D&D 5E Why my friends hate talking to me about 5e.

[James Gasik]

So my roommate, one of the people I game with the most, sends me this TikTok link from work. I started typing out a comment, then I realized, eh, maybe not. So I said "I had a whole spiel about this, but nobody wants to hear it, lol."


"He replies with, I think this is a really good idea, what's wrong with it?"

So I told him. It basically comes down to three factors.

Exhaustion is a terrifying bad status ailment in 5e. It's very hard to get rid of a single level of exhaustion, and, as anyone who has ever griped about a certain Barbarian subclass knows, while one level isn't the worst, those penalties start to set in quick, which can make a character useless before long. Not to mention eventually dying anyways. Oh and you can't just toss off a lesser restoration and cure a level of fatigue, like in other versions of the game.

Then you have the fact that in-combat healing is deliberately not great in 5e, by design. I had a thread griping about this a few months back. The response I got was "lol, out of combat healing is too good, in-combat healing is fine". So even if a Cleric did nothing else but throw out his best Cure Wounds each turn on the Fighter getting the tar beat out of him by monsters to prevent him from taking Exhaustion, they would have a very hard time keeping up, and quickly run out of spell slots. And be unable to cast anything else they might want to.

And finally, with players running around with levels of exhaustion, you're not going to get many encounters done, I would think. So the "6-8 encounters to run the party of resources" gets thrown right out the window, as everyone is going to use all their resources as fast as they can, knowing they weren't going to do more than 3-4 encounters that day anyways.

After laying down all these points, the response?

"James why do you have to ruin everything?"

 

[Vaalingrade]

She is trying to hard to sound creepy and it kinda works when she's trying to propose something so onerous.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I saw that tic tok and almost posted a reply buy decided that no one that wanted that idea cared what I thought.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I saw that tic tok and almost posted a reply buy decided that no one that wanted that idea cared what I thought.

I am so confused.

I though tik toks were tiny breath mints.

Mmmm.... I like the orange ones.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Right. It definitely makes the game harder, the characters more likely to die and makes the party to burn their healing resources in attempt to avoid characters dropping to zero HP, thus making it unlikely that they can do the recommended six to eight encounters.

But considering that following are common complaints about 5e:
1) It is an easy mode and characters never die.
2) Whack-a-mole healing is annoying, there is little incentive to heal characters before they drop.
3) Six to eight encounters is too much, people don't want to do that many.

This rule fixes all these, so it might be exactly what some groups need. My main concern would be that it is overly punitive to front line melee characters who are most likely to take the brunt of the attacks and thus most likely to drop to zero.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

But considering that following are common complaints about 5e:

3) Six to eight encounters is too much, people don't want to do that many.

On the one hand, I always hear this ... yet it seems that I've never played in a game where this happens.

On the other hand, I am currently playing in a PbP game (Against the Giants) where our group decided to take on all the giants, at once. I guess that's against them?

Note: If you really want to to deal with the easy-mode and resource issues, I recommend (1) tinkering with short rests and long rests (optional rule of short rest is 1/day, and long rest is 1/week), and (2) playing with gritty healing rules.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Note: If you really want to to deal with the easy-mode and resource issues, I recommend (1) tinkering with short rests and long rests (optional rule of short rest is 1/day, and long rest is 1/week), and (2) playing with gritty healing rules.

Sure. That's what I do.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Sure. That's what I do.

To quote the Splendiferous & Terrible Ilsensine, "Great minds taste alike."

 

[Jer]

This rule fixes all these, so it might be exactly what some groups need. My main concern would be that it is overly punitive to front line melee characters who are most likely to take the brunt of the attacks and thus most likely to drop to zero.

My worry with a rule like this is that it actually doesn't fix 1) at all. It's actually trivially easy to kill characters in 5e just like it is in any edition of D&D - you just increase the threat of the encounters you're throwing at the PCs to the point where it overwhelms them. Problem solved - PCs are dead.

The actual problem doesn't seem to be that you can't kill characters, it's that it's hard under the baseline rules to have a challenge that might kill 1-2 PCs without it resulting in a TPK. And I don't see how this fixes that issue. Except that maybe your front line melee guy goes down and can't get back up again even when the cleric has some healing left to throw at him and the rest of the PCs flee and leave him behind to die. Which meets the letter of the problem that folks seem to have but doesn't really seem to match the spirit of it IMO (and also makes it harder to recruit one of the players to be the front line meat shield when that player decides they'd rather play an archer with their next character).

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Right. It definitely makes the game harder, the characters more likely to die and makes the party to burn their healing resources in attempt to avoid characters dropping to zero HP, thus making it unlikely that they can do the recommended six to eight encounters.

But considering that following are common complaints about 5e:
1) It is an easy mode and characters never die.
2) Whack-a-mole healing is annoying, there is little incentive to heal characters before they drop.
3) Six to eight encounters is too much, people don't want to do that many.

This rule fixes all these, so it might be exactly what some groups need. My main concern would be that it is overly punitive to front line melee characters who are most likely to take the brunt of the attacks and thus most likely to drop to zero.

my biggest issue is the law of unintended consequences. I see this turning a "too easy" game into a "too hard" game real quick