D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[Manbearcat]

Either one is a pretty sure bet when the chance for success only differs by a few almost cosmetic percentage points. And the fight actually is given favor in this situation since 4e PC's have unique combat powers to deal with fights and don't have a lot of unique exploration powers to deal with rickety bridges.

KM, I see you make statements like this about 4e...knowing that you played it...and I'm absolutely floored. I mean I'm on the ground.

The last 4e game I ran was a late heroic, single player game which featured the following Fighter:

[sblock]====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Saeri Woodwalker, level 8
Wood Elf, Fighter (Slayer)
Slayer Weapon Specialization Option: Sweeping Sword
Moonstruck Hunter (+2 to Perception)
Theme: Ghost of the Past

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
STR 12, CON 14, DEX 19, INT 14, WIS 16, CHA 10

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
STR 12, CON 13, DEX 15, INT 14, WIS 13, CHA 10

AC: 24 Fort: 19 Ref: 19 Will: 18
HP: 71 Surges: 11 Surge Value: 17

TRAINED SKILLS
Athletics +10, Endurance +11, Heal +12, History +11, Nature +14

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +11, Arcana +8, Bluff +6, Diplomacy +6, Dungeoneering +9, Insight +9, Intimidate +6, Perception +15, Religion +8, Stealth +12, Streetwise +6, Thievery +10

POWERS
Basic Attack: Melee Basic Attack
Basic Attack: Ranged Basic Attack
Ghost of the Past Utility: Guidance of the Past
Elf Racial Power: Elven Accuracy
Multiple Class Attack: Power Strike
Fighter Utility: Mobile Blade
Fighter Utility: Battle Wrath
Fighter Utility: Duelist's Assault
Fighter Utility 2: Who's Next?
Heal Utility 2: Iron Resurgence
Athletics Utility 6: Mighty Sprint

FEATS
Level 1: Melee Training (Dexterity)
Level 2: Learned Spellcaster
Level 2: Ritual Caster
Level 4: Master at Arms
Level 6: Jack of All Trades
Level 8: Skill Power

ITEMS
Magic Greatsword +2 x1
Drakescale Armor of Eyes +2 x1
Essence of the Scout +1 x1
Bracers of Mighty Striking (heroic tier) x1
Acrobat Boots x1
Torog's Inescapable Suffering (heroic tier)
Longbow
Thieves' Tools
Adventurer's Kit

RITUAL BOOK
Bloom
Traveler's Camouflage
Pass Without Trace
Tree Stride
Earthen Ramparts[/SBLOCK]

She possessed:

1) Extreme proficiency in exploration skills (and other skills)

1) 5 Nature (Exploration) Rituals) that worked both in noncombat action scenes (SCs) and as transition scene mechanics.

2) 1 Encounter Power reroll for any skill

3) 1 Encounter Power reroll for History

4) 1 Encounter Power that put her Athletics check auto-passing the medium DC and challenging the Hard DC

5) 1 Daily Power to put her Stealth check auto-passing the medium DC and challenging the Hard DC

This is a Fighter...at the lowly levels of late Heroic...with an utter arsenal of exploration abilities...who still kicks maximum ass and is ridiculously survivable. This doesn't even mention her Bear Animal Companion Character.

And rickety bridges? Errr...DMG 2 and the stunting mechanics in general?

[sblock] [/sblock]

Scratching my head how it was that we played the same game. My 4e games (all of them) contained more wilderness vs the good guys conflicts than any of my other games (which includes over 5000 - yes five thousand - hours GMing AD&D 1e and 2e...which dwarfs all the rest of my D&D GMing, 3.x + 4e + RC, together).

I think this is one of the philosophical differences. If a game wants you to succeed, it's not offering a very meaningful choice - either way, you're probably going to succeed. Either way, you win. Either way, the good guys emerge victorious. The fight vs. the bridge doesn't actually affect your chances of the mission succeeding or failing much.

5e throws back to pre-4e game-centered philosophy in that in general it is perfectly okay with you failing disastrously, if that's how it plays out. Now, when the fight is at 1st level against a young green dragon and the bridge is rickety but at least manageable, things like reconnaissance and scouting and in-character research and questions pay off: they let you know the situation before you blunder into it, because if you blunder into a bad situation, you will eat it, and there will be consequences. It's not just choosing the color of the explosions in your ending, it's choosing if you get the good ending, or the bad one.

Of course, you can have calibrated DC's as well (it's not hard to look at the proficiency bonus and say, "okay, this +10 is what my medium DC for a proficient character is, maybe +1-5 if I want to include the ability bonus"), so it doesn't exclude that more stable choice, either.

Overcoming hard obstacles is part of the fun of play. Creating story out of dramatic decision points is part of the fun of play. There is a reason that "kill your darlings" is absolutely critical writing advice, and that stories where victory is assured are often dull. Games where you don't actually beat difficult challenges can also be underwhelming (imagine Super Meat Boy on "Easy mode.")

Which isn't to say that there's One True Way, merely that the 5e default isn't game-destroying. It just encourages DMs to think about what the challenge should be over the course of an entire campaign, not necessarily what is challenging to their particular parties in the moment, because things like bounded accuracy ensure that if the players want to, or if they get lucky, they can hit things that you might have thought difficult.

Hard to respond to this without getting further clarification. Is the thesis here "4e is D&D bowling with gutter guards?" Or "there is no hard failure with burdensome/unwelcome/punitive consequences/fallout in 4e (in one or both of SCs or combat)" Accordingly, "there is no overcoming hard obstacles, there is no dramatic decision-points, because victory is assured (or near it)?"

 

[Erechel]

What do you mean 'how'? You just use the current PC level DCs. RC even suggests this for a few specific types
No, it isn't. DC 20 is hard for level 1 PCs (19 is 4e's level 1 hard DC). For level 10 PCs 20 isn't so hard. They have almost surely about a +4 to their checks in 5e vs level 1. So probably on the order of +8 or +9, and for a character with Expertise or somesuch it would be higher. Heck, our thief had +14 to Acrobatics at level 1! OTOH in 4e Hard is always Hard. I can say "well, its a hard check from way back at level 1" but at level 10 that's a Moderate DC, reflecting that getting a 20 isn't so tough anymore.

But that is a false assumption. Hard means "world" hard. Look at this way: power, training and expertise are the way to do hard things. But still, to the other characters (whom probably don't have Proficiency or Expertise) is still hard. The Expert guy at level 10 can accomplish more often very hard tasks, and can attempt with some success Nearly Impossible tasks, and at the end of his career, Hard tasks are a cake to the experienced rogue, and he is accustomed to the impossible enough to have a fair chance of succeed (+17, 13 or more to make Near Impossible things). But the magician still has to use the Knock spell to open the easiest locks (unless background, etc.).

 

[tyrlaan]

This is a response on [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] post about how the DCs "should" guarantee success at about a 60% of the time. In fact, it's a description about 4ed made by a 4ed fan, against 5ed, which is supposedly a deadlier game (or at least a frustrating one). Many people (myself being one, but specially [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION]) insisted in your pont exactly: there is many of the same assumptions. 5ed isn't worst because somehow delivers dangers in a way that no other game has. The examples given were Skill/Ability Checks against Skill Challenges, with somehow people whom presumably don't understand Skill Checks believe that they are less roleplaying (!) than Skill Challenges, when clearly there is no such difference except on the "in-world" difficulty against "by-level" difficulty. I've always handled Skill Checks in a very similar way to Skill Challenges: there is problems to solve, and there are several possible ways to overcome them, with or without synergy among different skills, abilities and roleplaying, depending on the players' choices. And there is more ways to reward careful play, like Advantage and Inspiration (which, awarded by the DM, is left to the players to decide when and where to use it, and so breaking the "DM tyranny").

That's a big plate of assumptions that's a bit more than I normally like to eat at a meal.

• Who argued that 5e delivers dangers in a way that no other game has? Oddly enough, my argument is that, despite folks claiming it does deliver dangers in a new way (or "new retro" or just "not 4e", pick your phraseology), it most assuredly does not. Figuring out how to deliver danger is always in the hands of the GM and 5e does not change this. Now, people are arguing they have issue with adjudicating DCs in 5e, but that's a very, very different claim than it delivers dangers in a different way
• Assuming the problem is one of understanding when the thread has been going strong for 75+ pages with very long and detailed replies is probably a bad assumption to hold. Instead perhaps assume that people know what they are talking about and just see things differently than you
• Why the 4e/5e commentary again? I don't see how it's relevant to make a point other than to discredit the person you disagree with... which isn't making a point

The point being made is: many of the "5 Edition SUCKS because can't do X" are utterly false. I particularly like 5th edition because of Bounded Accuracy, which keep skill and stat choices meaningful; because how handles the interaction between Backgrounds, Classes and Races; because the empowerment of the Fighter without needing a weird system of vancian martiality (which is also there in a subclass); because keeps threats relevant en-masse at upper levels and don't scalate things in a Final Fantasy way where a high level character enters an area and suddenly all enemies are unable to even hurt them; because handles Multiclassing in a non-cheesy way; because I like subsystems to make the differences between the classes mechanically, but without the broken, messed out way of 3rd/ 2nd editions, and because the overall game is easy, simple enough encouraging careful roleplaying over dice-rolling without taking away rulesets.

Several critics made are, for me, gross simplifications (like the godlike, unfettered DM power) or blatantly false assumptions (as the luck overdependancy). I see several positions (not all of them) as heavily biased and unable to reason, no matter how many arguments are displayed. I can understand many reasons behind the bias (EG, the anger of leaving behind your entire edition due market reasons; the hatedom of your edition and the sense that this lead to an opposite direction of the new edition; and also emotional attachment), and I can understand a couple of reasonable "It's not my cup of tea" -as the linear and not exponential power growth of Bounded Accuracy-, but please try to read each other possitions in a meaningful way, open minded. Or at least, recognize some bias, and a certain amount of what has been always critiziced as bad for the same people who is making it now: flame. This post is flame.

I'll keep this brief because I think you're being pretty inflammatory here.

You like 5e. That's very cool for you. You know what? Just because someone has explained they don't like something about 5e here in this thread doesn't mean they don't like 5e too. RPGs cover a lot of ground, which means they have a lot of room for people to like some aspects and dislike others.

• Disliking a part of a game doesn't mean you dislike the whole game.
• Disliking a part or the entirety of a game doesn't mean other people have to dislike it too.
• Disliking a part or the entirety of a game does not mean the root cause of the dislike is a bias to another game.
• Liking a game or part of the game doesn't mean disliking the same thing is incorrect, blatantly false, or based on gross simplifications.

Please take this into consideration in future replies.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

1 - I was thinking of the pure martial archetypes Champion and Battlemaster.

2 - If we do include Ritual Caster investment and/or EK magic, I'm still not seeing these capabilities on either the Ritual list or the EK spell list. Help me out?

This is in reference to the bolded items in #749, right?

Turn into another person: EK can cast Disguise Self at 3rd level or Alter Self at 8th, if he picks it. (He can Polymorph at 20th level but that doesn't help with becoming people.) These are the exact same spells a wizard would use to become another person, so if he invests in this capability he's as good as the wizard at this specific thing. In practice I've seen EKs take combat spells instead like Blur, but opportunity cost exists for everyone: I haven't seen many wizards learning Alter Self either.

Fly: EK can fly at 14th level, again if and only if he chooses it as his non-abj/evoc spell pick.

See into the future: any fighter can spend his bonus feats on Ritual Magic (cleric) and get access to Augury, Divination, and Commune, which are the closest 5E gets to letting you "see into the future." (Well, Portent, the Diviner 2 ability, is kind of that too, but in a different way.)

I'm always surprised at how little my players invest in intelligence gathering. IMO spells like Augury and Divination are pure awesomesauce for preventing nasty surprises. "Augury of the Fates, tell me true: if I open this spooky coffin here, will I then rejoice or rue?" "Divination: are Rakshasa really vulnerable to weapons coated with salt?" "Divination: will the ancient worm Falgoth be able to sense me if I sneak in this entrance under Pass Without Trace?" This can't tell you anything that the DM doesn't know, but the DM usually knows quite a lot that would benefit the PCs.

 

[Erechel]

That's a big plate of assumptions that's a bit more than I normally like to eat at a meal.

• Who argued that 5e delivers dangers in a way that no other game has? Oddly enough, my argument is that, despite folks claiming it does deliver dangers in a new way (or "new retro" or just "not 4e", pick your phraseology), it most assuredly does not. Figuring out how to deliver danger is always in the hands of the GM and 5e does not change this. Now, people are arguing they have issue with adjudicating DCs in 5e, but that's a very, very different claim than it delivers dangers in a different way
• Assuming the problem is one of understanding when the thread has been going strong for 75+ pages with very long and detailed replies is probably a bad assumption to hold. Instead perhaps assume that people know what they are talking about and just see things differently than you
• Why the 4e/5e commentary again? I don't see how it's relevant to make a point other than to discredit the person you disagree with... which isn't making a point

I'll keep this brief because I think you're being pretty inflammatory here.

@tyrlaan, first of all, I apologize to you if you find what I said aggresive. I can see why you consider me to be rude. For one part, I should give you an explanation: my English is horrible. I'm from Argentina, and while I can communicate and try to be as grammaticaly correct as possible, there are several things (specially politeness) that escape me -. "Gross" may be one -it's not as politically incorrect in Spanish, and I may have mistaken the word. Even we, Argentinians, are considered rude among our own linguistic community. If I offend you, it wasn't my intention at all. Maybe I can say "oversimplification": and there is such thing here.

Two, I explicitly claim that several, not all criticisms were oversimplifications and biased. You, @pemerton, @DaveDash and @TonyVargas are not, at least as I see. But even the name of the thread, as I stated before, is flame war (and I'm not the only one who see it that way). As false I see things like the comment about the more "narrative" approach of 4th Edition. The comparison among 4th edition and 5th edition was not introduced by me: @AbdulAlhazred make this constantly. Explicitly. All the time. And I'm in several ways reacting against this. And disqualifying the 5th edition in the way.

You like 5e. That's very cool for you. You know what? Just because someone has explained they don't like something about 5e here in this thread doesn't mean they don't like 5e too. RPGs cover a lot of ground, which means they have a lot of room for people to like some aspects and dislike others.

• Disliking a part of a game doesn't mean you dislike the whole game.
• Disliking a part or the entirety of a game doesn't mean other people have to dislike it too.
• Disliking a part or the entirety of a game does not mean the root cause of the dislike is a bias to another game.
• Liking a game or part of the game doesn't mean disliking the same thing is incorrect, blatantly false, or based on gross simplifications.

Please take this into consideration in future replies.

I don't believe 5th edition as impervious to all criticism. I acknowledge that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but one thing is to say "I believe that 5th edition could do this that way -power growth, for example-" or "5th fails to X -EG keep the game heroic/simple-" -and that criticism could be true or false, and I don't see calling something false as accusatory-, and another "5th edition SUCKS", which, by the way, is how the post is tituled. Even if I'm sometimes unintentionally rude, can interpret this as rudeness.

 

[Manbearcat]

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION], good stuff! Again, my mind was focused like a laserbeam on the Battlemaster and the Champion and any purely martial builds possible for them. Then my thinking extended to Ritual Caster (Wizard) because I was comparing them to the Wizard (and the Wizard definitely has the best Ritual list).

However, an EK who took Ritual Caster (Cleric or Druid) and went the unorthodox, utility route for non-abj/evoc spell could certainly cover about half of those items I mentioned (that you then bolded). Were I to run 5e for one of my players who loves gishes (for the jedi factor), my guess is he would go just that route. Again, good stuff!

 

[spinozajack]

If I could change anything about 5th edition, it would making sure all weapon styles are worthwhile (and maintain their damage level relative to each other) with or without feats enabled, wizards could use a bit more oopmh, but be more fragile. War clerics should get a fighting style and extra attacks in exchange for reduced spell selection. I would have liked also prohibited schools come back, and a more sensible weapon and item table. There are only three times in a person's career where they can spend money for something that benefits their stats : level 1, when they can afford 500-750gp armor, and when they buy 6000gp armor.

Only having three times to "return to town and upgrade your gear" is a very poor way to design a game. There should be something to spend gold on in the PHB, not just stuff stored in the DMG. There is no reason they could not have added a few adamantium swords in the PHB that gave like +1 to damage only or something. The game is poorer for this oversight. A cheap bronze sword that you can afford at level 1 might only allow a +1 proficiency bonus max to hit to be used, for instance. Then you buy an iron and a steel version, and suddenly all that gold has something worthwhile to be spent on instead of saving it up for retirement.

 

[Manbearcat]

Curiously, the "5e doesn't have a thriving economy (mundane/magical) that players can spend money on" refrain is one that I don't think has much teeth. It seems to me that a table-driven economy for hirelings would be tremendously easy to establish using:

1) The Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic as a boon scheduled at an Extended Rest Recharge for n $ or a Short Rest Recharge for n * 3 (or something) $

2) A fictional trigger that the player(s) can use to invoke the Advantage/Disadvantage boon

You could have Guides whose Advantage boon is triggered when you're blazing a trail on a perilous journey or sponsored expedition, Huntsmen whose Advantage boon is triggered when you're tracking something in a wilderness setting, or Bodyguards whose Disadvantage boon as an immediate action is triggered when you're attacked in melee, or Heralds whose Advantage boon is triggered when your reputation, titles, or legacy would come into play in a social conflict. Etc, etc, etc.

This seems to be trivially easy and intuitive to implement and shouldn't be too terribly invasive, especially with a system that plays fast and loose with the rules, expects each table to own/hack their own game, and whose encounter budgeting is squirelly (and top down predicated on the adventuring day rather than bottom up) with severely diverging PC resource scheduling.

 

[I'm A Banana]

KM, I see you make statements like this about 4e...knowing that you played it...and I'm absolutely floored. I mean I'm on the ground.
...
Scratching my head how it was that we played the same game. My 4e games (all of them) contained more wilderness vs the good guys conflicts than any of my other games (which includes over 5000 - yes five thousand - hours GMing AD&D 1e and 2e...which dwarfs all the rest of my D&D GMing, 3.x + 4e + RC, together).

Yeah - dramatically different experience over here. Any utility power that gave you some advantage on a skill check was seen as kind of a waste of a slot by all the tables I played at. The logic tended to run that skill checks were mostly relevant in skill challenges, and there, you could normally sub in a skill check you were proficient at for overcoming any challenge if you made a good enough case for it (and it was not a hard case to make in many situations), making the choice of proficiency mostly cosmetic (though there was some difference between an exploration skill and a social skill, even this eroded with time - "use Athletics to talk about fights with the warrior at the table" and "use Diplomacy to make the NPC's do it for you" were all things that saw actual exposure). I wouldn't dispute that the characters had proficiency in these skills, but I never saw a character voluntarily take skill-enhancing powers when there were perfectly good healing/defensive/movement powers available for that same slot. Proficiency was enough - often MORE than enough - to do everything exploration and interaction requested of us.

Which is just to say that my 4e experience was pretty biased toward fights. More moving parts, more powers, more interesting things going on, more choices, more variety, more fights. Given the misguided complaints about 4e being nothing more than a minis skirmish game, I don't think I was the only one who saw that happening.

Your posted character sheet, as a Slayer, is also light on the attack powers, of which a comparable non-Essentials character, at level 6, would have six if I'm remembering my maths right. Compared to three utility powers.

Hard to respond to this without getting further clarification. Is the thesis here "4e is D&D bowling with gutter guards?" Or "there is no hard failure with burdensome/unwelcome/punitive consequences/fallout in 4e (in one or both of SCs or combat)" Accordingly, "there is no overcoming hard obstacles, there is no dramatic decision-points, because victory is assured (or near it)?"

Nothing so categorical. More that in practice, level-relative DC's can create a feeling of impotence in a player when they know that their achievements and experience don't actually affect the chance of victory very much, and world-relative DC's can by the same token create a feeling of mastery and achievement in a player when they know that they're taking on much harder challenges than they "should."

Which is just to say that a DC table that doesn't take levels into account isn't inherently flawed or backwards or useless or that it must lead to bad play where the PC's can't pass by some DC that is too hard for them or any of the other things AA seemed to presume must happen because 5e doesn't set DC's relative to level, and that setting DC's relative to level isn't clearly a better or more advanced or improved option. The reverse is also true of course: setting DC's relative to level doesn't necessarily mean you feel cheated when you achieve them. But it can.

I know I've felt more than once that 4e is largely a "level-less" game for all its 30 levels (of which I played about 18). And 5e, over the course of 7, is already showing me that setting the DC's relative to the world is a part of the edition's strong antidote to that. In 4e, I always felt at about the same level of badass ("fairly"). In 5e, I've felt the growth that comes from a tier-shift in a way 4e never achieved (going from "not very badass" to "a little badass!"), and in a way is a little more subtle and interesting than bigger numbers.

 

[Bluenose]

The only thing that would be 'inherently flawed' would be if the DC somehow didn't work. If 'easy' DCs turned out to be impossible, and 'hard' ones turned out to be a cakewalk. Given something as simple as d20+mods vs a DC, I don't see how that could easily happen.

That's true of any single roll. Very few adventures depend on a single roll. If you can keep re-trying, success is eventually certain in the DC is within range. If failing any one of several rolls means you can't finish, failure becomes the expected state far sooner than people realise. Probability doesn't play favourites the way GMs do, and it isn't something most people grasp instinctively.