D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[BryonD]

stuff

I'm thrilled that you have come around.
Again, back when 4E was in print you, and Hussar, and many other highly PRAISED this innovation of mathematically purity and were highly critical of me and others for promoting the approach you have described here.

You described in detail how it was the duty of the DM to always make sure that the SAME WALL was harder to climb if and when the party came back later, the lock would always be better, etc, etc. You made it clear that this applied to anything and everything.

You keep going back to "consistent nature" and using references as if this is a key point. That is exactly what I do. But I never need to know if a character is Level 1 or level 13 in order to reference fiction or nature or be consistent.

Again, I'm thrilled to know that doing things the 3E way is considered correct

 

[BryonD]

So have we resolved that on the issue of DCs 5E *does not* suck and 3E and 4E fans alike are singing its praises?

 

[Tony Vargas]

From the point of view of WotC's aspirations for D&D, it clearly fell short. It seems likely that some of the features of 4e that are, for me as a player, strengths, were not strengths relative to WotC's aspirations.

Y'know, I think they were strengths in that sense, just not nearly sufficient to make up for the other challenges D&D faced at the time.

It seems to me like you may have been playing in a way that failed to bring out the strengths of the system.

"You're playing it wrong?"

My experience is that about one extended rest per level, maybe two, is the right degree of pressure to make the system work. If you let the players take an extended rest whenever they want, or on a clock that they control (eg end of session) then you will get a very different experience.

Sure, but it's still not necessarily a bad experience. You can go for very dangerous overleveled battles, with long rests between each of them, and you'll get a certain experience, much like you would running other editions that way, just without the pronounced class imbalance and corresponding non-participation of some of the PCs. Encounter balance goes crazy, but that's kinda the point of intentionally going to the 5MWD.

Likewise if you don't explore the geographic dimensions of the system (movement, etc) which requires space.

A varied campaign is always going to be more engaging than one stuck in a rut, sure, but that's usually regardless of system.

I can easily imagine a mountain that would be deadly to peasant and easy for superheroes.

Indeed, that'd be most mountains. Ordinary folks, ~10 in most stats if fortunate enough to be in good health at the time, no particular training in mountain climbing. Even a mountain full of DC 10 checks is going to see some catastrophic failures for them. It'd take more levels in 5e than in 3e or 4e to make climbing that mountain 'easy' (indeed, automatic) but it'd certainly happen at some point in each. That just seems like it's the norm. Admittedly, in 1e, mountain climbing didn't get any easier (unless you're a Thief and 'climb walls' applies) as you level, but, then again, there might not be any rolls required, just have whatever player is able to convince the DM he knows mountain-climbing as your 'caller' and off you go.

That is not the same mountain that is hard for everyone.

In 5e, supposedly it's nominally 'hard' for everyone, hard is just easy when your stat+proficiency bonus gets high enough. Apart from those semantics or a total lack of mountain-climbing mechanics, though, "hard for everyone" is just nonsense.

You are the first person to talk about such a mountain, in this post.

I don't really follow this. The idea that a GM might build encounters, or indeed a gameworld, in order to provide a fun play experience for particular PCs brought to the table by particular players, is not new to 4e. I started doing this as an AD&D GM in the mid-80s.

The idea of challenges appropriate to PCs of a given level is at least as old as published modules, which gave a level range right on the cover.

The idea that there should be no such thing (and never had been any such thing, before) was just another fabrication of the edition war.

so that rusty locks are DC 8 for 1st leve PCs and DC 18 for epic PCs. This is the thing that [MENTION=29013]bert1000[/MENTION] described not far upthread as "nonsensical": assigning level-appropriate DCs to the fiction regardless of the fiction.

A fair description.

When [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] talks about setting the DC of a blizzard to something appropriate for paragon tier adventurers, he is not supposing that the blizzard has no consistent nature in the fiction. Rather, he's talking about introducing a new element into the fiction - a blizzard - and deciding, as GM, that he wants it to be a challenge for the PCs in his game... He then narrates it appropriately.

That does sound like a purely stylistic choice. If there were some objective table of blizzard strength, it'd be a matter of picking the right strength of blizzard to challenge the party, based on the DM's knowledge of the party's specific capabilities. If there's a DC range the game gives as appropriate to a given level, the DM might not need to have so clear an idea of the PCs capabilities. Either is a fine tool for the home DM. The latter is particularly handy for the author of an adventure, or a DM running a one-shot with strangers.

 

[pemerton]

I'm thrilled that you have come around.
Again, back when 4E was in print you, and Hussar, and many other highly PRAISED this innovation of mathematically purity and were highly critical of me and others for promoting the approach you have described here.

You described in detail how it was the duty of the DM to always make sure that the SAME WALL was harder to climb if and when the party came back later, the lock would always be better, etc, etc. You made it clear that this applied to anything and everything.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] can speak for himself, but as far as I'm concerned this is absolute nonsense. Of course you have no quotes, because I never said it.

It is possible that I said that, if the PCs return to the same lock or wall having gained levels then it would be more interesting for the game if the DC was higher, but that change in DC would not be divorced from the fiction - you make the wall harder to climb by narrating bad weather; you make the lock harder to pick by narrating bad lighting; etc. It's obvious that DCs and fiction correlate. (Though there can be looseness of fit - I have a lengthy post not very far upthread discussing this with [MENTION=29013]bert1000[/MENTION].)

To relink to a thread I've already linked to upthreadWhat do you think I was doing three years ago when the paragon characters in my game encountered (and defeated) a hobgoblin phalanx? I was changing the fiction so as to support the assignment of DCs in a way that would generate a mechanically, and hence narratively, satisfying experience (the "hence" is the result of the fact that 4e's mechanics are aimed at ensuring dramatically pleasing pacing when used in accordance with the DMG guidelines).

The "level-appropriate" hobgobling being a single soldier at 5th level, and being a phalanx at 15th level, is precisely an instance of the fiction changing as the DCs change.

I've been told on these boards (sometimes by the very same people) as well as in meatspace that the sliding DCs tied to PC level (and the entirety of "the math works") was a revolutionary breakthrough that made 3E a backwards, obsolete system.
But, abracadabra, now its just a matter of perspective.

I'm glad to hear from 4E fans that reverting to 3E style turns out to not be going backwards.

I feel that your tendency to frame every discussion as a contest, or as a point for vindication in respect of some past slight, is not helping clear analysis.

In this particular case, 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.

Thus, when people talk about "sliding DCs" being something helpful, they are talking about things from the point of view of GMing, just as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] did some hundreds of posts upthread when he triggered this discussion about DCs.

The point is that if I, as a GM, want to introduce an element into the shared fiction that will be a challenge for the PCs my players are playing (and hence a challenge for my players), it is useful for the system (i) to tell me what to set the DC at, and (ii) to be robust and reliable enough that what the system tells me is probably true.

4e satisfies (i) in the ways I've described in this post: it has a DC-by-level chart, a list of monsters and traps/hazards arranged by level, etc. It mostly satisfies (ii), although there are some break points (eg the Sage of Ages, which gets a +6 to all knowledge skills, definitely pushes the system limits - as I've learned from experience).

This is what is meant by the maths works. It has nothing at all to do with the very same lock, in the very same circumstances, having a different DC depending on the level the PCs happen to be. It has nothing to do with whether or not the ingame "reality" is mutable in the face of the PCs.

Of course, if you think of the ingame "reality" as already being authored prior to any particular player turning up to the table with any particular PC, then you might think that the only way to implement level-appropriate DCs is to make the reality mutable. But that is not the only way to approach the GMing task - which takes us back to [MENTION=29013]bert1000[/MENTION]'s sand-box/scene-framing contrast.

I'm sure there are some 3E/PF GMs out there somewhere who have run scene-framing 3E/PF, though I don't think the system is very well suited to it in part because it mostly lacks (i), and where it does have (i) - eg the CR system - it tends to rather weak on (ii).

Burning Wheel uses scene-framing although it lacks (i) also (and hence (ii) doesn't even come into play), but BW has many other mechanical devices to support scene-framing play within the context of "objective" DCs that 3E, and prior versions of D&D, lack.

You (BryonD) to the best of my knowledge do not make actual play posts, and so my sense of how you run your game is primarily conjecture based on more general comments you make about techniques, systems etc. I nevertheless believe that my sense of how you run your game is relatively accurate. I think you use a relatively high degree of GM control over the introduction of elements into the shared fiction (eg relatively little contribution of such material from the players, either via PC-build or via action resolution) and that you use a relatively high degree of GM control over the general direction of the game (eg in general my sense is that it is you, not the players, who decides who the "BBEG" will be - and this is fairly closely linked to the issue of content-introduction). I also think that you use a fair bit of GM control over action resolution, especially outside combat, in order to keep the game moving.

I would summarise the above as the sort of play emphasised and encouraged by the 2nd ed AD&D core rulebooks.

It is completely undisputed that 4e is not a system aimed at that sort of play - it encourages greater player authority over both content-introduction, over PC goals and (via transparent mecanics) over the outcome of action resolution. It favours scene-framing over "plot arcs". It works best when the fiction with which the players are not directly engaged, via their PCs, is treated in a rather loose way without being mechanically pinned down (as [MENTION=20998]tyrlaan[/MENTION] described not far upthread). In some posts from early 2011 I described this a "just in time" GMing. (You were quoted in these posts, so may have read them already.)

Not pinning down the mechanics of the fiction until the players engage with it via their PCs has nothing in common with your posited "the DC changes to level with no corresponding change in fiction, however. What it does mean is a departure from a certain sort of approach to world-building that you would probably not enjoy making.

 

[pemerton]

"You're playing it wrong?"

Absolutely.

The idea that any RPG is equally likely to produce a fun experience however it is approached, and whatever the player's personal conception of fun, is just crazy!

I guess someone, somewhere in the history of RPGing, used Tunnels & Trolls to play a Middle Earth game, but with spell names like "Take That, You Fiend" (rather than magic missile) and "Freeze Please" (rather than ice storm), plus mechanics that contain no non-dungeon exploration dimension at all, such people can't be more than a mere handful of the totality of RPGers.

4e has multiple intersecting rationing mechanics. If you play the game in a way that doesn't engage those mechanics, then you'd better hope that they're optional from the point of view of enjoying the game! (My view is that they're not; others might have different tastes, but from [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s posts I get the impression that rationing was desired.)

4e has complex movement and positioning mechanics. If you play the game in a way that doesn't engage those mechanics, then once again you'd better hope they're optional to enjoyment.

But the more of the system's mechanics that you fail to engage in your play of it, the more the question becomes "Why this system?" It seems to me, for instance, that if you don't engage the rationing and you don't engage the positioning, there's not a lot left of 4e's combat mechanics. You've got hit point ablation and condition infliction, but without engaging the rationing systems (eg for condition removal, unlocking surges, etc) these become less interesting. The game starts to look just like a needlessly complex version of AD&D.

 

[AlphaDean]

Perhaps its because I'm an old school gamer. I've been at this D&D thing for a long time. Almost 40 years worth of play over here. I can honestly say not since AD&D have I been so happy with an edition of D&D. The fact that the game has harkened back to its roots, but added a lot of flavor makes it down right fun. I build worlds and tell stories. This the beautiful thing about 5E... its a freeform enough with just enough crunch to make it work wonderfully.

 

[BryonD]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] can speak for himself, but as far as I'm concerned this is absolute nonsense. Of course you have no quotes, because I never said it.

Shrug. My approach has not changed and I was told that going back to my approach would be "going backwards". Now it is praised. I am glad.

In this particular case, 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.

No, I get it.

Thus, when people talk about "sliding DCs" being something helpful, they are talking about things from the point of view of GMing, just as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] did some hundreds of posts upthread when he triggered this discussion about DCs.

The point is that if I, as a GM, want to introduce an element into the shared fiction that will be a challenge for the PCs my players are playing (and hence a challenge for my players), it is useful for the system (i) to tell me what to set the DC at, and (ii) to be robust and reliable enough that what the system tells me is probably true.

One key difference here may be that a 12th level 4E wizard gains at least "+6" (whatever than means in model terms) to everything, including climbing mountains in blizzards. In 3E and in 5E, a 12th level wizard can be no better at climbing mountains in blizzards than a peasant. A "typical" L12 Ranger would be "good" at it and an optimized mountain climbing ranger may be "outstanding" at it. There is an implicit lack of "reliable", though I find it quite robust and dependable.

Again, to me this is a very good thing.

Edit to clarify: It isn't reliable because you don't know what the capabilities of the PCs will be, but it is robust in being self consistent.

You (BryonD) to the best of my knowledge do not make actual play posts, and so my sense of how you run your game is primarily conjecture based on more general comments you make about techniques, systems etc. I nevertheless believe that my sense of how you run your game is relatively accurate. I think you use a relatively high degree of GM control over the introduction of elements into the shared fiction (eg relatively little contribution of such material from the players, either via PC-build or via action resolution) and that you use a relatively high degree of GM control over the general direction of the game (eg in general my sense is that it is you, not the players, who decides who the "BBEG" will be - and this is fairly closely linked to the issue of content-introduction). I also think that you use a fair bit of GM control over action resolution, especially outside combat, in order to keep the game moving.

I wouldn't say this is accurate. You are right that I put a lot of "control" into setting the stage. But player input is HUGE and letting the players change the world, the path of the plot, everything is key to the fun. It is much more about challenging me to keep all the plates spinning while the players do their thing.

I would summarise the above as the sort of play emphasised and encouraged by the 2nd ed AD&D core rulebooks.

Yeah, I loved a greatly respect 2E. I dropped it in a heartbeat when I felt the market left it behind. I also completely missed S&P because I was playing other games, so if that is part of your analysis, keep that in mind.

It is completely undisputed that 4e is not a system aimed at that sort of play - it encourages greater player authority over both content-introduction, over PC goals and (via transparent mecanics) over the outcome of action resolution.

Without getting into the author vs. "being the character" debate, player control over what happens is fundamental to how I run games.

 

[BryonD]

[MENTION=22779]I feel that your tendency to frame every discussion as a contest, or as a point for vindication in respect of some past slight, is not helping clear analysis.

May I presume you will be calling out AA soon as well? I'm still waiting for you to call out Tony for the constant "H4ter" posts.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Absolutely.

The idea that any RPG is equally likely to produce a fun experience however it is approached, and whatever the player's personal conception of fun, is just crazy!

I don't entirely agree. The basics of a good game are more or less universal. Yes, there's lots of things you can do to ruin the fun of a game, but 'playing it wrong' (while still playing it by the rules, let's be clear) shouldn't be one of them. If a game handles the basics and is fairly robust, it should give a fair play experience, regardless - it might not be fun because you don't care for the subject matter, or for a thousand other reasons, but not because of the game, itself.

I guess someone, somewhere in the history of RPGing, used Tunnels & Trolls to play a Middle Earth game, but with spell names like "Take That, You Fiend" (rather than magic missile) and "Freeze Please" (rather than ice storm), plus mechanics that contain no non-dungeon exploration dimension at all, such people can't be more than a mere handful of the totality of RPGers.

People who have seriously played any game other than D&D are decidedly in the minority, to begin with.

4e has multiple intersecting rationing mechanics. If you play the game in a way that doesn't engage those mechanics, then you'd better hope that they're optional from the point of view of enjoying the game!

That's one of the nice things about it, actually, is that the balance is robust enough to handle that kind of abuse. You can have mostly single-encounter days, for instance, and still make a go of it. I just ran a scenario like that, in fact.

4e has complex movement and positioning mechanics. If you play the game in a way that doesn't engage those mechanics, then once again you'd better hope they're optional to enjoyment.

Well, if you're avoiding them, they probably are. You have to at least expect folks to try to have fun with a game, rather than try to avoid fun at all costs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The phantom steed stuff was showing up by mid-level-spread in 4e - it gave one ritualist the power to kind of negate what should have been an important part of the challenge of the game for all 30 levels.

I'm more happy with an epic feel to high level play. Its fine with me if level 15 PCs are flying a lot. It wouldn't be OK if it was level 8 PCs, though if they manage to snag such a ride on a good day, well good for them.

4e's approach to magic isn't a panacea - it had the problems you're talking about. And in comparison, my experience with 5e does not have those problems.

Really, there's no strategic movement, or ways to ethereally skip around most of the dungeon to get to the treasure, etc? I mean I don't know for sure what all the high level spells say exactly, but I'm pretty sure classic teleportation is a thing, and I KNOW scrying is.

Advantage on skill checks are the major use of that spell. The change in attitude to "friendly acquaintance" is little more than a fluff justification for why you have advantage on skill checks. It all means the same thing: you have advantage on skill checks to interact with the charmed person.

Its a named consequence of the spell and thus takes place in the fiction. There are plenty of times when checks aren't needed. I'd think that if you were a castle guard and your friendly acquaintance walked past on his way out you'd pretty much just let him go by, unless there was some specific reason not to do so, like you're SURE he's not supposed to be there.

That has a use - you are now much less likely to miserably fail your skill check because you are a wizard with 10 CHA, and you might even get lucky! If you really need to get past the guard, and you don't have the luxury of waiting around for the paladin, give it a try!

But, as I say, you may well not have to make a check, and there are BOUND to be many things you could check for against a guy that is friendly to you that wouldn't even fly at all if he's a fairly suspicious guard.

That is some weak sauce noodly-armed limp toothless DMing, man. "You fail your check and nothing happens" is no way to fail a check!

And still, you could do the same thing with a rock or a hedge to hide behind - "you fail your Stealth check and nothing happens" doesn't need Invis to work! So the point still stands: useless as long as you're not in a barren room.

Oh, come now, the very thought that being INVISIBLE is of no use to you when sneaking around following/hiding/etc is just ludicrous, do you hear yourself? Honestly, cut past all the mechanical arguments and put yourself IN the fiction, wouldn't you want to be invisible? Wouldn't it be hugely beneficial? Yes, it would! End of story.

If it might take you more than an hour, it is.

Plus, there seems to be this assumption that a charmed creature is somehow putty in the PC's hand - my guards don't let their friendly acquaintances take a look at the baron's treasure. They'd be pretty awful guards if any friend of theirs could waltz in and do whatever! I've got friends I wouldn't trust near an open bag of potato chips let alone with treasure.

I said, you could LEAVE, not that he would 'show you the treasure', but I'm on my way out of the castle, not wanting to be searched, and I come upon a guard. He's suspicious, I charm him, now he 'knows me' and is friendly, so why would he search me? Maybe he still might, if his orders were 'search absolutely everyone thoroughly no matter what', but chances are he's got discretion...

You're kind of ignoring the rules to amp up the power of these spells, and if that's how you play, it's no wonder your mages dominate the game. You're giving them all sorts of power ups that the RAW doesn't give them!

No, we're looking at the FICTION and what the spells describe. They're not doing anything that the rules of the game don't directly tell you that they do. There's plenty of times when Charm Person won't work, but it CAN be a good bit more useful than you are giving credit for. Its not really even the best example anyway.

Flying doesn't mean you can find your way. You can see a hill off in the distance, it doesn't mean when you're back on the ground that you can do anything with that information - that's what Survival checks are for.

Again, put yourself in the fiction. I've done some orienteering, and if I was not sure exactly where I was, then I'd absolutely want to get up higher and find my landmarks. I'd then relate them to trees, the Sun, or whatever else would be discernible from below. This is just an example, but its a clearly useful trick. I used the spell myself for a similar purpose, getting a view ahead in the forest when we heard a large creature moving a ways away. Turns out it was an ettin. I could see said ettin from a much greater distance than otherwise possible in the forest (and we avoided it, as we had other things to do).

The RAW says if you want to do anything more than move vertically, you've gotta climb - which means Athletics check.

Look, I levitate to the height of the top of a railing on a balcony and step down, you're going to tell me this is so hard that it requires a climbing check? Or that its so hard that using the spell was nearly worthless? I think you're ignoring common sense sometimes here.

Your table is reading all sorts of advantages into these spells that aren't written there. Your DM is making very generous rulings. You're running with Older Edition Instinct and gut-checks that make these things significantly more powerful than they're written to be. You're letting them bypass skill checks that they shouldn't be bypassing.

I disagree, we're following exactly on what is written and the plainest possible interpretation of the basic effects of the magic. I've thoroughly read the text of all these spells. I don't believe you are correct.

This isn't a problem if everyone's having fun, but it doesn't illustrate any flaw in 5e's design with regards to the power of non-combat magic.

It just illustrates that old habits are hard to break.

Read them again and use common sense. If I levitate so that my feet are even with a railing and step onto the railing and down onto the balcony its preposterous to call that climbing. Its preposterous to say that being invisible is of no use. Its preposterous to say a high vantage point isn't quite advantageous, or that a friendly acquaintance isn't going to be less suspicious and much more likely to ignore you than a hostile guard, or that if you alter self you are bound to have to pass close scrutiny.

But really, when it comes down to it, its spells that do totally unique things that count most. Nobody but a wizard can make a wall of stone. And I can find a HELL of a lot of uses for that. Its OK, but when I have a dozen other spells of equal utility it is maybe bound to create an issue. As I've said before, I really strongly advocated for much narrower casters.