actually get in fights. I mean, if you can randomly be decapitated through no fault of strategy or tactic, why ever engage in it in the first place?

 

[M.L. Martin]

It only needs to happen once...

Yes, but you'll need an average of 16,667 attack rolls before it does.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Which is interesting with the "combat is fail state" thread. The more chaos fog of war, the less you want to actually get in fights. I mean, if you can randomly be decapitated through no fault of strategy or tactic, why ever engage in it in the first place?

Certainly. Older editions of D&D had a tension (possibly intended?) where some mechanics instantiate heroic ideas or experiences, and others instantiate the opposite ("gritty" fantasy, "Fantasy Vietnam", etc.), but it's pretty clear that at the very least that that "gritty" state is something you move away from once you have proven yourself against it, which is a pretty heroic fantasy idea, just one that forces you to repeatedly run the gauntlet until skill or (mostly) luck gets you through it.

Later editions, in part because of the influence of Dragonlance and the popularity of a less-strident version of its playstyle*, have very intentionally moved away from having that tension. The fog of war simply isn't a design goal of modern D&D, and messiness of combat, while not actively shunned per se, isn't a priority for a variety of reasons. Biggest is probably just that having any system at all means there are reliable elements, and second biggest is that the needed swinginess required to overcome the reliability induced by having a system of combat just isn't very popular. Folks like feeling that their skill matters more than dumb luck, and "I showed my skill by just winning before things ever happened" has the serious flaw of usually being anticlimactic.†

*By which I mean, fully rigorous DL play has players basically taking on roles in a play, with scripted events even if the dialogue is impromptu. That style is nowhere near as popular as the much, much milder style inspired by DL, where there is no fixed plot to run, but the overall experience is still tailored to produce long-term satisfying narrative beats nonetheless. The idea that your group is effectively writing their own epic story, more or less.
†Consider the enormous kerfuffles we've had about the value and place of "fudging" and very specifically its (allegedly) warranted use to prevent a meaningful opponent from getting utterly shut down by the PCs merely due to incredible luck. Folks frequently insist that having this tool there, available to preserve the challenge and emotional impact of a particular fight, is essential to players having a good time. Given those folks almost always agree that fudging shouldn't be done lightly and absolutely should not be done in such a way that it might be noticeable to players, it's clear that they (or most of them) understand that fudging in this way is a steep price to pay; their insistence that they absolutely must have the ability to do this, then, indicates just how harmful they think anticlimax must be. So if almost every fight is supposed to be won before it's started....you can see how that might be a problem in the eyes of many players and DMs alike.