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

[MortalForce]

First time posting, only ever played 5e and starting on 5.5 now.

Diseases. Diseases weren’t much in 5e, but I just ran an encounter with some 5e diseased rats (no 2024 MM for us down in NZ yet) and had to retcon for the player that got diseased because magical diseases are all that’s in 5.5, and seem pretty convoluted.

Also as seems to be alluded to in other comments, the high fantasy “1hp PC is just as effective as 100hp PC” and “nearly died? Sleep it off!” mechanics sort of suspend disbelief for me.

Of course there’ll be better systems out there (for what I’m after) but DnD is the only game I’ve learned and I suspect I’d be hard pressed to get player buy-in for less well known systems. Also, learning a system is exhausting to me.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not referring to players, I'm referirng to DMs.

In that case, my objection becomes even broader. Depending on one's skills as a DM there are entire genres of RPGs one may not be able to run, as well as all sorts of stories where one might be dependent on other people's works to provide a framework since one lacks the skills necessary to invent stories of that type. And even then, because most adventures are written with limited page counts for economic reasons and are often very bare bones in what they communicate, and because often the very things which would be most desirable to know aren't recorded in published adventures, because they are the sort of things that the author just assumes anyone can improvise on the fly just because he could have done so, there is no guarantee you will be successful.

Now I will say that culturally there seems to exist among GMs and the RPG community as a whole more of an expectation that not only is this true, but also that by applying themselves to the problem and gaining experience that they can improve and "level up" and become better GMs, running more and more sorts of stories successfully and more and more gaining the skill to invent you own content. The idea is that you can become a good GM and better entertain your players. Whereas there seems to be no cultural expectations that players are trying to improve and become better players more capable of entertaining the GM and their fellow players. Culturally players are expected to be selfish and self-centered and to the extent that we talk about and expect a player to improve themselves, it's in ideas like system mastery and becoming more capable of overcoming challenges and not in the sense of becoming a more entertaining participant in the game better able to bring to life more and more diverse sorts of characters in an entertaining way. There is a double standard where we talk of "bad GMs" but rarely talk about "bad players" unless we are talking about some sort of social dysfunction like "rules lawyering" or "cheaters". We're perfectly happy to say a GM is bad if his characterization of NPCs is poor, but we rarely talk about the player not having an entertaining character. We know of GMs who say that they are working on their voices, on their acting, on their map making skills, on their ability to improvise, on their rules knowledge, on their story telling, on their pacing, on their people handling skills or whatever in an attempt to be better GMs. I rarely hear talk of their being an expectation players need to work at being better players.

 

[Celebrim]

First time posting, only ever played 5e and starting on 5.5 now.

Welcome to the boards.

Diseases.

You provide an interesting perspective because when I read the question I didn't search for problems a particular edition had but problems I thought no edition of D&D really addressed well. "Diseases" wouldn't have occurred to me because in 1e AD&D they were quite common and their was a whole section of the DMG devoted to mundane diseases and what happened if you got something like tetanus or cholera. In 3e AD&D while diseases were beginning to be deprecated as part of game play, the game had evolved tools for making diseases very nuanced and complex if you'd wanted that by have reoccurring saving throws, ability score drain, and conditions that could be applied as symptoms. It's only post 4e that D&D has a problem with any long-term conditions because the designers have generally taken the stance that any debilitating long-term condition (including being injured) isn't fun or is too hard to balance the game around. Resource drain and simulation have been deprecated to a large extent and are no longer part of the game. You could reasonably do a game of survival in older editions if you wanted to (not that many did, but you could), but I definitely agree that by 5e such games are no longer really supported.

 

[MortalForce]

Thanks very much, I’ll try and get used to using such a… “classic” medium again; I haven’t used a forum since I was a moody teenager on DeviantArt.
You’re not wrong though, I suspect what I’m looking for is realism in a game that isn’t about that any more, because dying in the trenches from dysentery isn’t much fun, and roleplaying that probably isn’t much fun either. I guess I’m looking for stakes, really. The 5 players pretty much steamrolled a reduced threat Otyugh (CR3), a Vine Blight (CR1), and a handful of giant rats and rat swarms at level TWO, which was… a relief, but I would like them to have a slightly grittier experience.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is a point of underlying philosophy. Experienced fictional heroes don't die ignoble deaths because they run out of water whist travelling or from an infected scratch. But real people do, no matter how experienced they are. A game can try and simulate reality, or it can try and simulate a fictional genre, but it can't do both at the same time. They are directly competing objectives.

My preference has always been to simulate a fictional setting.

 

[Celebrim]

This is a point of underlying philosophy. Experienced fictional heroes don't die ignoble deaths because they run out of water whist travelling or from an infected scratch.

This objection is far broader than you here claim. Heroes of fiction also don't die ignoble deaths at all, but only at narratively important times. They also don't fail except in cases that having a setback turns out to advance the story. In heroic fiction, the reader generally has an assurance that the protagonist will win out in the end and the characters generally have some sort of plot armor that protects the story from ending in an unsatisfying manner.

Or as the kid in the Princess Bride says, "What, you mean [Prince Humperdink] wins? Grandpa! What did you read me this thing for?"

I think it's obvious that D&D and pretty much any RPG first written before 2000 is not trying to emulate that sort of assured outcome. The player is given every opportunity to fail, and while the game is generally balanced to allow the outcome of victory it's by no means an expectation that the PC will not die ignoble deaths. Indeed, there is in historical D&D an expectation of a lot ignoble deaths.

But real people do, no matter how experienced they are. A game can try and simulate reality, or it can try and simulate a fictional genre, but it can't do both at the same time. They are directly competing objectives.

I don't know that that is entirely the case. In "The Lord of the Rings" in the climatic passage of the story* where Sam and Frodo discuss the meaning of stories on the path of Cirith Ungol, Sam observes that in realistic fiction it's not the case that the protagonists have plot armor or always make the right choices, but rather that stories are sifted by the audience and we remember the protagonists who made the hard choices and carried the story through to the bitter end, whether or not this bitter end was a heroic or tragic ending. Plenty of stories occurred other than these stories and had heroes who had ignoble and undramatic ends, but we choose not to tell and remember those stories because they are unsatisfying. I think D&D classically worked like Sams sifter of stories, where there were many possible protagonists who failed and died ignobly but that we carried on the story with the ones who did not. Protagonists were always replaceable. There we no guarantee you'd earn a noble death or a heroic victory with this protagonist, but you could roll up another one and try again.

*(In Tolkien preparing for the battle is always the actual dramatic climax, and the battle itself is almost always dramatically anticlimactic and resolved with a twist, often with the protagonist not even being the primary actor in the battle. It's preparing yourself to "go over the top" and "do your duty" that is for Tolkien the truly heroic moment.)

So yes, there is a philosophical difference, and we have more and more seen games written since the 2000s that have tried to make a game where the PCs do have plot protection and can't die except when it is dramatically appropriate to do so, but if you bring that into your game I personally don't think it solves the problem and guarantees you create a narrative that resembles heroic fiction. One problem is often that you aren't creating verisimilitude. In a good story, the author comes up with skillful and clever things for his protagonist to do so that their success, however much it is in reality because of plot protection and because as Stan Lee says, "because the author wanted it that way", the audience feels like the victory is earned. And if the audience doesn't feel like the victory is earned, they groan, they lose their suspension of disbelief, and they say, "Arrggg, this is a bad story."

I think therefore that ultimately both groups are trying to emulate heroic fiction in their own manner. For Gygax and other traditional RPG authors, it's the responsibility of the player to emulate the actions of heroes through what he calls "skillful play" and thus earn the outcomes of heroic fiction by successfully navigating challenges in the way heroes do. Gygax doesn't put this burden on the system or the GM, whose role is to sift out protagonists that don't have the moxie and cunning and heroic will or character to succeed. The Narrativists are trying to provide a framework where plot armor exists to guide the players to satisfying endings, but they are in my opinion just as dependent on or even more dependent on the players providing that "skillful play" that Gygax wanted if the framework is to generate satisfying stories. It's just, I don't think the authors of those Narrativist games are typically as aware of that fact as Gygax was, nor do they seem to think that ignoble ends are fun whereas Gygax seemed to think that the "journey along the way" was as fun as the destination, or at least there was no way to rush it. I consider Ron Edwards complaint that he never got there a huge part of the Narrativist movement and why (hitherto) I think it has failed ignobly (in as much as the majority of people have never adopted Nar assumptions of play). I think this is because for all its striving, as of yet, Nar isn't actually "getting there" in the sense of better more enjoyable plots and transcripts of play more often that Trad was.

 

[Voadam]

Sure. But this is an oddity of the way that non-4e D&D only permits players to have "auto success" abilities in the form of spells or items, not in the form of non-magical abilities.

An argument that D&D would make more sense if it relaxed that constraint (as 4e did) is a good one.

But this is not the case for an argument that D&D would make more sense if mid-to-high level PCs - who perform the sorts of feats that @Imaro referred to - were nevertheless hostage to mundane survival threats, like running out of food or failing to find water or suffering from exposure. I think that's a bad an argument.

Having enough water on your desert caravan is not a matter of low level versus high level challenge in D&D. It is a matter of whether you have a cleric or druid in the party or not. Create Water is a first level spell that any cleric or druid can prepare after a long rest at level 1. Bards and feats can also grant access to this spell.

High level rangers and barbarians might have survival as a trained skill and get a level dependent proficiency bonus on their checks, but they are still making checks like 1st level characters versus autosuccess create water 1st level magic.

4e could get around that with their ability checks increasing every two levels so if they set the DC low it would be a challenge for low level characters but high level ones would eventually heroically autosuccess the check even if they were an urban academic with no wilderness survival training or experience.

 

[SkidAce]

We had rangers from an arid wasteland that we added create food and water to their spell list. Flavored as scrounging and digging in the right spot.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Having enough water on your desert caravan is not a matter of low level versus high level challenge in D&D. It is a matter of whether you have a cleric or druid in the party or not. Create Water is a first level spell that any cleric or druid can prepare after a long rest at level 1. Bards and feats can also grant access to this spell.

High level rangers and barbarians might have survival as a trained skill and get a level dependent proficiency bonus on their checks, but they are still making checks like 1st level characters versus autosuccess create water 1st level magic.

4e could get around that with their ability checks increasing every two levels so if they set the DC low it would be a challenge for low level characters but high level ones would eventually heroically autosuccess the check even if they were an urban academic with no wilderness survival training or experience.

That is true, unless you change spells so they don't just instantly solve exploration problems.

 

[billd91]

I would expect Aragorn and Conan to be great at wandering woods and foraging as rangers and barbarians, not to rely upon spells to do so in the way D&D does.

Sure, but it's kind of a specialty for Aragorn and a pretty substantial element of Conan's adventuring life. But would we expect it of, for example, Prince Imrahil from Dol Amroth? He's a warrior and leader just a step below Aragorn's significance and he knows something of healer craft. But he's also a high noble cavalryman, likely far removed from the experiences of either a ranger in the old domains of Arnor or a Cimmerian with respect to woodcraft and foraging. And he's just as valid an archetype to play in D&D as either Aragorn or Conan.

I think it's important to note that D&D is capable of handling a lot of different character archetypes and backgrounds - not all of which are suitable to finding sustenance in the wilds. Should the game system essentially require it of them simply because they form an adventuring company? Or should we expect the players to deliberately pick up that slack by making choices that feature those skill sets?