What Content Would Make 5e Good

[Bihlbo]

I stand by my assertion made at the end of my PHB review - there is literally nothing salvageable from that book.

I think that's some angry hyperbole, or maybe you don't understand what "salvage" means. For instance, some of the spells are straight up improvements over their 3.5 versions. There, salvageable material.

[CapnTthePirateG]

I think that's some angry hyperbole, or maybe you don't understand what "salvage" means. For instance, some of the spells are straight up improvements over their 3.5 versions. There, salvageable material.

Would you care to provide actual evidence for this assertion? Going through the spell selection pretty much everything is trash and you're hard pressed to find actual gems.

[Kaelik]

By straight up better he means "is worthless garbage that no one would take if they could take something good, and is therefore better if you are an idiot DM who gets mad when your players do anything good."

It will be 100% a list of nerfs, and all the nerfs will be ones that don't even nerf an overpowered thing into being simpler and better, but just a nerf that makes things more complex and have worse results for the actual game, like 3e -> 3.5 Hold Person style nerfs.

[Mord]

I ran a 5e game

[...]

The biggest problem we had was that the fighter was just too good

[Bihlbo]

By straight up better he means "is worthless garbage that no one would take if they could take something good, and is therefore better if you are an idiot DM who gets mad when your players do anything good."

It will be 100% a list of nerfs, and all the nerfs will be ones that don't even nerf an overpowered thing into being simpler and better, but just a nerf that makes things more complex and have worse results for the actual game, like 3e -> 3.5 Hold Person style nerfs.

It's been a couple of years since I touched it, so I can't list much of anything from the system. I'm just repeating something we said at the table when we were playing it. But I'll look...

Burning Hands. 3.5 says the range is 15 feet. It doesn't say where the cone originates. 5e's range makes it clear. At 5th level you'll do an average of 2 points more damage than you did at 4th level using 3.5's burning hands, and there it maxes out. 5e's burning hands does your 4th level 3.5's burning hands damage starting at level 1, and you can surpass your max 3.5's version damage by spending a higher spell level, starting at level 3.

Puny improvements, I know, but it's not a nerf and it proves my point.

Alter self is another example, though subjective. Maybe you like your game to bog down as soon as someone casts a spell, forcing them to look through the MM and take a lot of notes. Or, maybe you like OP options. Our group found 5e alter self to be extremely easy to use by comparison, and it still accomplishes things you want it to accomplish. That one's kind of a nerf, unless you prioritize playing the game over personal power fantasies, then it's a big improvement.

Also, casting cantrips as many times as you want allows a wizard or whatever to have something wizardy to do at all times, rather than rely on a crossbow. That's certainly something we enjoyed when playing. I know, you saw that in Pathfinder and some splat material, but I wouldn't play 3.5 without that.

Concentration is a mixed bag, though - I can see what they tried to accomplish, but once you reach mid-level it's terrible.

I ran a 5e game

[...]

The biggest problem we had was that the fighter was just too good

hehe. Well...

1) He was better than a 3.5 fighter at the same level, so that was great.
2) He was better than anyone in the party at doing lots of hp damage and tanking, and that's compared with a warlock who specialized in shooting people, and a paladin.

So the fighter wasn't excessively good. Maybe just surprisingly good? I'll settle for that. The party had a really hard time surviving when he got replaced with a rogue. Maybe rogues suck.

[Kaelik]

Burning Hands. 3.5 says the range is 15 feet. It doesn't say where the cone originates. 5e's range makes it clear. At 5th level you'll do an average of 2 points more damage than you did at 4th level using 3.5's burning hands, and there it maxes out. 5e's burning hands does your 4th level 3.5's burning hands damage starting at level 1, and you can surpass your max 3.5's version damage by spending a higher spell level, starting at level 3.

1) 3.5 does specifically have rules for where the cone originates, it's not their fault they wrote a better ruleset where all cones are the same and you are too stupid to read the rules.

2) The relative value of an extremely tiny damage boost is subject to the rest of the system.

3) The ability to spend a 3rd level spell for a less than third level effect isn't actually a good thing at all, and by having it as an option it makes the entire game worse because measure damage output in the form of heightened first level spells.

4) It is BURNING HANDS. So it's still garbage even if it were buffed, instead of basically not changed.

Alter self is another example, though subjective. Maybe you like your game to bog down as soon as someone casts a spell, forcing them to look through the MM and take a lot of notes. Or, maybe you like OP options. Our group found 5e alter self to be extremely easy to use by comparison, and it still accomplishes things you want it to accomplish. That one's kind of a nerf, unless you prioritize playing the game over personal power fantasies, then it's a big improvement.

Hmmmmm Which is more likely?

1) 5e solved the irreducible Polymorph dilemma, but no one ever mentioned it anywhere and it wasn't shouted from the mountain tops.
2) They guy talking about the relative value of burning hands write ups who doesn't even know the 3.5 rules for cones exists is wrong about whether 5e solves the irreducible polymorph dilemma, and specifically in the direction that I predicted, which is thinking arbitrary nerfs that make it not operate like a shapechanging spell at all is a good polymorph spell.

?

I'm going to pick 2.

Also, casting cantrips as many times as you want allows a wizard or whatever to have something wizardy to do at all times, rather than rely on a crossbow. That's certainly something we enjoyed when playing. I know, you saw that in Pathfinder and some splat material, but I wouldn't play 3.5 without that.

Not even a spell change, so irrelevant, but yes, also in 3.5 and Pathfinder.

[Trill]

2) He was better than anyone in the party at doing lots of hp damage and tanking, and that's compared with a warlock who specialized in shooting people, and a paladin.

[Whipstitch]

5e nukes have a serious monster manual problem. A lot of the spells really do have noticeably higher numbers at the level you first acquire them but hp variance and inflation is all over the place in 5th. You've got rando cannon fodder humanoids with 13 hp and cr 1/2 Satyrs packing 7d6 fucking hit dice. That's like dogs and cats living together.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Unfortunately I was beaten to the punch, but I was about to point out that 2 points more of burning hands doesn't matter when monsters are running around with a ton more hit points.

If all the hit points go up and you get 2 more damage but the ratio is more in the monster's favor, THAT IS A NERF. Now, I haven't done comprehensive mathematical analysis on 5e, but when your level 2 character is running into 40+ hp monsters in AL you're basically fucked.

As I recall anything not named alter self - which wasn't very good in 3.5 unless you did some dumb shit with troglodytes to turn yourself into a meh warrior for a few minutes - in 5e just forces you to dumpster dive through the monster manual anyway. 5e didn't fix shit, because that would require Mearls to have an original thought in his life.

Lastly, the at-will attack magic that does crap damage is an idea from 4th edition D&D and while it's not a bad one, giving 5e the credit for this idea is laughable.

[Whipstitch]

What bothers me about 5e nukes isn't that they're nerfed--a level 1 Burning Hands deals 3d6, which is actually a pretty beefy upgrade over 3.x's 1d4 per level in the sense that it can at least threaten to kill anything at all--but the hp variance is so fuck off huge that you don't know when to consider using the damn things unless you're pretty serious about committing the monster manual to memory. There's no real rhyme or reason to why a cr 1/4 Blink dog has three times the hps (22) of a cr 1/4 Goblin (7). As far as I can tell the best rule of thumb is assuming they charge monsters a shit ton of hit dice for the right to carry a bow. Frankly, I'd rather just stick with Grease and Silent Image.

[WiserOdin032402]

2) He was better than anyone in the party at doing lots of hp damage and tanking, and that's compared with a warlock who specialized in shooting people, and a paladin.

Yeah I'll be taking that now. Thank you. I have some debates to go settle.

[Cervantes]

5e Alter Self isn't Polymorph Self, it's a Disguise Self spell that's not an illusion

also i live for these 3.5e v 5e slogfests but... where the fuck is the blood? i haven't seen anything 5e does better than 3.5e in its core rules. backgrounds are fine but they're easy to mod onto 3.5e

how about proficiency v skill ranks or the skill list in 5e v 3.5e, or the combat rule changes or the power progression comparison

[Username17]

also i live for these 3.5e v 5e slogfests but... where the fuck is the blood? i haven't seen anything 5e does better than 3.5e in its core rules. backgrounds are fine but they're easy to mod onto 3.5e

Not only is it easy to mod Backgrounds into 2.5, but K and I already did in our Tome materials. We called them "Backgrounds" and they work exactly the same. And we did it more than 8 years before 5th edition was a thing.

I'm not saying that 5th edition Backgrounds are necessarily copied directly from a set of 3.5 house rules published for free on the internet two presidential terms before Mearls' submission deadline, but they would look literally exactly the same if they were. It's an obvious enough concept that I'm willing to not point fingers and shout "Plagiarism!" but to say that it's a good idea that 3rd edition should take from 5th edition is basically absurd. 3rd edition had that concept written for it years before WotC even decided who would still be working for them when they put out the call to start writing 5th edition.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

5e Alter Self isn't Polymorph Self, it's a Disguise Self spell that's not an illusion

OH LOOK IT WAS 2 I WAS RIGHT. THIS IS SUCH A SURPRISE! I'M SO SURPRISED THAT IT TURNS OUT 5e ALTER SELF IS JUST DISGUISE SELF BUT TO TOUCH AND THAT IT WAS BEING CALLED A BETTER SPELL EVEN THOUGH IT FAILED IN THE EXACT WAY THAT I PREDICTED IN MY ORIGINAL POST.

[Cervantes]

Not only is it easy to mod Backgrounds into 2.5, but K and I already did in our Tome materials. We called them "Backgrounds" and they work exactly the same. And we did it more than 8 years before 5th edition was a thing.

I'm not saying that 5th edition Backgrounds are necessarily copied directly from a set of 3.5 house rules published for free on the internet two presidential terms before Mearls' submission deadline, but they would look literally exactly the same if they were. It's an obvious enough concept that I'm willing to not point fingers and shout "Plagiarism!" but to say that it's a good idea that 3rd edition should take from 5th edition is basically absurd. 3rd edition had that concept written for it years before WotC even decided who would still be working for them when they put out the call to start writing 5th edition.

-Username17

the fact that it's also the only thing i can think of that's undeniably an improvement kind of speaks for itself there

[Previn]

Lastly, the at-will attack magic that does crap damage is an idea from 4th edition D&D and while it's not a bad one, giving 5e the credit for this idea is laughable.

Eh, I could see an argument that's it's 3.5 thing via reserve feats.

[Koumei]

Lastly, the at-will attack magic that does crap damage is an idea from 4th edition D&D and while it's not a bad one, giving 5e the credit for this idea is laughable.

Or you know, third edition. What with that being the entirety of the Warlock class. Now sure, that was the shtick of the entire class and not just a universal "everyone has some shitty at-will stuff and some other use-limited stuff", but "putting everyone on the same schedule" turned out to be a failure point of 4. And basically doing the same with 5th (just tweaking the dials a little bit) wasn't exactly a wild improvement on that.

[Cervantes]

why is "putting everyone on the same schedule" bad? it helps to solve the martial/caster divide, the failure point was that they brought casters down to martials instead of bringing martials up to casters, no?

(that said, i can't even imagine how to bring martials up to casters, so)

[Kaelik]

why is "putting everyone on the same schedule" bad? it helps to solve the martial/caster divide, the failure point was that they brought casters down to martials instead of bringing martials up to casters, no?

(that said, i can't even imagine how to bring martials up to casters, so)

If everyone has the same resource management system, then that drastically limits the kinds of characters you can have in the game, and makes it more likely that across any given amount of material your options feel "the same" so people are absolutely going to get bored or feel less special than they would with different resources management systems.

Whether greater "balance" is worth the cost depends on many things, including on whether you are capable of writing many different resource management systems that are balanced.

[Cervantes]

when we say "same schedule", do we have to mean "same resource management system"? can't we have several resource management systems that all revolve around "long rests"?

[Kaelik]

when we say "same schedule", do we have to mean "same resource management system"? can't we have several resource management systems that all revolve around "long rests"?

Yes indeed, let us have essentia based on changing essentia with long rests.

And let's have at wills where you have to wait to use your At will again until after a long rest.

And a Rage Meter, where your rage goes up during a long rest.

And an stance and strike user who changes stances with a long rest.

You get the point?.... this doesn't make sense.

[OgreBattle]

when we say "same schedule", do we have to mean "same resource management system"? can't we have several resource management systems that all revolve around "long rests"?

If everyone runs on a stamina system then has some other fiddly mechanic that layers on top of it. In Naruto all the magic is based on converting your body's stamina into chakra so Rock Lee and Gaara both get exhausted and need a day's rest. But Rock Lee's unlocking gates are mechanically different from Gaara's Tanuki summoning and sand control.

[Shrieking Banshee]

Id say, yeah 5e is unsalvagable because it's built on quicksand.
It really easier to just start all over and maybe grab some decorations before the thing collapses in on itself.

Like I played in a 5e game for 5 months where all of us acknowledged the GM as a cool dude, and nobody there was a real rules or D&D Junkie so that 5e was such a radical shift away from what people wanted. And everybody left disappointed.
Again, like people with even the most minor modicum of care about rules felt disappointed by them. Combat was stupidly swingy. You just need somebody in the front to be knocked out every round and then revived the next. Rules were often missing not in a "Whoaa I'm so totally empowered" sorta way.
Often reverse was the case where everything felt like it was floating on hot air. The GMs role wasn't all that bunch easier, so he never felt like he didn't have to prep as much.

[Bihlbo]

Again, like people with even the most minor modicum of care about rules felt disappointed by them. Combat was stupidly swingy.

I haven't personally played any game in which combat was anything but swingy. Are there games with non-swingy combat? Does that exist?

[Foxwarrior]

Chess is only as swingy as you are bad at it.