What should one dislike about DnD5e mechanics?

[Koumei]

At the bare minimum it should tally all the sources of Advantage and Disadvantage and have them cancel out, one for one, until you have a net Advantage or Disadvantage. The bit where you roll multiple dice and pick the best/worst, eh, whatever. I'm not excited for it, but they could have managed a worse idea. In the hands of people with a better understanding of math, and thus what the Dis/Advantage meant, it could work.

I'm not looking forward to the thing where they release an optional splatbook where you get tasks that are "impossible unless you have Advantage, in which case both rolls have to succeed" (probably first found on rare monsters, maybe as a 1/round defence), and then to make up for that you can get Double Advantage where you roll 3 dice, and then it's a dice pool system with a massive die and variable dice pools with variable target numbers and variable numbers of "successes" needed on the roll to succeed and just kill me now.

[Krusk]

At the bare minimum it should tally all the sources of Advantage and Disadvantage and have them cancel out, one for one, until you have a net Advantage or Disadvantage. The bit where you roll multiple dice and pick the best/worst, eh, whatever. I'm not excited for it, but they could have managed a worse idea. In the hands of people with a better understanding of math, and thus what the Dis/Advantage meant, it could work.

The first few times i read it, thats what i assumed it said. Because its so obviously better. Yes its tedious but at least its successful. The "eyes closed far away without prof at a target behind cover but with assistance so no penalties" thing is terrible.

It basically gives everyone 3.5 imp precise shot where you throw daggers through key holes. But worse and broader.

[nockermensch]

I'm not looking forward to the thing where they release an optional splatbook where you get tasks that are "impossible unless you have Advantage, in which case both rolls have to succeed" (probably first found on rare monsters, maybe as a 1/round defence), and then to make up for that you can get Double Advantage where you roll 3 dice, and then it's a dice pool system with a massive die and variable dice pools with variable target numbers and variable numbers of "successes" needed on the roll to succeed and just kill me now.

[Aryxbez]

Pretty much. K and I wrote up those rules for Backgrounds, and called them "Backgrounds" over eight years ago. You can't steal the Backgrounds from 5e, because you'd have to steal them from me and K first. Like 5e pretty obviously already did.

As Jawesome as your guys work is, I sincerely doubt they ripped off backgrounds from your guys project. I doubt Mearls and the like have actually ever read anything in the [Tome] Series, let alone know/remember its existence. Lastly, I don't buy that you guys are the more original creators of rules for "backgrounds", I'm pretty damn sure that design probably precedes you guys from older RPG's (as fectin kinda pointed out). As knowing them, they probably yoinked it from something else, like Warhammer, as been indicated they ripped from for Orc-Ogres & Orcs =goblins? jazz.


Though Funnily enough, I agree I liked Backgrounds, how they gave character to our random PC ideas where there were none. However, makes me wonder what it says of the game when I'm far more interested in playing a character with just the background, than "also" choosing a class. I guess I figure if it's going "peasant-fantasy" drop the pretense of us having heroic classes?

[erik]

Pretty much. K and I wrote up those rules for Backgrounds, and called them "Backgrounds" over eight years ago. You can't steal the Backgrounds from 5e, because you'd have to steal them from me and K first. Like 5e pretty obviously already did.

As Jawesome as your guys work is, I sincerely doubt they ripped off backgrounds from your guys project. I doubt Mearls and the like have actually ever read anything in the [Tome] Series, let alone know/remember its existence.

I think they are popular enough that if your full-fucking-time job is writing D&D RPGs, how the fuck do you miss them?

It may be that Tomes, K and Frank aren't well thought of everywhere, but I think on most D&D-centric RPG boards a lot of people do have opinions on em. My experience here certainly comes with bias, but I think you have to be pretty deep in the echo-chambers to have missed out on their existence entirely.

[fectin]

I think they are popular enough that if your full-fucking-time job is writing D&D RPGs, how the fuck do you miss them?

It may be that Tomes, K and Frank aren't well thought of everywhere, but I think on most D&D-centric RPG boards a lot of people do have opinions on em. My experience here certainly comes with bias, but I think you have to be pretty deep in the echo-chambers to have missed out on their existence entirely.

I have no difficulty simultaneously believing that those statements are true and that the current design team has never seen them.

[erik]

I suspect they were read by some, if not all, but with bias such that they were essentially dismissed out of hand.

I do doubt they lifted anything directly though. Backgrounds weren't a new idea in RPGs. And there's only so many tiny sweets that you can give out for backgrounds in D&D without creating more bloat or making them too important that there is a kind of natural resting place of giving skill bumps. It's either that or giving out feat cakes.

[PhoneLobster]

Lastly, I don't buy that you guys are the more original creators of rules for "backgrounds", I'm pretty damn sure that design probably precedes you guys from older RPG's (as fectin kinda pointed out).

Fectin missed the most directly relevant example that is from within the WOTC stable, from the direct ancestors of 5E (which for all I know may even share writers) and uses similar options/terminology.

D20Modern Occupations.

Yes. The thing people are saying is possibly the most likeable thing from 5E is something from D20Modern.

When your best stuff is stuff from D20Modern your stuff has problems.

[mean_liar]

Speaking about DnD5e with my gaming group this evening, there's a strong liking of the simplicity: the Adv/Dis system is well-regarded and they actively disliked 3e's compounding of (and more to the point, tracking of) a ton of fiddly bonuses. I know that the Den - and I - tend to appreciate more granularity than 5e provides, there's also a player base that doesn't believe that adds enough to the game to worry about.

Just to pound the pulpit a bit, one thing they weren't really cognizant of was and were nodding slowly about was the sort of hard limits 5e places on character capabilities, and what that looks like with respect to their high-level character's output compared to, say, two dozen militiamen with bows and their small low-level contingent of specialists.

[Insomniac]

They still have poor ways of tracking buff durations and have limited it greatly to 1 or 2 via the Concentration rules, but yeah, I can see how it could be refreshing to only have to keep track of a buff or 2 in 5E as opposed to the plethora of defensive, offensive and contingency buffs on characters in 3.5/Pathfinder.

After a while the game just stacks buffs, debuffs and the like on characters and parties and foes to a fairly dizzying degree.

Also, not worrying about the 4E movement stuff and Conditions in 5E has to be nice to people who felt overwhelmed by it all in 4E. I know I found combat to be a baffling array of nonsense that had us pushing, pulling and sliding friends and foes alike across hex grids as though we were running some demented game of 3 dimensional chess.

My personal preference is for more buffs and debuffs as I was always enamored with tracking modifiers, enjoyed it quite a bit, and love to play guys like Bards and Buff-Clerics but 5E does have something going for it in the less is more sense. Vanilla is the Best Selling Flavor for a Reason and all that.

[souran]

Speaking about DnD5e with my gaming group this evening, there's a strong liking of the simplicity: the Adv/Dis system is well-regarded and they actively disliked 3e's compounding of (and more to the point, tracking of) a ton of fiddly bonuses. I know that the Den - and I - tend to appreciate more granularity than 5e provides, there's also a player base that doesn't believe that adds enough to the game to worry about.

Just to pound the pulpit a bit, one thing they weren't really cognizant of was and were nodding slowly about was the sort of hard limits 5e places on character capabilities, and what that looks like with respect to their high-level character's output compared to, say, two dozen militiamen with bows and their small low-level contingent of specialists.

There are a lot of people that don't mind lowered upper limits especially on D&D because they basically would prefer the game to top out at Final Fantasy and not the Avengers. Weather that is good or not i don't know.

What I do know, is that the "how many archers to solo an X in 1 round" is fundamentally a measure that the vast majority of players simply do not care about. The typical player thinks balors are tough because they are told they are tough. They never get the opportunity to face a balor while playing the commander of 45 archers. They always face balors in an underground dwarven city, on a bridge that is 10 feet wide so that the fighter and cleric face him in melee, the ranger and wizard shoot at him from range and the theif tumbles under him to get into sneak attack position.

The combat engine is built for a small force of PCs to go into a dungeon and fight the denizens there. The further you get from that the faster and more obvious the combat rules collapse.

[Prak]

Nevermind the fact that that scene in the dwarven city totally had plenty of space for the 45 archers to shoot at the Balor from, it just happened to be taken up by archers shooting at the party, right?

[souran]

Nevermind the fact that that scene in the dwarven city totally had plenty of space for the 45 archers to shoot at the Balor from, it just happened to be taken up by archers shooting at the party, right?

Space or not the party didn't hire 45 Archers. Nobody wanted to deal with trying to bring 45 archers into the ruined dwarven city. Ryan just wanted to get the damn game moving. Sarah was too busy picking her spells to give a crap. Eddie hates it when Sarah summons even 1 monster so he would have bitched forever if Ryan had tried to hire 45 NPCs anyway. And Tom the DM is super stoked that tonight he finally gets to play with the Balor and so if the party HAD hired 45 Archers he would have them get lost or killed along the way.

They play the fight, they have fun. It takes them 10 freaking years to figure out that Sarah can end the fight before it begins with stoneshape and if they lure the Balor to the surface they can kill him for less than the cost of a warhorse.

[Prak]

It also takes them 10 freaking years to figure out that Tom is a railroading gygaxian douche.

edit: which is not to say you're wrong. The broader point here is on your side. I'm just sleep deprived and feeling punchy.

[infected slut princess]

Any D&D game where a bunch of losers can kill a balor is automatically the worst D&D game of all time.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Speaking about DnD5e with my gaming group this evening, there's a strong liking of the simplicity: the Adv/Dis system is well-regarded and they actively disliked 3e's compounding of (and more to the point, tracking of) a ton of fiddly bonuses.

They still have poor ways of tracking buff durations and have limited it greatly to 1 or 2 via the Concentration rules, but yeah, I can see how it could be refreshing to only have to keep track of a buff or 2 in 5E as opposed to the plethora of defensive, offensive and contingency buffs on characters in 3.5/Pathfinder.

After a while the game just stacks buffs, debuffs and the like on characters and parties and foes to a fairly dizzying degree.

Ryan just wanted to get the damn game moving. Sarah was too busy picking her spells to give a crap. Eddie hates it when Sarah summons even 1 monster so he would have bitched forever if Ryan had tried to hire 45 NPCs anyway. And Tom the DM is super stoked that tonight he finally gets to play with the Balor and so if the party HAD hired 45 Archers he would have them get lost or killed along the way.

They play the fight, they have fun. It takes them 10 freaking years to figure out that Sarah can end the fight before it begins with stoneshape and if they lure the Balor to the surface they can kill him for less than the cost of a warhorse.

You know, I heard much of the same crap about 4E D&D's combat system back when it first came out, too. It runs faster; there's less stuff to track round-by-round; who cares whether minions are dissociative and don't work, people just want to mow down large hordes of critters; people don't care about the innards of the combat system, people just want to roll dice while the DM screams 'A BALOR ATTACKS!' So on and soforth.

[mean_liar]

Yeah, but 4e actually had a shitload of fiddly stuff to track. The Conditions were pretty out-of-control. 5e actually is easy and simple.

I don't like that, but others do.

Nobody wanted to deal with trying to bring 45 archers into the ruined dwarven city.

That's because they've been playing 3e and 4e and Pathfinder and a bunch of other systems. Real grognards who've played 2e and earlier/similar-era games used to do this shit all the time. I hated it then, I hate it still, but henchmen used to be a big tool that PCs were expected to use because they could be really useful (largely dependent on how the system doles out access to AoE attacks). It seems to me that 5e comes out of players who treat henchmen like a forgotten technology, which is to say that they don't really consider it much at all.

To broaden the point a little, that's a real design problem that low fantasy games need to address: if a badass character can be taken out by, say, five militiamen with spears, then what's stopping the badass from hiring five militiamen? Sometimes the game's answer to that problem succeeds, sometimes they fail. Regardless, hoping no one notices is not a generally good strategy.

[OgreBattle]

To broaden the point a little, that's a real design problem that low fantasy games need to address: if a badass character can be taken out by, say, five militiamen with spears, then what's stopping the badass from hiring five militiamen? Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. Hoping no one notices is not a generally good strategy.

This actually sounds like a neat way to run a Warhammer Fantasy-scale RPG where your hero eventually gets his own retinue, then another squad of men lead by your trusted man-at-arms, then you wind up as a 1000pt army unto yourself.

[Prak]

That's actually a really cool idea. I'd be interested in seeing an actual write-up of that system.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yeah, but 4e actually had a shitload of fiddly stuff to track. The Conditions were pretty out-of-control. 5e actually is easy and simple.

What? 5E D&D's condition section is not only larger than 4E D&D's but it has a lot of conditions (like slowed) that aren't even in the condition section. 5E D&D out of the box has a lot more fiddly stuff to track; look at the spells and class features and shit. A 10th level 5E D&D Paladin has literally twice the amount of shit to track in their own class than a 15th level 4E D&D Paladin. Anyone who says that 5E D&D is simpler to run and play than 4E D&D is high on crack. The only argument that even has a chance of standing up is that it hits a sweet spot of complexity and simplicity that's between 3E and 4E D&D.

I don't find this convincing either; if you come up with a list of peoples' top three complaints for 3E D&D (open multiclassing is busted, saves and defenses go pear shaped, and linear warriors/quadratic wizards) and 4E D&D (dissociated mechanics, levels that didn't do anything, DM adjucation needed to do anything cool), 5E D&D doesn't do anything better than both editions. Which is what it needs to do to escape the IP death spiral short of having its own unique strengths. Or getting bailed out by some promotional media black swan.

[mean_liar]

I don't have a lot of experience with either. I do know that seeing Penny Arcade playing 4e with sticker tags on the minis to track their conditions was surprising, and assumed that 5e had less. How common are the status conditions in play? Like, how many classes/monsters are handing them out? My impression - 2nd hand - was that 4e classes/monsters handed them out like candy.