D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[FormerlyHemlock]

Fifth Edition doesn't have rules taking into account that you're trying to tell a story

I think this is contentious. (Hence whether 5e is a good vehicle to evoke the sense of a world infused by luck, fate, myth etc that I just described is probably also contentious.)

Have a look at [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION]'s post 1034, and [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION]'s post 1038. And also the Inspiration mechanics (which are pure player side - NPCs don't earn Inspiration - and affect PCs' chances of success).

Hemlock's post 1038 isn't saying anything that Saelorn wouldn't agree with. It is not about rules for telling a story. It's about a DM skipping over rules in the interests of not wasting play time, or--dissatisfied by the lack of rules--inventing his own rules. Saelorn and I are both simulationists at heart, or what you have previously called "process-driven" players. I don't care about any story except whatever emerges out of play.

 

[Manbearcat]

4e doesn't really emphasise the tactical to operational to strategic - or rather, the fiction can change in this sort of way but mechanically much of it will still be skill challenges (but the fictional framing of the skill checks takes on a bigger scope).

But 4e does do a good job of the first sort of escalation you describe (eg Symbols of Insanity in chokepoints). On the player side, you see this sort of thing in powers that open up new conditions (eg stun, dominate) and new forms of movement (fly, decent distance teleport). So the tactical context, both for exploration and for combat, changes quite a bit as the PCs gain levels.

Just amping up the Cave Slime won't play to these features of the system - as the HPE modules tend to demonstrate.

I'm going to call on [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] at this point, to see if he has any views on how what I've said fits into his reply to you on this point upthread.

At first blush in reading your exchange with Hemlock and then this, I'm kind of waffling back and forth between whether we're in agreement or not. If you don't mind, I'm going to use some simple examples from your game that I hope might illustrate my position.

Your PC group has (that I'm aware of) used three primary means of travel/navigation:

1) Hoofing it manually

2) Phantom Steed Ritual

3) The flying tower that is sort of their analogue to the X-Men's Blackbird

The implications of 1-3 have had implications on your players' action declarations that span that tactical <==> operational <==> strategic continuum, right? I'm thinking of things like "go here and do this because of n (related to their ability to deploy or not deploy a resource) versus go there" or "provide air support for the guy on the flying carpet or the fighter in the middle of the army of bad guys" or "fly the tower into the entropic hole in the Abyss and stop it from sealing (or something like that...I can't recall exactly)".

If the PCs lose access to those resources due to fallout in the fiction (perhaps failure in a Skill Challenge), suddenly the scope of their tactical <==> operational <==> strategic continuum narrows.

For a more generic example, consider hirelings/Companion characters or Consumables in 4e. On Consumables, the consideration is "do I need to use this expendable/non-refreshable resource now to get necessary effect x or should I save it for y later?" On Companion characters, going to my Dungeon World example above and moving that to the realm of 4e, if the PCs go to the white dragon and attempt to parley and gain alliance, their is quite an inherent risk. Yes, the machinery for social conflict would be an SC. However, the decision is strategic. We want to gain a powerful ally Companion Character for a coming conflict. We will risk the prospect of having to do battle with something that may be able to TPK us for it. Then there would be operational considerations in the build-up stage and finally down to tactical considerations when locked in deadly combat with their true enemies (the Aboleths) should they be able to successfully gain alliance. A level + 8, possibly unmanageable, climactic combat may now be bumped down to something more akin to level + 7 because of the gain of the Companion character and the use of a consumable at a key moment may help a rally come to realization.

Hopefully that better reveals where I'm coming from, and you can tell me if we agree or disagree.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Just a point of clarification - I don't think I said boring and didn't intend to imply it. (I did say non-fantastical/magical, though.)

Oh, sorry. Consider that my accidental projection of my own values onto your statement: i.e. I personally would consider a campaign which never ventured into fantastic locations to be boring. But then, I play Spelljammer so of course I'd say that...

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton has a good point about actuals vs. counterfactuals, but the only relevance breadth of game experience has on counterfactuals is that broad experience allows you to more easily see counterfactuals, which the same as seeing actuals in advance.

I think breadth of experience can also help someone see the counterfactuals as just that - possible artefacts of a particular approach to system or fiction that won't be actualised in this particular game/campaign.

Or, to restate with slightly different emphasis - breadth of experience might make it easier to separate the actual fiction being generated via actual play from hypothetical fiction that might be generated using a different system, or using the same system under different parameters.

To give a really simple example, someone who is familiar with HeroQuest Revised is going to have no trouble with the thought that Neverwinter compresses the fiction of default Heroic and Paragon into the mechanical space of 10 levels (eg by restatting monsters and NPCs), or with the thought that weapons in Dark Sun that are mechanically identical to weapons in the default are made of bone rather than the default steel.

Whereas someone whose only RPG exposure was Rolemaster might find both these things very jarring, and perhaps even hard to follow (RM is very objective in its skill numbers and DCs, and has rules imposing objective adjustments for bone weapons). For instance, they might mistakenly think that Dark Sun is (nonsensically) asserting that steel weapons are no better than bone ones; or think that Neverwinter is making aboleths and mind flayers weaker for no good reason.

Obviously I can't speak for [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], but I am guessing that this is the sort of thing he had in mind.

In my usual way I'm going to drop in a slightly tangential anecdote, of a more baroque example of the sorts of differences in appreciation that exposure can generate. I've become increasingly interested in the idea of systems that encourage players not to always use their best bonuses. This is quite hard to pull off, I feel, and very contrary to the spirit of classic dungeon crawling D&D, but a system that does pull it off overcomes a number of problems that one commonly sees discussed (eg bonus stacking and similar exploits to trivialise challenges or even break the system; always letting the party "face" handle negotiations, and the allied issue of players whose PCs have low bonuses not getting involved; etc).

It was Burning Wheel which first showed me how this can be done, and hence how it can help deal with these issues, and that then helped me recognise and draw upon certain aspects of 4e that can be used in a similar way (not as elegantly as BW, but no system is perfect!). Whereas if you're not familiar with the idea, you can miss those aspects of the system and end up having a very different experience - see eg [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] upthread commenting that, in his 4e game, the players always just used their best skills in skill challenges, and hence (i) tended to make the SCs less interesting, and (ii) had no reason to invest PC build resources in building up non-combat capabilities.

Flat miss percentage

BW uses a version of this (roll armour dice against an obstacle to negate the incoming damage), which makes armour very strong in that system. Some weapons have a "versus armour" rating, though, which increases the obstacle for the armour dice.

In Rolemaster attacks are resolved on lookup tables, which yield a "concussion hits" result (this is the RM system for tracking minor bruising and blood loss) and, at the upper ends of the table, a crit (which is rolled to determine the condition/debuff inflicted by the hit - crits are rated from A to E, with an increasing though partially overlapping severity of results as you move up the letter scale).

Armour changes the column on the lookup table, increasing the likelihood of modest amounts of "concussion hit" damage (as armour makes it harder to dodge completely) but significantly at the upper end of the table significantly reducing both concussion hits taken and crit severity. Also, a sword does mostly Slash crits against an unarmoured person, whereas a person in armour is equally or even more likely to suffer a Crush crit (less bleeding and severing, more bruising and breaks).

The need to go to a lookup table (and a second lookup table if a crit needs to be rolled) to resolve every attack is just one of the reasons why [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] is part of that fairly large group that finds RM mostly unplayable!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I may have misunderstood what you were contending. I read your post as effectively saying that subjective DCs (that is to say, non-world-physics-centered DCs) tend to push toward a play dynamic whereby your tactical > operational > strategic progression (my continuum) and "variations of the same old threat" are mutually exclusive. That is what that first bit was about. If I was wrong about what you were saying, I'd be happy to be corrected. *snip* On your second part, I didn't think you meant to suggest otherwise. I definitely thought you felt that different scopes were more fun. I just thought you were positing that subjective DCs make the effort to do so prohibitive (or outright impossible). I may have had you wrong there.

It was more conjecture than contention, and not anything so strong as a prediction of mutual exclusion. Pemerton asked what effect fixed DCs would have, and I was basically saying that one possible effect, which I think I've observed in my own games, is that you naturally graduate to problem scopes at high levels.

But that could just be my own tendencies as a DM, and in any case it's certainly not an argument that you couldn't do it with relative DCs. It's just a conjecture that you will naturally do it with fixed DCs. A -> B does not imply that !A -> !B.

 

[pemerton]

Hemlock's post 1038 isn't saying anything that Saelorn wouldn't agree with. It is not about rules for telling a story. It's about a DM skipping over rules in the interests of not wasting play time, or--dissatisfied by the lack of rules--inventing his own rules. Saelorn and I are both simulationists at heart, or what you have previously called "process-driven" players. I don't care about any story except whatever emerges out of play.

Without wanting to just project myself onto you, I feel that "wasting play time" is connected enough to broader pacing issues that it at least has a hint of "story" to it. I'll summon [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] to get another opinion.

As a Rolemaster GM I have insisted on rolls being made that add nothing dramatic to the game, but have a risk of fumble that could have meaningful consequences, and hence - if one is to be faithful to the simulation - have to be made.

Part of what appeals to me about BW is that it achieves a type of reconciliation of the RM simulation with the story/pacing techniques of "not wasting time", "say yes or roll the dice", etc. It achieves this reconciliation through a lot of interacting system elements, but some of them involve offloading onto the players responsibility for making things dramatic, and hence requiring rolls.

Which leads me, circuitously, to a question for you if that's OK: do you use the Inspiration mechanic? And if you do, have you integrated it into your simulationist approach?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think breadth of experience can also help someone see the counterfactuals as just that - possible artefacts of a particular approach to system or fiction that won't be actualised in this particular game/campaign.

Or, to restate with slightly different emphasis - breadth of experience might make it easier to separate the actual fiction being generated via actual play from hypothetical fiction that might be generated using a different system, or using the same system under different parameters.

To give a really simple example, someone who is familiar with HeroQuest Revised is going to have no trouble with the thought that Neverwinter compresses the fiction of default Heroic and Paragon into the mechanical space of 10 levels (eg by restatting monsters and NPCs), or with the thought that weapons in Dark Sun that are mechanically identical to weapons in the default are made of bone rather than the default steel.

Whereas someone whose only RPG exposure was Rolemaster might find both these things very jarring, and perhaps even hard to follow (RM is very objective in its skill numbers and DCs, and has rules imposing objective adjustments for bone weapons). For instance, they might mistakenly think that Dark Sun is (nonsensically) asserting that steel weapons are no better than bone ones; or think that Neverwinter is making aboleths and mind flayers weaker for no good reason.

Obviously I can't speak for [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], but I am guessing that this is the sort of thing he had in mind.

I think you've articulated a particular point of view here which is consistent with broad exposure to multiple game systems. But it doesn't follow that broad exposure will generate this mindset. Breadth of exposure is ultimately a red herring here because the determining factor here is aesthetic: does the player like the aesthetics of statting up bone weapons just like steel ones and handwaving the difference as a change in reference frame (to use physics terminology)?

The only reasons I'm not outright disagreeing with you here is that you use the word "may." Someone who's been exposed both RM and and Burning Wheel might appreciate 4E Dark Sun weapons relative scaling (vs 2E Dark Sun weapons, in which bone swords were genuinely mechanically worse than steel swords, with the consequence that the best weapons were those that could be made from bone/obsidian without penalty), if they've acquired and enjoyed the BW mindset. But they might not. I assume that you're cognizant of the fact that there are people who understand both playstyles and just don't like one or the other. If not, then we disagree.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I recognize you are responding to others, and I do not embrace everything being stated from any quarter here.

But do you find this highly ironic? When 4E first rolled out it was vastly praised as the game for newbie GMs and everything was made foolproof for a brand new player to jump in as DM. This was hailed as the cornerstone of the soon to be vastly expanded player base. What happened to that?

I don't note that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] validated those opinions of 4e. One COULD respond with "fans of earlier editions uncharitably met any change in their game with hatred and derision, poisoning the community atmosphere and driving players away."

I would note that a lot of new incoming D&Ders have had very positive experiences with 4e. It is quite an easy game to pick up, the rules are quite simple and orthogonal, its presentation of game elements is clear and straightforward, etc.

There clearly were some issues of presentation that didn't help. In some respects the game might have given more of a nod to tradition, and in others its presentation was too timid and failed to explicate the full potentialities of the game.

Still, one of the things that could happen is people could stop trying to characterize versions of the game they didn't care for as 'failed', etc. Analysis is one thing, but blind unending criticism of all aspects of a system because people had some issue with it has become monumentally tiresome.

I love GURPs. Recently Tony made some comment about the lack of GURPs taking over showing that customizable systems aren't all that. (paraphrasing very much from off the cuff memory)
I don't think these games made nearly the dent in the industry that GURPs made. But I readily acknowledge that they were quite popular. But a lot of people never tried them and a lot of people just didn't care for them.
It doesn't really resolve anything. And if anything you seem to be piling on to a conceit being offered by Lovecraft's alter-ego here that failure to enjoy 4E stems from lack of sophisticated appreciation of the hobby.

I don't buy that.

The problem with universal systems is just their very genericity. In order to fit into a variety of genre adequately well they tend not to explore or tailor themselves to any one of them with any significant depth. GURPS has quite a lot of in-depth mechanics for numerous genre, but it only really works for a style of gaming that is quite mechanistic in its tone, much like 3e. It always left me a bit cold, though I can definitely see how cross/mixed-genre play can profit from a system that supports both of them.

I think you have to admit that the whole "its not an RPG" thing was a pretty objectionable conceit to start with, as well as being laughable. What people's tastes stem from isn't something I really generally care about, but when they keep waving a very narrow viewpoint in your face with the intention of backhandedly dissing what they don't care for, its more than a little tiresome, particularly when this is year 7 of such kinds of behavior.

 

[Bluenose]

I don't know whether BESM had it before GURPS, but GURPS had this in 1999 as part of a 75-point Advantage for Black Ops characters:

'If it isn't important, you can just kill it: That's without a die- roll of any kind. By taking a one-second Attack maneuver, any Scrub becomes dead. Or they can become unconscious or maimed, if you feel like it. They must be within reach (or yards equal to your DX, for ranged weapons). Characters or foes of signifigance (GMs discretion) are immune to this. If you have multiple attacks you can make multiple kills.'

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/grip.htm

It was either Villains and Vigilantes (1979 1st edition) or Champions! (same period) where I first remember seeing "minions", enemies that you'd always put out of the fight with one successful attack. James Bond might have had them a little later, and one of the editions of Chivalry and Sorcery. Not a terribly new mechanic.

 

[pemerton]

Your PC group has (that I'm aware of) used three primary means of travel/navigation:

1) Hoofing it manually

2) Phantom Steed Ritual

3) The flying tower that is sort of their analogue to the X-Men's Blackbird

Correct - though I hadn't thought of the Blackbird comparison before now. (The player of the Chan/Corellon-devotee chaos mage really wanted it, so I stuck it in the Glacial Rift, frozen in an icicle, as the retconned mode of arrival for the Storm Giant prisoner - who in my version of G2 was the crazed prophet of the Crushing Wave.)

The implications of 1-3 have had implications on your players' action declarations that span that tactical <==> operational <==> strategic continuum, right? I'm thinking of things like "go here and do this because of n (related to their ability to deploy or not deploy a resource) versus go there" or "provide air support for the guy on the flying carpet or the fighter in the middle of the army of bad guys" or "fly the tower into the entropic hole in the Abyss and stop it from sealing (or something like that...I can't recall exactly)".

Yes.

Phantom Steeds have been their default since mid-Paragon (when flying steeds became fairly reliably obtainable). This does structure where they go in the fiction, and the minion-esque nature of the steeds matters when combat breaks out (always a risk in D&D!).

The Tower didn't dramatically change these transport options, but did change the interface between transport and combat: instead of combat being about dismounting Phantom Steeds or trying to recover from having them "popped", it provided a fully operational, mobile firing platform with its own additional aerial support in the form of flying carpet plus jumping fighter.

If the PCs lose access to those resources due to fallout in the fiction (perhaps failure in a Skill Challenge), suddenly the scope of their tactical <==> operational <==> strategic continuum narrows.

The Tower couldn't fit through the portal they used to escape the Demonweb Pits, so they're back to Phantom Steed plus teleportation/portal rituals.

This may affect their ability to smoothly escape from Thanatos now that they have killed Orcus.

Hopefully that better reveals where I'm coming from, and you can tell me if we agree or disagree.

I'm not 100% sure what the actual topic of agreement or disagreement is, but here're some thoughts.

4e does involve strategic resources (eg Phantom Steeds, Thundercloud Towers) that can impact on operational/tactical matters in interesting and non-uniform ways. I think that's a point of agreement.

The players access to these (via their PCs) can be affected by action resolution within the relatively uniform, level-scaling device of the 4e skill challenge or 4e combat. I think that's another point of agreement.

Hence, outcomes in the operational/tactical space can feed back into the strategic space, again in interesting and non-uniform ways. I think that's a third point of agreement.

I suspect that [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] would probably be happy to agree with all this too.

I think that one point Hemlock wanted to make was that a system of scaling environmental challenges (eg Cave Slime) makes a type of GM laziness especially easy, of not changing the overall structure or deep nature of the game as the PCs level, instead just amping up the numbers and adding superficial descriptions (Astral Teflon Slime, Utra-violet Slime, etc) while leaving the basic dynamics of play unchanged.

I agree with Hemlock that Cave Slime and its relatives among the 4e system elements do lend themselves to this sort of laziness. I point to the HPE modules as evidence of this.

I think that 3E is equally amenable to this sort of laziness. I don't know a wide range of 3E modules as well, but having looked through Heart of Nightfang Spire and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits I'll point to them as instances of much the same sort of laziness in 3E. However, this is not necessarily a counterexampe to Hemlock's conjecture because 3E is ultimately a scaling, subjective system that hides that fact behind some purely notional simulationist labels like "natural armour bonus", "deflection bonus", "luck bonus" etc.

When I think of Rolemaster modules, they do have a tendency to emphasise the strategic and operational much more than the WotC 4e or 3E modules that I know, but I'm not sure if this is a result of design pressure emanating from "objective" DCs, or rather evidence of the preferences of the designers who wrote them (who, perhaps due to a common cause, maybe related to wargaming/boardgaming backgrounds?, also preferred "objective" DCs).

So I'm on the fence about Hemlock's conjecture. But I do agree with you (a fourth point of agreement, I think) that subjective DCs don't force towards the sort of lazy design that Hemlock commented on. They may not even push towards it - being amenable to isn't (either in semantics or in the real world) equivalent to pushes towards.

A final thought for yet another rambling post (it's the middle of the night Melbourne time, why am I not in bed?): in AD&D campaigns the lazy design option tends to break down around 10th level (you've gone through all the basic humanoids, the ogres, trolls and most of the giants). You can broaden out a bit (look at how the D-series tries to do this - I am assuming that Hemlock would agree with this as an instance of broadening out to the operational and strategic), but I reckon many AD&D campaigns just fell apart at this point precisely because there was no material left to feed the lazy approach.

4e doesn't strike me as adding anything to this AD&D treadmill (for better or worse) accept another 20 levels of it if that's all a GM and/or his/her table can come up with.

But, again, to facilitate isn't to force or even to push.