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

[Stormonu]

A Skill system that frankly sucks. To work, everyone has to have a moderate skill at everything from the start or they don't get used at all. And frankly, combat and spellcasting should be skills too.

Especially when so many spells circumvent having a skill at something.

 

[overgeeked]

A Skill system that frankly sucks. To work, everyone has to have a moderate skill at everything from the start or they don't get used at all. And frankly, combat and spellcasting should be skills too.

Especially when so many spells circumvent having a skill at something.

Check out Dragonbane. It’s a d20 roll low skill-based system. If roll low is a no go, you can easily fix that.

 

[Reynard]

Check out Dragonbane. It’s a d20 roll low skill-based system. If roll low is a no go, you can easily fix that.

There is so much to love about Dragonbane.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm not convinced play improves if your character can only be as charming,smart or sensible as the player.

Sure but I mean, there's a real double standard in a lot of games regarding Charisma, where you can't be more charming, smart, or sensible as the character OR the player! The shy kid in a group plays a Bard and gets ignored despite having a 19 Charisma. The theatre kid in your group can be as suave and eloquent as they want to, but their Charisma is a hard limit.

I don't mind if one of these is true, but too often, both of these things are true. It doesn't help that social rolls are kind of backwards in their execution- you might attempt to persuade an NPC through conversation, and then after the fact, be asked to roll, which can have very contradictory results.

 

[Remathilis]

I tend to take an inclusive stance when it comes to genre because I've yet to have an interesting discussion about whether or not something meets the definition of horror, science fiction, or whatever, so I'm fine with classifying Ravenloft as horror. But I also classify Scooby-Doo, Where Are you? as horror because it has many of the trappings. Ravenloft is among my favorite settings, with the I-6 Castle Ravenloft module my favorite of all time, but it's the Diet Coke of horror. Just one calorie. Not horrible enough. I just don't expect D&D to be good at horror but it can be fun to play in what's the equivalent of Disney's Haunted Mansion.

I have always said D&D emulates no genre but D&D. However, you can flavor your D&D in different ways. D&D horror is basically dark fantasy where your goblins and kobolds are replaced with skeletons and werewolves. And if you approach it mostly as Halloween-themed D&D, it works. Anything more needs major work done too much of D&D's assumptions to do other. It would just be nice if somehow you could do a more traditionally frightening horror for longer.

 

[Remathilis]

In fairness: You get diminishing returns on the GAME as the game goes to higher levels, regardless of the story you're trying to tell...

I try to cap mine out in the 12 to 13 range because after that character abilities tend to go quadratic and I didn't take trig.

(The joke being they go to 4 and I didn't even take 3. >.>)

I mean, that's a point too.

 

[Reynard]

Sure but I mean, there's a real double standard in a lot of games regarding Charisma, where you can't be more charming, smart, or sensible as the character OR the player! The shy kid in a group plays a Bard and gets ignored despite having a 19 Charisma. The theatre kid in your group can be as suave and eloquent as they want to, but their Charisma is a hard limit.

I don't mind if one of these is true, but too often, both of these things are true. It doesn't help that social rolls are kind of backwards in their execution- you might attempt to persuade an NPC through conversation, and then after the fact, be asked to roll, which can have very contradictory results.

That is certainly a function of D&D not knowing what to do with the social pillar, just because of all things in the game people have the strongest and most divisive opinions about it (going all ybe way back to the beginning of the hobby).

That's why I advocate for a more mechanical system. Not skill checks, but NPCs having specific and defined check boxes the PCs can engage by doing specific things. Get 3 of 5 and the king will do.X, but get all 5 and the king will do X AND Y.

 

[Theory of Games]

The issue is one that D&D specifically suffers from: it doesn't have a default setting. Unlike Pathfinder and other RPGs, D&D has mostly been designed to be "generic" enough to be used for numerous settings rather than a single one. This means that it doesn't really fit any specific theme or style particularly well, because it's supposed to be useful for all of them.

This is a feature, not a bug

 

[GrimCo]

Low fantasy and low magic. Classic S&S style a la Conan isn't really doable in modern D&D (3-5 editions). It was somewhat doable in 2ed. Never played editions before so i just don't know.

As said, political & court intrigues with grand scale domain management. This d&d doesn't do at all. You can, but mechanics wise, not much there. You have Charisma stat and few skills, some spells and that's it. As a game, it's not really designed for that type of play. They tried something with GoT 3e supplement, but it was meh ( didn't touch over 15 years). Example of how it's done? Look no further than Houses of the Blooded, game that's exclusively about that kind of play.

To tie in with above - mass combat and ship to ship combat. Now, for mass combat, 7th sea 1ed has solid system. It's based on heroic actions of individuals that shift tides of battle (giving bonuses to friendlies and penalties to enemies).

 

[Theory of Games]

Low fantasy and low magic. Classic S&S style a la Conan isn't really doable in modern D&D (3-5 editions). It was somewhat doable in 2ed. Never played editions before so i just don't know.

I've run exactly that with the system (PF). What were your problems?