D&D 5E Why you shouldn't allow optional rules.

[Leatherhead]

In the latest edition, there is a plethora of optional rules: Feats, Multiclassing, Magic Weapons, etc. As of late, people have been expressing concern over their use as they seem to make characters "overpowered."

I'm going to tell you strait up, they do. Stock monsters aren't meant for that kind of abuse, the CR guidelines printed in the DMg indicate that a significant number of the common lower level monsters favor padding AC and DPR over HP pools. Meaning a few solid +10 damage hits will do them in quick.

The options in 5e are not what would be considered "plug and play", throwing everything into the pot willy-nilly is going to make it come out some weird kind of mess. You need to take all of the new power your PC's have into account when make the adventures for them. There isn't really any way around it, and playing without options is a viable way to do things.

If your PC's have too high of an accuracy, consider eliminating stacking bonuses such as the bless spell or magic arrows. If they have too high of damage, try using monsters with better defensive stats. Perhaps you could pad the HP of the bigger bosses with things like resistances, regeneration, or shells of temp HP. Or you could deviously start using hordes of lesser creatures to soak up stray sword swings and evaporate the overkill. It doesn't really matter if the PC's can do 10 or 38 damage a swing when the kobold only has 6hp.

As for why you should try it: Some people just have more fun with bigger numbers and tinkering around with the rules to see what they can create, and that includes some DM's.

 

[DaveDash]

To me that's taking away customization and all the stuff from previous editions. Feats and especially magic weapons are part of D&D to me.
I'm happy for the base assumptions to not take these things into consideration, but I am very unhappy that th DMG lacks tools in its toolkit to handle the game at a higher power level.
I really could have done without some of unearthed arcana stuff in there for better guidelines on building harder encounters, quick hacks to cater for magic weapons, etc.
I'm a time poor DM, I don't want to have to re-play test the entire game to see what works for a min max group, but right now that's what I feel like I have to do. In fact I'm going to run all the monsters manual through the zdMG monster building guidelines, because I just don't feel like I can trust any of the CRs in the book.

It seems for a lot of things the designers threw their hands up in the air and said "This is too hard for us to get right, so we will let you guys sort it out!"...

 

[Scorpio616]

Or you could deviously start using hordes of lesser creatures to soak up stray sword swings and evaporate the overkill. It doesn't really matter if the PC's can do 10 or 38 damage a swing when the kobold only has 6hp.

It isn't that devious. it's how the game is supposed to be played. Lesser foes are supposed to abound for the players to mop them up. It wasn't until the 3Era that the foes individually were expected to to be in a proper power curve to fight for the PCs. In 4E it became the default where even lesser foes were 1 hit cardboard cut outs that were still leveled up to hit at the Players level.

 

[Li Shenron]

If this is true, this makes me feel like 5e is a great system for old-school sandbox campaigns, but poor for a carefully-planned railroad story arc.

 

[Mouseferatu]

This is easily fixed by throwing more or tougher monsters at the PCs than the guidelines suggest.

Seriously. That's it. It takes some trial-and-error to figure it out for any given party/campaign, but otherwise it works just fine.

(I run a very plot-centric campaign, for the record. Not a railroad, but nowhere near a sandbox.)

 

[Derren]

It seems for a lot of things the designers threw their hands up in the air and said "This is too hard for us to get right, so we will let you guys sort it out!"...

In my opinion this is the whole reason for the "rulings, not rules" approach and I find at very perplexing that many people even cheer when the designers dump unfinished or vague rules onto the DMs/players so that they have to do the work while still having to pay premium prices.

 

[FireLance]

Frankly, the simplest way to avoid options is to just play with the Basic rules, and eliminate the overpowered Cleric and Wizard classes. Ability score increases and other class features are also overpowered, and should go.

The real problem, however, is that the CR system is out of whack. A party should only expect to emerge victorious against an opponent with CR equal to their level 50% of the time, and should expect to suffer a few fatalities while doing so. I haven't worked out the math, but I think a good start would be to divide all CRs by 4, so that a level 1 party should be expected to take on a banshee (CR 1) and a level 7 party should be expected to take on the Tarrasque (CR 7, rounded down). It should be made painfully obvious to PCs who insist on taking on challenges that they are expected to survive that the system expects much more of them. Level 7 PCs fighting a stone giant (CR 1, rounded down) should be repeatedly told that they are having a far, far easier time than they should be.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I prefer to have multiple possible optional rules at my disposal to choose from, and carefully pick what goes in my campaign. Also they don't have to be permanent implementations, you can always plug an optional rule as a temporary try out and remove it if you are not happy with the result.

 

[ExploderWizard]

This is easily fixed by throwing more or tougher monsters at the PCs than the guidelines suggest.

Seriously. That's it. It takes some trial-and-error to figure it out for any given party/campaign, but otherwise it works just fine.

(I run a very plot-centric campaign, for the record. Not a railroad, but nowhere near a sandbox.)

DING!!

Every time a subject about this or that option will WAY overpower a PC it is astounding how many otherwise solid DMs forget that the PC opposition is completely in their hands and that regardless of what the PCs have, the DM pool of challenges is infinite.

 

[Mephista]

Frankly, I'm tired of games that try to cater around min maxers. Either by banning fun stuff that aren't abused by a lot of players, or by making the game all about system mastery.

Whenever I make a house rule (such as by banning multi-classing), its an attempt to shift the minds of the players towards what style of game I want to run at the moment. I'm pretty liberal with the rules when it comes to giving things out to the pcs. Sorcerer who gets a free familiar? Swapping around skills a class has access to for fitting a different character concept? Absolutely fine with me.


I work freely with the players. But I detest min-maxing at my table. I would sooner not have a game than play with one. I want everyone to have cool stuff and have fun. But min-maxers, in my experience, ruin fun for others. They create a kind of competitive atmosphere in the group that I don't care for.

So, I'm glad the game doesn't cater to them.