D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[AbdulAlhazred]

And never underestimate the power of willful ignorance by those who favor something and aren't willing to admit or see it's flaws...


EDIT: I'm finding this whole conversation kind of borderline absurd at this point... are people honestly arguing that 4e's default procedure, advice, etc. don't push the DM to assign DC's by character level... is that really the argument? If that's the case what does one use to assign DC's then?

OK, then explain to us how its different then in 5e. How there's some mysterious procedure by which the DM, blind to any possibility that he's got an actual party of characters to cater to, simply divines how hard it would 'really be' to pick a magical lock, or dispel a demon? Or even climb a mountain.

Hint: He doesn't, he looks at the players at his table and he makes up a DC that fits the characters, which is presumably also part of a story with 'appropriate fiction' so that it all seems satisfying to all. That's all there is. There's no other process in existence for this, never has been, never will be. 4e just chose to be completely open and up front about it. Maybe as a result, hypothetically, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] maintains, there's some difference in bias and DMs produce slightly different results depending on which system they use. I don't discount the possibility, but my guess is its well within the range of individual variation.

 

[Hussar]

snip

Maybe as a result, hypothetically, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] maintains, there's some difference in bias and DMs produce slightly different results depending on which system they use. I don't discount the possibility, but my guess is its well within the range of individual variation.

Oh, there is definitely differences depending on DM bias. IME, DM's will err very much on the side of caution and will set DC's much higher than they need to be. I think it has to do with the idea that a "difficult" task should have about a 25% success rate while a normal task should be about 50%. Which, really, is much, much too high. Normal tasks should be about an 80% success rate, while difficult should be about 50%.

Think of it this way. If climbing a wall is hard, say, then how much of the group should fail? 3 out of 4 PC's or half of them? How hard is hard? It's like when people talk about combat difficulty and talk about combat being 50:50. That's not just difficult, that's insanely difficult. That would mean that you'd kill a PC every other encounter. That's obviously way, WAY too hard. Actual odds are probably somewhere around 90:10 in most combats or even better. But trying to explain that to people can be a real challenge.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And you get that level of difficulty from the levrl of the PC's... call it challenge level or whatever... the basis for said difficulty in default 4eis the level of the PC's. Show me a passage, sentence or whatever that tells you to base the actually difficulty ratings (actual numbers) on the adventure... I bet you can't...but I and others have cited numerous references to character/creature level in determmining the actual DC numbers. Should the adventurebe considered... sure but the basis in the 4e booksalways starts with characterlevel.

No, 4e says "here's how you can make an encounter of X level." Every element in 4e has a level, which you can use to decide what level and encounter containing that element is. There's also variation, a level 10 encounter could contain 5 level 10 'objects' (traps or creatures), or it could contain 5 level 9 monsters and one level 10 monster, or 2 level 14 monsters and a level 9 monster, etc. (traps can replace any of these and work exactly the same). Said encounter would be hard for level 6 PCs, moderate for level 8 PCs, and very easy for level 11 PCs. A DC for a check within such an encounter could range from level 6 easy to level 14 hard, a range from 11 to 29. So really, the DCs are only VERY loosely determined by the level of the PCs in the sense that PRESUMABLY the DM is following recommendations.

HOWEVER there's nothing telling the DM to follow those recommendations if he doesn't want to. And there are plenty of fun reasons not to. In fact DMG2 goes to great lengths to explain some of them.

So, no, DCs are not fixed by nor scaled to/by the levels of the PCs to any greater degree than they are in 5e where the DM is still faced with EXACTLY the same task, assigning difficulty classes that the players will have fun interacting with. That is the ACTUAL players at the actual table, not some hypothetical players.

 

[Diamondeye]

So then releasing a game that says something like... "Class A deals 1 damage all 20 levels. Class B deals 1,000 damage at 1st level +1,000 each additional level all the way to 20th level." is acceptable because balance is the job of the GM and not the system?

Or is your commentary missing some qualifiers?

Yes, it's missing qualifiers as that was just a quick aside. Your example isn't very good though, becuase there might be an actual reason why it's designed that way; taking pure damage numbers from a hypothetical system doesn't tell us anything. Assuming, however, that those numbers are just as disproportionate as they appear the obvious answer is "pick a different system".

I also don't understand how the designer(s) of a game would somehow not be qualified to do this (assuming I'm reading your comments at face value correctly and they are not hyperbole). I kind of feel like that's saying it's the readers' job to edit the novel they read.

Designers are not perfect, and they cannot make a system be all things to all people. A novel isn't an appropriate comparison; a story where the reader is not a participant is a fundamentally different activity.

However when a system is one of, if not the, best selling game system around, complaining that it's "horribly unbalanced" and "broken" is silly. It's obviously working fine for enough people to remain a commercial success; either they are unaware of the "issues" (in which case it may be designed for them), they don't matter to much of the base, or they are easy to work with or work around.

I won't speak for the culture, just myself. To me, I think it's very reasonable to expect a game to be designed with a general level of balance. I am not going to freak out over an overpowered feat, but I want the chassis to be balanced.

I don't disagree in principle. In practice, however, I rarely see a legitimate balance complaint, and when I doit's almost always an exaggeration. Hyperbolic language is usually the easiest way to discern whining from valid complaints.

 

[Diamondeye]

I'm not much on the word "mandatory", but they are certainly a no-brainer for my own game.
I'm very underwhelmed by the available selection.

By mandatory, I meant they should have been a basic part of the character build process just like 3.X/PF

I'm retooling a lot of pieces for my next campaign and armor will be part of that. But I don't think it needs much, it is pretty close as-is.

My fixes would be:

• Chain shirt goes to light
• the heaviest Medium armor available starts at max Dex 1 and goes up 1 Dex from there back to the top, so Hide would allow Dex 4.
• Heavy works the same but starting at 0 for the heaviest
• For all medium and heavy metal armors - simply remove the descriptor and just refer to them by their stats. Let the player assign the type they think is coolest to the armor (within reason) so if a player really likes the idea of chain mail but wants the stats of a breastplate, let them call it what they want.

Note sure what you are getting at here.
I like the system.

I don't see the need for 6 different saves, and it looks like it would be mathematically problematic at high level where targeting a weak save would be too easy. I'd combine INT and DEX into Reflex, WIS and CHA into Will, and STR and CON into Fortitude.

Their seems to be a culture of "the game should do everything by itself and still be as good as a game where a good DM is facilitating". I got no solutions for this. I just ignore it, pick the best game available and worry about my own table.

Because of D&D's overall popularity/prevalence, I think there is a feeling among some people that it ought to work for everyone - it's like a "default" system that anyone should be able to compromise on. I do think it's a widely adaptable system, but you have to be willing to adapt it.

I'd say this is also something of a shift in attitude from the mid-1990s when 2E was mid-life. Back then, D&D was the "Default" but around where I was going to college things like WoD, Earthdawn, and Shadowrun were gaining popularity. D&D suffered from a lot of elitism from people playing other systems that seemed to feel (sometimes outright said) it was a "beginner" system and not for "serious roleplayers" (which seemed to be a code word for LARPers and.. well, that's another story. Balance complaints, however, were unheard of.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd say this is also something of a shift in attitude from the mid-1990s when 2E was mid-life [...] Balance complaints, [were] unheard of.

OH, now they weren't unheard of. Our entire group despised UA and most of Tome of Magic (a bit earlier those), and then with 2e we used NOTHING except a few carefully selected materials from the Complete books. The rest of it was almost entirely wildly OP and VERY poorly playtested (actually later descriptions of late 90's TSR development practices would indicate there was no playtesting at all).

 

[Diamondeye]

OH, now they weren't unheard of. Our entire group despised UA and most of Tome of Magic (a bit earlier those), and then with 2e we used NOTHING except a few carefully selected materials from the Complete books. The rest of it was almost entirely wildly OP and VERY poorly playtested (actually later descriptions of late 90's TSR development practices would indicate there was no playtesting at all).

They were definitely unheard of. Choices of what to use and what not to use were confined to particular groups or their DMs. There was no community discussion of balance at all if you went to cons or even sat around on Friday night at the gaming club. MMOs did not yet exist, so "balance" when it was discussed still referred to the balance of a particular campaign (you might remember the term Monty Haul), and whether a system was balanced wasn't a concept that even occurred to anyone to talk about.

 

[tyrlaan]

Because of D&D's overall popularity/prevalence, I think there is a feeling among some people that it ought to work for everyone - it's like a "default" system that anyone should be able to compromise on. I do think it's a widely adaptable system, but you have to be willing to adapt it.

I'd say this is also something of a shift in attitude from the mid-1990s when 2E was mid-life. Back then, D&D was the "Default" but around where I was going to college things like WoD, Earthdawn, and Shadowrun were gaining popularity. D&D suffered from a lot of elitism from people playing other systems that seemed to feel (sometimes outright said) it was a "beginner" system and not for "serious roleplayers" (which seemed to be a code word for LARPers and.. well, that's another story. Balance complaints, however, were unheard of.

In fairness, wasn't that the party line for 5e though, that it would "unite the clans"? Reality would never come close to that promise though.

I never experienced that elitism IRL, but you can hit certain forums to find it in spades if you'd like

I do think though that playing other games gives you a different perspective on D&D, which could be for better or worse; likely based on one's personal preferences in gaming.

 

[Diamondeye]

In fairness, wasn't that the party line for 5e though, that it would "unite the clans"? Reality would never come close to that promise though.

I don't know if that promise was made or not. Then again, EVE Online has outweighed all other gaming concerns for me for years now.

I never experienced that elitism IRL, but you can hit certain forums to find it in spades if you'd like

I had quite enough of it aat age 20. I'll be 40 in a few weeks, no need to revisit it.

 

[Hussar]

They were definitely unheard of. Choices of what to use and what not to use were confined to particular groups or their DMs. There was no community discussion of balance at all if you went to cons or even sat around on Friday night at the gaming club. MMOs did not yet exist, so "balance" when it was discussed still referred to the balance of a particular campaign (you might remember the term Monty Haul), and whether a system was balanced wasn't a concept that even occurred to anyone to talk about.

I suggest that you peruse Dragon magazine and Usenet archives before making blanket statements of this nature.