D&D 5e has failed

[Chamomile]

Worth noting that unless you grab it from racial proficiencies or burn your one and only level 4 feat on it (passing up a +2 WIS to do so), only the Life domain gives 5e Clerics heavy armor. Everyone else is stuck at medium.

[TiaC]

What about the Amonkhet domains? At least two of those give heavy armor.

[Chamomile]

If you can convince your GM to allow Plane Shift domains associated with specific gods deeply enmeshed with a setting you are almost certainly not playing in, sure. My default assumption is that this level of dumpster diving is not going to be allowed at most tables. Although, on a related note, I have no idea what the new Mordenkainen book contains, but it does have some new player options in it, so one of them might be a new Cleric domain.

[Eikre]

5E has like a few hundred pages of usable content; in contrast to the dim view that most DMs took with Dragon content when there were scores of 3E manuals to dredge, I suspect a lot of them will take a fairly maximalist stance on incorporating material from anything resembling official providence.

[tenngu]

Worth noting that unless you grab it from racial proficiencies or burn your one and only level 4 feat on it (passing up a +2 WIS to do so), only the Life domain gives 5e Clerics heavy armor. Everyone else is stuck at medium.

Not that it really matters, but the tempest domain and the war domain also give heavy armor out of the player's handbook.

Also, just like in 3.5, casters still rule. Shout outs to the moon druid for pretty good wildshaping. Also the power spikes for that at 3 and 6 if I recall.

Also shout out to the hexblade warlock, which gives cha to attack rolls, damage rolls, and is your spell casting mod. Also gives medium armor and shields. also has 9ths.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Hexblade is pretty damn nuts in 5e land. Made a polearm master one for AL and he outdamages pretty much every party member.

I also feel compelled to point out 5e offers no reason to play anything not a feat human.

[Whiysper]

Winged Tiefling Hexblade Bowlock. Seriously - you just ignore the map, all the crappy melee-only enemies... and all you lose is some crappy spellcasting . Feat human is solid gold, but so is always-on un-dispellable flight.

[WiserOdin032402]

Okay, so I'm gonna need you to break this one down Whiysper. Because that sounds like some broken cheese and I need to know how you're doing it.

[shinimasu]

The winged tiefling is a racial variant that gives your tiefling wings.
The improved pact weapon invocation gives you the ability to make ranged weapons with your summonable pact weapon.

Build comes online at level 5, earliest you can take the improved pact weapon invocation, before then I assume you're just spamming eldritch blast.

Level five is also when you start encountering more flying enemies, enemy spell casters, and enemies with effective range, so I have to assume that if he's cheesing fights with this then the DM hasn't been particularly creative with enemy placement.

[souran]

So, I have been running a 5e game for a while now and while the output of new content is a trickle compared to the raging river that was 3.x or 4th edition, there are some things that I think 5e does that are actually good for a table top rpg.

1) While advantage/disadvantage are not the panacea to all the d20 system's flaws that Mearl's seems to think it is, it is certainly easier than bonus tracking. As long as people roll both dice together it is faster/easier all around.

2) Characters seem to have about the right amount of complexity. This does not mean that all the classes are balanced or contribute equally. They are all over the place as everybody nows. However, all the classes quickly get to where they can do "their thing" reasonably successfully. Additionally, especially compared to where pathfinder is right now, each class has the right amount of "fiddeliness" to keep players interested in their characters and give them things to do without creating a lot of action paralysis. Certainly spellcasters still have a whole extra layer with memorizing/known spells but basically every class we have tried has a couple of gears and things to do that keep players excited to level.

3) Related to 2, the bonus action/reaction system seems to work pretty well for giving players just about the right amount of stuff to do in combat. Most people end up with 1-3 things they can do as bonus actions making it better than just spamming the same thing, although of those 1-3 their is usually one that is what they spam unless they need to do something else. Everybody also usually gets a reaction that helps keep them engaged during other people's turns.

The game obviously has a bunch of flaws most of which have been discussed here at length. Two that I don't remember getting much attention are that weapons and armor needs a second editorial pass and should just merge a bunch of stuff into because right now their are a ton of duplicate or pointless weapons in the cart and armor is basically just as bad. Also, money is fucking pointless after about level 4 or 5 but is supposed to be a motivating factor and thing the players care about throughout the whole game.

However, for all of that I can understand why it's fairly popular. The table play is actually fairly decent especially for most players who never venture into the sort of games den type issues come up.

[Username17]

Additionally, especially compared to where pathfinder is right now, each class has the right amount of "fiddeliness" to keep players interested in their characters and give them things to do without creating a lot of action paralysis.

Pathfinder is basically a parody of itself, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if some character somewhere has "meat points" they are supposed to track. It's gone the full Iron Heroes with like twenty different resource pools that are only subtly different and ways and reasons for characters to collect more than one at a time.

But I genuinely didn't feel that my 5e character had enough fiddliness. There just weren't meaningful choices I could make most of the time, and I was a fucking Druid. Being a Fighter looked like something that should be played like five at a time.

-Username17

[hogarth]

1) While advantage/disadvantage are not the panacea to all the d20 system's flaws that Mearl's seems to think it is, it is certainly easier than bonus tracking.

But there's also bonus tracking on top of it (in the campaign I'm playing with, Bless, Guidance and Bardic Performance get used fairly frequently). So how is that easier?

As far as fiddliness goes, my Level 4 Sorcerer/Level 1 Bard knows 7 cantrips, 8 level 1 spells and 2 level 2 spells, plus Bardic Inspiration, plus Sorcery Points, plus Favored by the Gods (which I haven't even used yet) so that's enough options for my brain to handle at the moment.

[shinimasu]

Relatively fewer bonuses though, and mostly on the GM's side. It's a lot easier to go "ok you have advantage" if a player wants to do something unusual/take advantage of a terrain feature/distract the enemy with illusory hand puppets. As opposed to trying to figure out what penalty, if any, the phantasmal punch and judy show gives to the enemies perception while the party sneaks past.

Advantage is bad though because it's too easy to cancel out. There are several conditions that don't really do anything aside from give the player disadvantage, and they immediately lose any teeth they might have had because most PCs will have an ability or a spell that gives them advantage which means they just roll like they normally would which doesn't feel right if your barbarian is blind, but reckless attacking cancels it out so he might as well not be.

[Emerald]

The equivalent to "Okay, you have advantage" in 3e and its derivatives is "Okay, you have a +2 circumstance bonus," or -2 instead of disadvantage, as per the DMG:

When in doubt, remember this handy little rule: Favorable conditions add +2 to any d20 roll, and unfavorable conditions penalize the roll by –2. You’ll be surprised how often this “DM’s best friend” will solve problems.

A favorable circumstance gives a character a +2 bonus on a skill check (or a –2 modifier to the DC) and an unfavorable one gives a –2 penalty on the skill check (or a +2 modifier to the DC). Take special note of this rule, for it may be the only one you’ll need.

Mialee runs down a dungeon corridor, running from a beholder. Around the corner ahead wait two ogres. Does Mialee hear the ogres getting ready to make their ambush? The DM calls for a Listen check and rules that her running from the beholder makes it less likely that she’s listening carefully: –2 penalty on the check. But one of the ogres is readying a portcullis trap, and the cranking winch of the device makes a lot of noise: –2 modifier to the DC. Also, Mialee has heard from another adventurer that the ogres in this dungeon like to ambush adventurers: +2 bonus on the check. Her ears are still ringing from the shout spell that she cast at the beholder: –2 penalty on the check. The dungeon is already noisy because of the sound of the roaring dragon on the
level below: +2 modifier to the DC.

You can add modifiers endlessly (doing so is not really a good thing, since it slows down play), but the point is, other than the PC’s Listen check modifier, the only numbers that the DM and the player need to remember when calculating all the situational modifiers are +2 and –2. Multiple conditions add up to give the check a total modifier and the DC a final value.

And while collapsing a lot of things into (dis)advantage may be easier than adding +2s and -2s, it's worse for the player and for verisimilitude. In both cases you have the same sort of "favorable and unfavorable conditions cancel each other out to get a final result" setup, but getting a +2 to a roll means that you can go from "I can't do this even on a 20" to "I can now do this at all" and further helpful circumstances will make success progressively more likely, while getting advantage just lets you have a better chance to do something you can already do and never lets you exceed your base capabilities no matter how favorable the circumstances.

[souran]

The equivalent to "Okay, you have advantage" in 3e and its derivatives is "Okay, you have a +2 circumstance bonus," or -2 instead of disadvantage, as per the DMG:

The reason advantage is easier is not becasue it's easier to remember, the +2/-2 general rule was easier to remember. The difference is that players could come up with LOTS of conditional modifiers in 3.x. In my 3.x games with experienced players lots of critical rolls often ended up basically being people bonus hunting till their die roll turned into a success.

Advantage/disadvantage is faster because adjudicating the state of advantage/nothing/disadvantage is faster/easier.

But there's also bonus tracking on top of it (in the campaign I'm playing with, Bless, Guidance and Bardic Performance get used fairly frequently). So how is that easier?

All of those add dice instead of a flat bonus. It seems to be faster at my tables because when a roll has guidance or bless or bardic bonus that dice is rolled with the d20. The only "flat" modifier they have is written on their character sheet. All the other numbers are on the dice on the table.

[Emerald]

The equivalent to "Okay, you have advantage" in 3e and its derivatives is "Okay, you have a +2 circumstance bonus," or -2 instead of disadvantage, as per the DMG:

The reason advantage is easier is not becasue it's easier to remember, the +2/-2 general rule was easier to remember. The difference is that players could come up with LOTS of conditional modifiers in 3.x. In my 3.x games with experienced players lots of critical rolls often ended up basically being people bonus hunting till their die roll turned into a success.

Advantage/disadvantage is faster because adjudicating the state of advantage/nothing/disadvantage is faster/easier.

Yes, if players start rattling off bonuses until they turn a miss into a hit that'll cause problems. But it's a DM tool, not a player tool, so a DM is not obligated to go with any circumstance modifiers the player suggest.

Also, DMs shouldn't let players hunt for bonuses retroactively to affect the result any more than they should let players ask for advantage retroactively to do the same, and nowhere in those paragraphs does it even remotely suggest that's a possibility. I honestly hadn't ever heard of players doing that until you mentioned it, and I have a pretty experienced and high-op group myself, so your group may be an outlier there.

[souran]

Quite frankly thats bullshit. If the bonus exists players are going to expect it to apply to their rolls. If they can just keep ratteling off bonuses till they hit the target that is within the rules. The fact that this is a process that can take a couple of minutes per roll is a real fucking problem. Also it's not retroactive until you go back and change the result from a failure to a success. However, even that is the sort of thing that happens in tons of games.

Advantage/Disadvantage is faster to both adjudicate if it applies because you can heuristic approach, which is the one of the few types of information processing that humans do better than computers. Resolution is about the same or maybe a little faster if you are good with making sure people roll all the dice for events together.

All that said, I don't know that this is particularly intentional on Mearl's part. I would doubt it. I do not think that Mearl's thinks about how things play at the table basically at all. I think that in general the industry/game designers do not think about the table resolution time of their systems. Resolving attacks and especially damage in Shadowrun (2nd and 3rd edition) takes for fucking ever.

There are a lot of terribad game systems that take forever, but there are also a lot of really elegant game systems that take forever. A lot of these games seem to forget that often it's better to just keep the fucking thing moving even if its not elegant.

[OgreBattle]

Is there an ideal number of bonuses that folks at the table can all keep track of?

Like... 5 bonuses of +2 or something

[Kaelik]

Hot Take: Fuck off they can keep listing bonuses and it takes a long time. There is no defined list of circumstance bonuses, if your players keep making up bonuses, then that's your own fucking fault for being apparently incapable of saying no.

If your players can't get a "+2 because it's Tuesday, and my character has some pep in his step on Tuesdays" bonus because you say no, they aren't going to sit around for a minute trying to make up bonuses to get you to accept them.

[CapnTthePirateG]

But I genuinely didn't feel that my 5e character had enough fiddliness. There just weren't meaningful choices I could make most of the time, and I was a fucking Druid. Being a Fighter looked like something that should be played like five at a time.

This is legitimately one of the system's problems, and a lot of it stems from the vast majority of options in 5e being watered down crap that it's incredibly hard to get excited about. Spell lists are very Pathfindery in that there are a few superpowerful spells every mage will cast (Hypnotic Pattern, Animate Dead) but the vast majority is unmitigated garbage.

[nockermensch]

Question: How 5e is dealing with errata? Back in 2014 we noticed that Contagion was a murder spell. Did they nerf it? Do they even care?

[CapnTthePirateG]

Contagion is nerfed so you have to fail all 3 saves before the stun goes into effect.

[hogarth]

All of those add dice instead of a flat bonus. It seems to be faster at my tables because when a roll has guidance or bless or bardic bonus that dice is rolled with the d20. The only "flat" modifier they have is written on their character sheet. All the other numbers are on the dice on the table.

That's an interesting point. The game I'm playing in is a play-by-post, so we don't have a d4 sitting in front of us reminding us that we have a bonus.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I've not played 5e, but I have played Shadow of the Demon Lord. In SotDL, most rolls are d20+stat mod, and all other modifiers are Boons and Banes.

• If you have any boons, you roll that many d6s with your d20 and add the highest to your roll.
• If you have any banes, you roll that many d6s with your d20 and subtract the highest from your roll.
• If you have both, they cancel out 1-for-1 until you have only one kind (or neither).

The thing I found interesting was that it wasn't any faster than just having numerical modifiers. People still took time on their turn counting them up and down on their fingers. In a lot of cases it was actually slower, because e.g. Warriors get a Boon to all attack rolls and instead of that being a static bonus on a weapon entry it was one more thing you had to make sure you accounted for before you rolled.

[Username17]

Variable bonuses aren't a new idea. They aren't even a new idea for Mearls. You had various d4s and d6s and shit to add and subtract from things in Iron Heroes back in the Bush administration. It very definitely isn't faster.

• A fixed bonus you identify getting the bonus, and add the value to your result.
  A variable bonus you identify getting the bonus, get the appropriate physical die, roll the dice, maybe have one of the dice roll off the table and have to get re-rolled, read the dice, and add the value to your result.

Literally all the steps are there, but then there are some extra steps involving interacting with physical objects. It must take at least as long, and pretty much always takes at least marginally more time.

-Username17