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

[Theory of Games]

I legitimately don't understand why, if you were familiar with UI, you were feigning to not understand what I was talking about when I brought up courtly intrigue.

YOU SAID D&D didn't have those kinds of rules. Payn beat me to the spot I was headed.

 

[Yaarel]

Yeah, I think D&D could do with a distinction between Might and Prowess to cover that, and fold the manual dexterity into something else (probably intelligence).

I think Size can define the "weight class". Size comes with a "Size bonus to damage".

So there can be the clumsy Ogre that is unable to run or jump (Large), and the athletic Rabbit that can jump far (high Strength).

 

[Li Shenron]

Personally I think that at least the last few editions of D&D have been generally bad at two things (separated for convenience but rather parts of the same problem)

a) leaving non-combat problems to be resolved narratively: I think having strict rules for social interaction and exploration very often ruins the whole pillars, replacing open-ended problem solving with dice rolls.

b) preserving resource management challenges: there are way too many spells and items which instantly remove resource issues, from food and encumbrance to darkness and travel.

I am aware that a lot of gamers actually want these rules in the game. The irony is, the same gamers are also usually endlessly unsatisfied by any such rules, and consequently looking for more rules.

 

[Reynard]

a) leaving non-combat problems to be resolved narratively: I think having strict rules for social interaction and exploration very often ruins the whole pillars, replacing open-ended problem solving with dice rolls.

A conundrum literally from before the hobby had a name.

 

[Remathilis]

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.

Combat is a factor, but I think it comes with the fact that most D&D characters have a lot of tools and resources that your typical horror protagonist doesn't. Divination magic, healing spells, stuff like that.

Horror is doable, I'm not arguing that. Too many years as a Ravenloft DM to say it doesn't. But I find it a diminishing return as the game goes to higher levels. It just would be nice if somehow the window for truly scary horror was larger, but that's a fundamental change to D&D's leveling system.

 

[Steampunkette]

Combat is a factor, but I think it comes with the fact that most D&D characters have a lot of tools and resources that your typical horror protagonist doesn't. Divination magic, healing spells, stuff like that.

Horror is doable, I'm not arguing that. Too many years as a Ravenloft DM to say it doesn't. But I find it a diminishing return as the game goes to higher levels. It just would be nice if somehow the window for truly scary horror was larger, but that's a fundamental change to D&D's leveling system.

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. >.>)

 

[Lanefan]

For example, I think D&D is historically pretty bad at "courtly intrigue."

When I saw the thread title I was going to jump in to post exactly this, and bam - there it is, right in the OP!

I'll expand this, though, to say D&D has always been rather bad at (or, more, that its rules and design have fought against) intrigue and mystery and "spy stuff" in general.

I don't think social interaction rules are the fix, however; in fact I think that'd make it worse if anything. Instead, the initial fix is to strip out the various spells and effects (of which each edition has a different list of specifics) that circumvent in-fiction mystery and deception. If it says "divination" anywhere, for example, it probably has to go; ditto for spells and effects like charm, intimidate, and scrying.

After that, leave it to the players to solve the mystery in-character by actually thinking it through rather than relying on divination and scrying; and if they get frustrated because they can't arrive at the solution then so be it: let 'em stew.

 

[MGibster]

Horror is doable, I'm not arguing that. Too many years as a Ravenloft DM to say it doesn't. But I find it a diminishing return as the game goes to higher levels. It just would be nice if somehow the window for truly scary horror was larger, but that's a fundamental change to D&D's leveling system.

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.

 

[MGibster]

I wish D&D was good for playing at high levels.

 

[DragonLancer]

For me it's inability to represent differing settings. Right now and for some time too, D&D has felt like a powered up computer game - World of Warcraft or League of Legends. Using the D&D system as is doesn't fit settings like Conan or Middle Earth. A minor niggle but something that I think D&D is bad at.