D&D 5E What Single Thing Would You Eliminate

[Reynard]

Or rather generations of players having told the designers that exploration isn't fun because DM's tend to skip the exciting locales and finding interesting things and going straight for jumping them in their sleep, making them count rations and generally turning exploration into an inventory mini-game which is... let's say 'an acquired taste'.

Show us on the character sheet where the bad DM deprotagonized you.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Show us on the character sheet where the bad DM deprotagonized you.

points to combat features and spells...

 

[Vaalingrade]

Show us on the character sheet where the bad DM deprotagonized you.

I thought this was a snarky response to my second comment. With the one quoted... I have no idea what even

 

[Reynard]

I thought this was a snarky response to my second comment. With the one quoted... I have no idea what even

More likely I am just not as clever and funny as I think. So to respond more seriously: I don't think players told WotC to get rid of meaningful exploration because they felt put upon by DMs.

 

[rmcoen]

I have wanted to run an "explore the unknown wilderness, conquer it, and expand civilization" campaign for literally decades. Ever since playing a Basic D&D "carve out your kingdom in the north" module. Plus lots of CRPGs where you might know "way to the south is LA; between here and there, no freaking clue!" [Fallout 1].

In practice... nothing I've read in the rules has lent itself well to this style (that my players would find fun).

 

[ART!]

My preferred game as a DM would be to have the PCs traveling through vast (mostly) unknown wilderness, discovering semi-random stuff. Maybe as part of a trade caravan making an annual trek to wherever, or as a monarch's exploratory expedition. Regardless, they might have the equivalent of a small traveling village with them.

 

[tetrasodium]

Really? My FR games have all been a series of outdoor region scale dungeons. All of my exploration-intensive games were in FR. In contrast, in all my Eberron games, outdoor travel was mostly eliminated by lightning rail, Argonth, or airship travel. Heck of a ride and a lot of fun, but not particularly more exploration-friendly than FR.

And Athas, well, you're screwed as soon as you set foot in a town, and just as screwed as soon as you leave it...

Not saying it can't be done, just that the setting doesn't really have much in the way of iconic "all bets are off this is new territory" areas on the surface map where the players know they are going to be in trouble going there & 5e' focus on Fr to such a near exclusive degree resulted in a lot of things that remove the drudgery of traveling from waterdeep to daggerford or some equally civilized "wilderness" without enough thought to how those things affect adventuring in actual interesting outdoor wilderness locales.

 

[Xetheral]

I have wanted to run an "explore the unknown wilderness, conquer it, and expand civilization" campaign for literally decades. Ever since playing a Basic D&D "carve out your kingdom in the north" module. Plus lots of CRPGs where you might know "way to the south is LA; between here and there, no freaking clue!" [Fallout 1].

In practice... nothing I've read in the rules has lent itself well to this style (that my players would find fun).

I did a variant of that type of game as a 5e campaign. To address the exploration issues mentioned above, I had all food grown, caught, or created in the region be inedible to anything from outside. So all the food for the exploratory expedition had to be imported or fished in deep water (i.e. beyond the continental shelf).

IC, figuring out why the local flora and fauna were inedible was one of the available plot hooks of the campaign. Also, organizing trips far from the expedition's base was much more challenging and expensive. OOC, this conceit helped ensure that the party was back at base at the end of every session (each of which covered a two week venture beyond the camp), which was essential since it was an episodic campaign with irregular attendence.

(And yes, the players knew about the restriction in advance, so they were on notice that the Outlander background and certain spells would be less useful.)

 

[Lanefan]

Literally the 3.0 Player's Handbook. I don't have a copy handy, or I'd give you the page number. Half-plate imposes a -7 penalty to most Dex-based skills, including Balance and Sleight of Hand.

Ah, that. Gotcha. You originally phrased it as "Armor Check penalty" which confused me as I'd never heard of an Armor Check.

Nobody in that video looks over fifty to me, most of them look under thirty-- and none of them has been trained since birth, nor is any of them a full-time, professional, life-depends-on-it archer. And, quite frankly there isn't and couldn't be any real-life human higher than-- wait for it-- about sixth level or so.

Most of the adventurers we play - at least the Human ones - are under 30. Doesn't stop 'em.

Ignoring the fantastic for a moment and sticking with purely martial, I'd disagree in some respects. Some martial artists can absorb what to me are insane amounts of physical abuse and remain upright and at least vaguely functional: in game terms they have stupendously more hit points than I do. Your archer has a ridiculous amount of skill with the bow; compare that to the average joe on the street.

Now some editions (3e and 4e mostly) have a steeper power curve, and 4e assumes even a 1st-level character is significantly more than an average joe, and yes here things get unrealistic in a hurry.

So your "realism" flies in the face of demonstrable reality, and in a game with reality-bending wizards and dragons, you're insisting that larger-than-life sword & sorcery heroes are less competent than real-life hobbyists and reenactors.

I suspect you're giving the sword and sorcery heroes credit for much more competence than I generally do; and I'm intentionally trying to reduce the larger-than-life aspect where I can. I assume they're imperfect at best and to be more than capable of messing up because, to paraphrase Albus Dumbledore, their mistakes tend to be much bigger.

Put another way, I want Steve the Bartender to still be recognizable as Steve the Bartender even after five years of adventuring have put twelve levels of Fighter into him.

 

[Lanefan]

Also note that those pcs can see out fine but nobody can see in for an extra level of asymmetry

Easily fixed by altering a very few words in the spell write-up as a houserule...