D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[Bluenose]

At every level casters were more powerful than martials. Level is irrelevant. As Tony Vargas pointed out, Merlin and Gandalf were probably level 5 wizards, yet they were still the strongest characters in the game world. Nothing changes with level. Magic is inherently more powerful than mundane weapons.

Please stop already. Start listing examples where magic couldn't accomplish more than what martials could in games. Let me see all these examples from fiction in worlds where magic existed.
Explain how Robilar doesn't fit my example? Was he more powerful than the wizards he worked with? Nope.

Games where martial characters are as useful as mages (assuming they're close in experience - you are only the second person I've ever seen argue that level doesn't matter, magic is inherently better): Runequest, World of Darkness, Exalted, Heroquest, Savage Worlds, Gurps, Fate, The Dark Eye, Shadowrun, and I could go on. Magic characters can accomplish things martial ones can't; the reverse is also true, and the martial characters are usually much superior in the areas they're good at than the casters can be through using magic.

Literature where martial characters aren't inferior to magical ones - harder to assess, since literature rarely lists character level - also exists. The Mahabharata, Spenser's The Faerie Queen, Tamora Pierece's Protector of the Small series, Patricia Wrede's enchanted Forest Chronicles, Peter Beagle's LAst Unicorn has a wizard who accepts he's useless in a situation which needs a hero, Sapkowski's Witcher series has several situations where casters are defeated by non-casters. I could go on.

Robilar's effectiveness is probably best demonstrated by the character being more successful at overcoming the challenges of the dungeons than the mages he sometimes accompanied.

Also, you're continually misunderstanding the point. The argument I am making is simple. Mundane characters and magical characters shouldn't be the same. They should have different ways of doing things. As long as the characters are equal in (level/experience/ranking/whatever the game uses to measure power) that means they should be equally useful in the hands of a skilled player. The game should not go out of it's way to create a rules set where things that are easy for casters are difficult to impossible for mundane characters and where things that are easy for mundane characters are also easy for casters.

And since you challenged me to provide examples of games/literature where magic and mundane characters were on a level footing, how about you provide examples where demonstrably low level characters with magic are clearly superior to high level ones lacking it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

At every level casters were more powerful than martials. Level is irrelevant.

So, Tobas (apprentice 'wizard,' able to start a small fire magically) beats Conan, King of Aquilonia? I don't think so.

As Tony Vargas pointed out, Merlin and Gandalf were probably level 5 wizards, yet they were still the strongest characters in the game world. Nothing changes with level. Magic is inherently more powerful than mundane weapons.

Wow, way out of context. Gandalf casting nothing more than 3rd level spells, and Merlin up to about 4th or so (maybe 9th, depending on how you think his precognition should be modeled) is not an indicator of their power in their respective stories. Gandalf was a Maiar, Merlin half-infernal, yet both needed to manipulate events because they couldn't just meet the challenges the heroes faced head-on. They were at or near the top of the supernatural heap, but Gandalf couldn't just destroy the One Ring or vaporize the Orcs of Mordor, and Merlin couldn't just turn England into a magocracy. Why? Because magic in those settings wasn't all-powerful, not even close. And, both performed feats of magic that mid-level D&D casters could re-produce, using only a fraction of their repertoire. "Gandalf was a 5th level Magic-user" doesn't mean 5th level magic-users are the most powerful beings in the universe, it just means D&D gave magic-users way too many toys.

Games where martial characters are as useful as mages (assuming they're close in experience - you are only the second person I've ever seen argue that level doesn't matter, magic is inherently better): Runequest, World of Darkness, Exalted, Heroquest, Savage Worlds, Gurps, Fate, The Dark Eye, Shadowrun, and I could go on.

Literature where martial characters aren't inferior to magical ones - harder to assess, since literature rarely lists character level - also exists. The Mahabharata, Spenser's The Faerie Queen, Tamora Pierece's Protector of the Small series, Patricia Wrede's enchanted Forest Chronicles, Peter Beagle's LAst Unicorn has a wizard who accepts he's useless in a situation which needs a hero, Sapkowski's Witcher series has several situations where casters are defeated by non-casters. I could go on.

There's a few out-there examples, like Harry Potter, or (if you take psionics as magic, Lensmen), where it's all about the mages, and the rest of humanity might as well be ants. But it the more typical fantasy genre that preceded D&D, you routinely see the martial hero defeating the magical villain. The villain may have fearsome press and do a handful of really impressive supernatural things, but in the end, he loss. You don't model that in a game by making the Villain strictly superior and hoping the hero gets lucky. You need to model some of the 'author power' in the story, with things like hps, saving throws - and 'plot coupons,' to do a really good job of it.

Also, you're continually misunderstanding the point. The argument I am making is simple. Mundane characters and magical characters shouldn't be the same. They should have different ways of doing things. As long as the characters are equal in (level/experience/ranking/whatever the game uses to measure power) that means they should be equally useful in the hands of a skilled player.

Sure, just as you have different sorts of magic (arcane, divine, natural, &c) and other supernatural powers (ki, psionics &c), each comparable in overall PC effectiveness at a given level, but differentiated, often in subtle ways, you can have martial abilities that are distinct from supernatural ones, even as they grant comparable effectiveness to the martial PC (who thus might be downright super-human).

 

[Jessica]

Games where martial characters are as useful as mages (assuming they're close in experience - you are only the second person I've ever seen argue that level doesn't matter, magic is inherently better): Runequest, World of Darkness, Exalted, Heroquest, Savage Worlds, Gurps, Fate, The Dark Eye, Shadowrun, and I could go on. Magic characters can accomplish things martial ones can't; the reverse is also true, and the martial characters are usually much superior in the areas they're good at than the casters can be through using magic.

I think Iron Kingdoms RPG could also be included in that list. There is a hard upper limit on what kind of magic casters can perform and the strongest magic tends to be battlefield control. While high level non-gifted(gifted being the magic archetype for PCs) do amazing things that a gifted character can't even begin to replicate. A gifted PC will never wreck things as hard as a mighty pc, or do the crazy combat shenanigans of a skilled PC, or have the synergistic battlefield coordination of the intelligent PC. Gifted PCs can do a ton(and our last game had 3/5 of the PCs as gifted because it was a very broad archetype that covered my gun mage, my friend's menite warcaster, and my other friend's arcane mechanik), but they still won't have the wide range of abilities within their special field as the non-gifted PCs.

Personally, I think non-4e D&D gives way too much power to spellcasters and this is coming from a spellcaster player.

 

[Ody]

I searched and couldn't find anyone having posted this - I agree completely that 5e is too easy, however it's perfect to introduce new players, especially ones new to RPGs in general.

Spoony reviews the game in depth:
watch?v=jtaL5Bark54
watch?v=MaIdRMelb74

Ody

 

[Hussar]

You've got causality backward, neighbor. The expected level of PCs is based off the difficulty. You don't reduce the strength of traps in the Tomb of Horrors because first level PCs choose to go there; you just laugh maniacally and run the module as written. More power to them if they survive.

Oh, and fair enough. I agree. And if you're playing a sandbox style campaign, you have a Level 10 adventure over here, a Level 5 adventure over there and a level 1-2 adventure near that spot over there. No problem. And, if it's a typical sandbox, you then proceed to inform the players in game where those adventures are so that they don't blunder into them unawares.

But, again, that's got nothing whatsoever to do with DC's being part of the world. In that Level 10 adventure over here, all the traps, hazards and NPC interaction DC's will be based off of a level 10 party. That's WHY it's a level 10 adventure. But that's not how a world works. Why do aboleths automatically get better locksmiths than the Level 1-2 adventure kobolds? If the DC's are objective, divorced from the level of the PC's who happen to be adventuring in that location, then why aren't the kobolds, who are known for being pretty cunning trap smiths and whatnot, building locks and traps that 1st level PC's could never open or discover?

Yet, funnily enough, in a kobold lair, the DC's for traps and locks will be in the 15-25 range, all nicely resolvable by a 1st or 2nd level party. Convenient that.

 

[pemerton]

there is still no discussion of "shifting DCs for static challenges".

Untrue. He was specifically talking about needing to know that the PCs were Paragon and I was responding to that.

But he was not talking about "shifting DCs for static challenges". He was talking about setting a DC . Setting a DC is not shifting it. (Also, a blizzard does not seem to me to be a static challenge. It can get lighter or heavier, and - as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] himself indicates in his reply to you, at 1289 - a GM can exploit that feature of a blizzard to shape the ingame situation to narrative purposes.)

He was talking about a specific mountain, but he didn't know the DC until he knew the PCs were Paragon. If the PCs had been a different tier then THAT EXACT SAME MOUNTAIN would have been a different DC. Thus I saw him proclaiming the merits of "shifting DCs for static challenges".

In post 1261 upthread (a reply to you), I said:

you seem to be confusing two completely different things: fiction whose mechanical specification is only loosely pinned down prior to the PCs encountering it, which then enable the GM to set the DCs at something level-appropriate (drawing upon the system's support for doing so); and fiction which remains constant from the ingame perspective yet changes its mechanical DC. The second thing is the thing that all the 4e posters in this thread are agreed is nonsensical.

AbdulAlhazred applies the same "loose until pinned down" approach in 1289.

In my post with spoilerblocks, I gave more examples of this. Also, a way upthread I talked about the relevance or irrelevance of counterfactuals of the sort you put forward.

In my 4e game, the Abyss has been known, throughout the game, to be a challenging place. When the PCs tried to seal it off from the rest of the cosmos at 28th level, the DC was set by reference to that line on the DC-by-level chart. Had the PCs been 29th level, I would have used that, lower, line on the chart. But this is not "shifting DCs for static challenges", because no DC has shifted. It is setting a DC, rendering the difficulty of the challenge precise at the moment of play when that is required. The fact that, under different circumstances I would have set a different DC has no bearing on the nature of the actual fiction in the actual gameworld.

This is why, in a thread more than 4 years ago, which I have linked to in the same post above, and in which you were a participant at the time, I described this technique as "just in time" GMing.

I still maintain that knowing the level of the characters is completely unneeded.

Unneeded by whom? The fact that you don't use a particular GMing technique doesn't determine the question, for the rest of humanity, whether or not they want to use that technique!

But the tone of this conversation is swinging like a pendulum. People who didn't like 4E say that they like X about 5E and 4E fans start proclaiming that they were unfair to 4E because 4E did this just the same.

Not all the 5e players in this thread use the same approach for setting DCs.

You, and [MENTION=6784868]Erechel[/MENTION], use "objective" DCs.
[MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] uses 4e-style "subjective" DCs, though without a handy chart to help.

The fact that 5e is ambiguous in its presentation of DC-setting practices is probably a deliberate decision by its authors.

I haven't spent the considerable time that Manbearcat and I imagine pemerton have in doing analysis of Forge discussion and reading up on theory in indy game design. I've read a lot of discussion about techniques and application, but I leave the heavy theoretical lifting to others.

I can say that, in my case, reading around The Forge, and familiarity with games like HeroWars/Quest and Maelstrom Storytelling, and especially Luke Crane's GMing advice for Burning Wheel, helped me with 4e from day 1.

Here is a bit of advice I wrote and circulated to my players at the start of our campaign (it refers to 3E and RM because those are the game my players had previously been playing):

Unlike 3E or Rolemaster, a lot of the 4e mechanics work best if they are not treated as a literal model of what is going on in the gameworld. So keep in mind that the main thing the mechanics tell you is what, mechanically, you can have your PC do. What your PC’s actions actually mean in the gameworld is up to you to decide (in collaboration with the GM and the other players at the table).

Some corollaries of this:

Character Levels
Levels for PCs, for NPCs and for monsters set the mechanical parameters for encounters. They don’t necessarily have any determinate meaning in the gameworld (eg in some encounters a given NPC might be implemented as an elite monster, and in other encounters – when the PCs are higher level – as a minion). As your PC gains levels, you certainly open up more character build space (more options for powers, more feats, etc). The only definite effect in the gameworld, however, is taking your paragon path and realising your epic destiny. How to handle the rest of it – is your PC becoming tougher, or more lucky, or not changing much at all in power level relative to the rest of the gameworld – is something that will have to come out in the course of play as the story of your PC unfolds.

PC Rebuilding
The rules for retraining, swapping in new powers, background feats etc, don’t have to be interpreted as literally meaning that your PC has forgotten how to do things or suddenly learned something new. Feel free to treat this as just emphasising a different aspect of your PC that was always there, but hadn’t yet come up in the course of play.​

 

[Tony Vargas]

On the DC topic, wouldn't it be better to have both?

You have one set (possibly very large) of 'objective' DC tables. A wooden latch is DC 5, an iron key lock DC 20, a 12-key adamantium time lock with retina scan made by hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, DC 35, etc...

And, you have an easy/moderate/hard DC by level table.

Rather than come up with throwaway challenges yourself, you just consult the tables. "Hmm, I want a moderate check for a level N character..." look-up on the level table "that's X DC..." Look through the various objective table for matching DCs.... "Ah, here's one: play 3D chess with an awakened displacer beast... oh, or chop down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring... oh, or..."

...or, maybe not.

 

[Gilladian]

Right. There's plenty you need to make a check to do, but also plenty that you don't. I think 5e's spell descriptions are undeniably tighter than 2e's, its much more clear what you can and can't do and when maybe there needs to be some checking of some sort. The real problem 2e had was just not having any system spelled out for the checks, unless they fell directly into a specific NWP, and then the problem was, NWP's were all 'trained only' and an open ended list, so it was unclear what you could attempt AT ALL without having a specific NWP. It was all very murky.

I think my original point still stands. There are LOTS of situations where the plot likely revolves around something the wizard can do with a spell. Other times its just popping out as the best problem solver. Of course people use skills all the time, but wizards (in particular, other casters too) just seem to have this 'edge' in terms of the most difficult situations.

While my 5e wizard often only contributes the same as the other characters, and they certainly do some things that are cool, the time we killed off the owl bears was because of spells. The time we killed the dragon, was a spell. When we defeated the bugbear king it was the wizard that killed him (in single combat no less). I don't think that can be chalked up to "your DM is a wimp". I mean I can summon her, [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION]! and she can give you her impression.

The 5e wizard seems to be the most flexible of all D&D wizards on the whole. But there aren't really generally 'broken spells', or as many simple exploits as there were in AD&D. I think you can see it both ways, casters are very strong, they have a better ability to pop out the specific spell that's needed NOW, but the spell's effects are often not so overwhelming (IE you don't charm people into being almost completely dominated, but its easier to have charm person ready when you need it).

Hey, I have to admit I have not followed this whole discussion - I'm not even QUITE sure what's being argued. But I'll give you my impressions of what happens in my game vis-a-vis magic vs skills. AbdulAlhazred (I really hate typing that, Tod), says that 5e's spell descriptions are tighter than 2e's; I would agree that they tend to use language more specifically than in 2e, which makes it easier to make decisions - when they refer to searching for something, they're going to specifically refer to the perception check, unlike in 2e, which might refer to "looking for" something in one spell, and "searching" in another. Neither referred to a specific task with a specific resolution. So 5e is a bit easier to adjudicate in many circumstances.

The time they killed off AN owlbear - I think he means the BUGbear in the opening adventure of Phandelver - they had a higher level druid PC with them; a friend joined the game for ONE session, and he misunderstood what level the PCs were - he created a 4th lvl druid, and I let him run it because he was only here that one session - so they had that extra bonus - and it was still a VERY tough fight. My notes for the encounter read as follows:

"Continuing up the main passage, Doodle examined the side route, and decide it was too risky to climb. She spotted the goblin on the bridge , but it did not see her (she made her perception check, it failed its passive perception vs her stealth). Daringly, Alzardel and Theron both firebolted the goblin, and killed it without any alert being given. At this point they realized that they needed light for their fighter (Gia) to be able to see in the caves. Sindre (the 4th level druid) cast Darkvision on her and was able to allow her to see in the dark. For himself, he wildshaped into an owl. He was able to fly into the main caves and see all the goblins, and locate Sildar where he was imprisoned. (in this case, I did feel I was too generous allowing the druid to scout, but I was not expecting the situation, and did not challenge him much; he made at least one stealth check to avoid being spotted by the goblins as he flew around).

With this scouting info, the whole group decided it was too risky to take on either group with the other free to react. Theron threw a rope up to the bridge, and Sindre flew up the passage to the west, then reverted to his own form; he threw thornspike and locked the goblins down. Then the whole group went up the trail into the eastern cave - the three goblins there were not quite surprised, as they'd heard the goblins yelling about the thornspike, but were not expecting an assault. Combat was joined; Gia got hit by one goblin, but two of the three fell swiftly, and the party was able to position themselves for the arrival of the bugbear Klarg and Ripper the Wolf. Alzardel slept the goblins, Theron finished off the last of the first three goblins, and Doodle threw handfuls of ball-bearings in Klarg's path, causing him to fall prone and not be able to rush into combat. Ripper lept over his fallen master and attacked, however. Gia, Theron and Doodle engaged him; he bit Gia savagely, but fell to Gia's blade. Klarg rose and advanced. He nearly struck Doodle with his first blow, and the terrified thief retreated. Sindre had two cure potions; he passed them off to Theron, who drank one and then passed the second on to Gia. She drank the second, and they both advanced after the halfling to engage the bugbear. Alzardel finally hit with his firebolt, putting the first damage on the bugbear. Klarg hit Sindre, and badly wounded the hobbyt. Gia and Theron both landed blows, and were finally able to slay the brute. They then kicked one of the sleeping goblins awake, and quickly questioned it about where Sildar and Gundren were. It told them that Gundren had been sent to Cragmaw Castle, at the behest of King Grol. They managed to get rough directions from him to Cragmaw Castle before slaying him."

I think it was a good mix of spells and skill use here; intimidation by the fighter got them good info from the goblin - their real advantage was in the Druid's higher level spells and HP. If he'd not been there to take a blow or two from the bugbear, as well, that fight would have slain at least one PC. Theron (elf fighter) was already hurt by the goblins, and would have been killed by any blow either Ripper or Klarg landed. Gia (human fighter) wasn't much better off.

And they never killed a dragon - Alzardel is BOASTING with that! They DID capture Venomfang behind a wall of force - which was something they found and turned into a very clever trap. The tower of an ancient wizard was encased in a wall of force, and they figured out how to raise and lower it with a lever. They used their wits, good timing, Alzardel's alarm spell, and the Rogue's silver tongue (and its own youthful naivete) to lure it to the seemingly wide-open and harmless upper roof of the tower, then retriggered the wall of force, trapping it there. The PCs who were trapped with it then fled down the tower stairs (their henchman cleric dying in the dragon's breath as they fled) and barely escaped via use of careful timing to get them out of the tower and the forcewall back up while the dragon was busily destroying the tower a stone at a time. So, ancient and powerful magic. Yes, magic won the day, but it was in many ways the rogue's ability to convice the dragon to follow them to the tower for a chance at treasure that was the real success.

Fnally, the bugbear king - Alzardel did fight him single-handedly, but a) I toned King Grol down a good bit to avoid a quick and brutal slaughter, b) he had a potion of firebreath with him that he used to very good effect, and c) when King Grol tried to call his wolf into battle with him (treachery!) the rogue shot it and critted, removing it from the equation. And if I recall, Alzardel was one HP from death at the end - if at any time I had rolled slightly better damage, the battle would have gone the other way.

So, maybe I am a wimpy DM, but we all had LOTS of fun in every one of these encounters, and I doubt anyone feels that they got a "walkover" in any of the contests.

 

[pemerton]

On the DC topic, wouldn't it be better to have both?

You have one set (possibly very large) of 'objective' DC tables. A wooden latch is DC 5, an iron key lock DC 20, a 12-key adamantium time lock with retina scan made by hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, DC 35, etc...

And, you have an easy/moderate/hard DC by level table.

Rather than come up with throwaway challenges yourself, you just consult the tables.

This is certainly how some, perhaps many, people approach 4e, at least as far as doors, gates and environmental effects are concerned.

Personally, I prefer the looseness of fit based on genre and prior fiction that I've described upthread. I think a long table can get in the way of a certain approach to the game, as per my quote from Maelstrom Storytelling upthread.

As 5e currently stands, it has neither an objective nor a subjective table. (Though I guess elements of an objective table might be able to be reconstructed from the DMG?)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Oh, and fair enough. I agree. And if you're playing a sandbox style campaign, you have a Level 10 adventure over here, a Level 5 adventure over there and a level 1-2 adventure near that spot over there. No problem. And, if it's a typical sandbox, you then proceed to inform the players in game where those adventures are so that they don't blunder into them unawares.

But, again, that's got nothing whatsoever to do with DC's being part of the world. In that Level 10 adventure over here, all the traps, hazards and NPC interaction DC's will be based off of a level 10 party. That's WHY it's a level 10 adventure. But that's not how a world works. Why do aboleths automatically get better locksmiths than the Level 1-2 adventure kobolds? If the DC's are objective, divorced from the level of the PC's who happen to be adventuring in that location, then why aren't the kobolds, who are known for being pretty cunning trap smiths and whatnot, building locks and traps that 1st level PC's could never open or discover?

Yet, funnily enough, in a kobold lair, the DC's for traps and locks will be in the 15-25 range, all nicely resolvable by a 1st or 2nd level party. Convenient that.

Are we talking now about modules or sandbox play? If modules, then I dunno, I suppose the Tomb of Horrors has the best locks that Acerak's money could buy. If sandbox play, then I would say that there is no such correlation. Frost Giants are really tough, and from a combat perspective they are a high-level opponent--but from a social perspective they are probably some kind of medium (as susceptible to fast-talking and illusions as moderately dim-witted humans), and they're also not skilled metalworkers like fire giants are, so if they have locks at all (mine wouldn't) they will be crude and low-DC. Svirfneblins on the other hand are cunning smiths, so might have finely-wrought locks and intricate mechanical traps on their valuables, notwithstanding that the svirfneblins themselves aren't much of a challenge in combat. But they're be tricky to steal from.

I'm not sure what I would do about kobolds, except that I don't think I agree that they'd have cunning locks. Cunning traps, maybe, although their reputation for cunning traps is exaggerated IMO thanks to Tucker's kobolds, which was more of a DM's metagaming than something inherent to the actual kobolds. When I think of kobolds, the key words that come to mind aren't "Intricate locks and traps," it is "lots and lots." As in lots of kobolds (10d100 adults), and lots of traps, in a relatively confined space. They're not much for offense in the open but on the defense they will swarm you under. Or they'll try, at any rate. High-level adventurers can deal with that kind of thing relatively easily with proper preparation.