Speaking for my group, we played our campaign, started since 1E, and then built mainly through 2E, we did play it through 3E, 3.5, and 5E. We didn't hate 5E; we tried to adapt our higher level characters to 5E rules, but we quickly realized, well, after about six or seven months of playing, that our campaign was designed to be played with 2E rules, modified. So, we went back, and we haven't looked back since. By the way, ask me about how well converting a high level nymph mage over to 3rd, and then to 5th, and let me tell you, it was like she was depowered, if that could be believed. One of the things I think that bothered us about 5E the most was that, in prior editions, we never cared about game balance. Our games are notoriously deadly, and we like things like Level-Drain for certain Undead. My nymph mage is so high level in 2E that she never has to journey anywhere with the party; she has two crystal balls, each with clairaudience, and the spells for things like Teleport and Teleport Without Error are so potent that the party could literally be on the other side of the world, and she could not only know where they are at any given time, but could teleport there to deal with issues that the party might have trouble with, and be back to her tower in time to continue binge watching Gilmore Girls while sipping wine. On top of that, if we had a Paladin in our group (by the way, we roll 3d6 and take the stats in order as they come), he's the only one in our game setting, and we gave him some minor extra abilities due to the nature of the campaign. For instance, he could prevent a character that was killed by some sort of Undead attack from rising back as an Undead, thanks to additional rules we gave for Bless (being a Priest is a very potent and important thing in our campaign). If your character dies, and cannot be raised to life, whether through Raise Dead (within one hour of dying), Resurrection, or Reincarnation (how my mage became a nymph), or a Wish spell, and you have to make a new one, that character starts at first level, even if the rest of the party is at higher levels. If we ever encountered anything beyond our abilities in game, well, that was tough. Retreat and running were always an option if it could be done. 5E seemed so preoccupied with game balance, to the point where it felt as if the game is tailor designed to have encounters that the party could overcome through their abilities. Not in our campaign. Though the DM might be inclined to want to wipe us out, at the same time we're more interested in what seems more logical for an encounter and the context of it. If we were to make a ruckus in a dungeon or something, enough to wake the other denizens of the dungeon to our presence, we could have a lot more enemies to contend with. It's why I can be rather sparing with the Fireball spells, because they make a loud boom when they explode, and that could bring the entire lot of baddies on us. Oh, yes, we also use Material Components, and I've played with plenty of groups who eschewed it in favor of expediency, which is fine, but we opted for this because magic in 2E is very potent. As I said, we didn't hate 5E. One thing I noted about 5E is, as you said, after a certain level, you felt more like a superhero rather than a character in a high fantasy setting. There was a point where it felt like most monsters arrayed at us were not a worry, and that was around 7th or 8th level. We have younger players in our group more used to playing either 3E, 4th, or 5E, and they like our setting and the game rules as we've been developing over the nearly forty years of playing. It takes some adjustment, of course, and we did adopt certain things from 3rd such as being able to trade in prayers for healing prayers for priest/paladins, and a few other things, but by and large most of the rules we use are more or less the same for 2E in general. I note that, while we think 2E is the best edition, we don't hate 3E or 5E, and I figure if we built our campaign on those latter editions, it would be a different setting to some degree. Invariably, sometimes we play 5E today, just not with our campaign setting.
One thing that I have done in my group is to bring back Damage Reduction from armor. One half the total AC modifier from armor + shield, rounded up, is Damage Reduction. So leather with +1 AC gives 1 DR. Plate + Shield gives +10 AC, or 5 DR. Damage reduction is reduces from each attack. This makes tanking actually possible and does not favor the fast characters when the armor should do its job.
I take a slightly different approach (for 3.5/Pathfinder). AC = Dex + Shield + 1/2 BAB. Armor does Damage Reduction, however, it gets lower the more the wearer is flanked and surrounded.
I agree with most of this, but I do feel obligated to say that the 2014 do actually have a sliding table for social interaction responses. Unfortunately they're hidden in the DMG behind the rules for Exploration nobody, absolutely nobody playing 5e uses (like Travel Pace and Visibility Outdoors) and just ahead of the rules on Object damage and Chases. The social interaction rules aren't great - there isn't a real benefit to rolling a a 15 over a 13, for example. But there's a difference between rolling a 0, a 10, and a 20, and it depends on how much the NPC likes you, and explains you can shift how much NPCs like the PCs up or down one. But this section has been absolutely overlooked by so many people that it really seems like it's missing.
And it is quite undercooked. The table on page 245 is something, but not much. The text on the same page also seems to assume each monster or NPC comes with well defined ideals, bonds and flaws, but that seems to have not survived into 5e proper. 5e felt undercooked and rushed, and 5.5e feels the same.
Honestly, I think this is just a problem with people. There are tons of ways you can fix a lot of the problems with fifth edition. It just requires a lot of thought. They also have a ton of optional rules that I don’t hear people using in order to make death more possible. For example you could make long rests a week instead of just one day. I think the culture though doesn’t really encourage doing things like that because that just doesn’t seem very fun.
In light of all the recent layoffs (including the lead designer) Jeremy Crawford’s writing of vague rules for D&D 5.24 guarantees him job security via the Sage Advice column.
I designed an OSR-esque system with combo-classing just the 4 basic classes to make the other classes. Paladins are Fighter/Clerics and always have been, and Druids are just a variant cleric with wild shape instead of Turn Undead. Barbarians I thought were just Fighters with low armor and greataxes, but I eventually thought better on it and made a Barb class that DOESN'T have a rage clutch mechanic. My Barbarian doesn't get armor OR unarmed defense, but keeps the d12 HD. The barbarian deals more damage as he takes damage, so he WANTS to get hit and will mock the heavy armored fighters and paladins for their cowardice. (Here's a history lesson: the historical berserkers CUT themselves in full view of the enemy before the fight just to get inside their heads faster and prove that they were too CRAAAZZYY to fear pain) This quick loss of his own hit points changes when a barbarian kills a bloodied foe and spatters blood all over him, which grants stackable Damage Reduction per kill with his "Bloodsoaked" ability, making sending an army of mooks to try and "slow down" the barb the WORST thing you could possibly do if you dont' have a route of escape, because if the blood is still wet, will protect the barb until it dries. The barbarian becomes less of a big stupid cuddly teddybear with an anger management problem, and more of an R-rated cold, resolute, psychological warfare-wielding engine of grimdark mass murder that is the nightmare of weak villains who sit comfortably on their cushy thrones hiding behind armies of minions and cheating surprise attacks to "soften up" their enemies beforehand.
I'm coming at this from a 1e perspective. I fell into this trap long ago, and wrote something similar to what you wrote. The problem is that it waters down important archetypes and class roles. For example: A Druid's wilderness-related abilities could be shared with a Ranger, right? Except the Druid spell list is supposed to be a mix of Clerical support and Wizard damage-dealing but in the specific niche of battlefield control. Throw in that non-Druids should have only the tiniest smattering of Animal / Plant / Weather magic and the class is really doing something special. It's also another odd duck in equipment picks because it's non-metal armor only and a weird selection of weapons that's different from Cleric. Since non-metal armor is generally going to be Leather with poor AC but good mobility, or Hide with horrible mobility and sort of okay AC, Druids become another class interested in picking the magic Leather Armor the party finds in loot. It's also an important Neutral alignment requirement, and if nothing else alignment requirements are there to prevent a party from loading up on all the strongest classes at the same time. How to build a Ranger in this scheme? Well you'd obviously make them a Fighter / Wilderness class. But that ignores the Ranger's spell use later (in 1e that's some Druidic magic and some Wizard magic), species enemy, animal companion, stealth, spying, and in Drizzt-influenced 2e onward their TWF, and later powerful animal and monster followers. They also have loot limits to what they can physically carry (Rangers don't want a lot of baggage holding them down to an area). That's a lot to add on with feats or whatever, and most players won't make exactly all those picks. Meaning the archetype is totally busted if you don't just have a specific Ranger class. Rangers as Good-only is an important distinction too. Paladins as LG, not just LG but super-LG, is vital to their essence. You simply don't have NG Paladins, that's bogus bullshit. Other alignments have their own special heroes. Paladins have a special mount, aura of protection, lay on hands, cure / immunity to disease, an interaction with Holy Avengers, and strong limitations on wealth, magic item loadout, hirelings and henchmen, and only limited Cleric spellcasting at high level, etc. The Paladin never has, nor ever will be, just a damn CLR/FTR. Illusionists in 1e are strikingly different from Magic-Users, and it's not possible to have the distinction in a game where 2e / 3e style specialist Wizards are a thing but a straight Wizard has access to all spells. Illusionist spells are weird, last a long time, break the game in odd ways, etc. but they are also highly limited compared to an M-U's spell list. 2e onward broken Illusionists, much to the game's detriment. This goes really deep. An Elf FTR/M-U in 1e is its own archetype because of the casting-in-armor thing. Not everybody gets that. And generally that elf has to choose whether to wear nonmetal armor for her strong stealth ability or metal armor for combat ability. Half-Elves as the ultimate multiclassers because they have options open to them that nobody else does, but having few other racial benefits. Half-Orcs being the only CLR/ASS is interesting and attractive. This bled into What Latter D&D Lost but my point is that the effort to standardize has costs. If the game had dozens of classes then I could see trying to narrow that down because people struggle with more than 7 +/- 2 choices at once. But it's never been that difficult. And getting down to 4 classes is a bummer. It's a heartbreaker desperately in search of a mission. I thought, when I wrote it, that I would create more archetypal classes, and then when you mix them you'd not only be able to re-create all the interesting subclasses but also create a bunch of really cool new combos that are effective and fun. Not how it worked out. Instead, I went on a new path deconstructing all class abilities into feats, then just having classless D&D where everyone takes 3 feat picks per level. That was fun and enjoyed all around. But I found there again were lost game elements: because of the variability in character power based on pick efficiency, you couldn't tell how strong a 7th level PC was AT ALL. Which made adventure creation a little more challenging. There were also NO archetypes any longer, besides people who focused on fighting or on casting. It really does help to be able to write "HUM F RNG-6" and have an excellent sense of that character already.
People keep saying that, but its interesting to me that everyone is all like "AI DMs, AI DMs" but nobody is forewarning of "AI procedural video games! AI procedural video games!" ...because that's what it is.
Having played all editions except for OD&D I agree with all of your points. This is why I'm very disappointed with the 2024 5E revision because it doesn't fix these issues but instead are just band-aid solutions (that you have to pay in the form of new core rulebooks instead of erratas).
The proficiency system was introduced in 2nd Edition, as optional rules. In 5e, entire campaigns hinge on it as a core mechanic-- so much so, that players instinctively roll perception when they enter a room, before they hear the description. Worse, 5e DMs will always _insist_ on such a roll, no matter how obvious finding that trap door should be, if a character just lifts up the enormous rug in the center of the room. Any task has a 5% chance of failure, no matter how easy, and the gnome bard with an 8 strength can bend solid steel, if he just rolls a natural 20. Yes, this isn't quite how it's meant to be done, RaW, but _it's literally how everyone plays!_ It's even how every single mechanic works in Baldur's Gate 3.
While not a fan of 5e, my solution in 3.5e and similar is to explicitly keep a notecard of players perception scores, hidden-roll them in advance if I need to, then set the scene. Any "I roll to spot-" is met with "you already have-" Alternatively, take a page from heroquest, make perception an action in combat tied to your rogue/thief equivalent, and have it reveal all traps in the current battle zone. This is the "if you want pure crunch" approach.
@@Ultrox007 - Wrong. WRONG! You describe the environment thoroughly, _then_ they investigate. Period. No rolls necessary. The only rolls that should be made, are for hidden doors, traps, etc... that are _not_ crucial to the plot (see: _The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun)._ This way, you don't have to come up with something, when every single character fails their perception check (which happens frequently), _or_ make the party dependent on that _one_ character who's hyper-specialized, with a 20+ passive perception score. You're doing the Baldur's Gate 3 method, where they _know_ they must have missed a roll. You'll soon have every character casually walk by that same spot, wasting everyone's time, until one of them finally gets lucky, and finds that minor magic item, that none of them want.
All true, but for me and the kinds of stories I like to tell (heists, horror, and action comedies) those are all features and no bugs. I'm not there to play a war game with custom minis. I'm there to live out a narrative my friends and I are making up on the spot. So the idea that one bluff or diplomacy skill roll can bypass an entire combat or a bad perception roll can cause master assasins to literally trip face-first into an ambush is a good thing from my point of view. No matter how elite the team, mistakes and bad luck still happen. Death in combat isn't the only failure state worthy of the word "consequences".
@@Grizabeebles - Then each NPC should be fleshed out enough, so that the PCs can discern a diplomacy method, without endless rolling. For an excellent example, see Warhammer Fantasy's _Power Behind the Throne._ I'm not saying by any means that players need to give some Oscar-worthy performance, but few things frustrate me more, than when the introvert of the group decides to play an uber-charismatic bard: - DM: The evil lord's soldiers approach. They look hostile. - Bard: I try to convince them we're friendly. - DM: How? - Bard: I guess... tell the main guy... the thing... - DM: [sigh... ] Roll persuasion. - Bard: [ 36 ] - Party: (all together) Yay. 🥱 Rulings, nor rules, dude! Don't get me wrong, rolls have their place, but if you're letting them determine every outcome, you may as well roll up 4 or 5 characters, and play by yourself.
@@Grizabeebles - Or, conversely... Player 1: We want to approach the orc camp, under a flag of truce. Player 2: Yeah. We deliver the bandit king's head to the orc chief, so he doesn't attack the village. DM: Ok, roll persuasion. Player 1: What? But... we're giving him exactly what he wants. DM: Roll persuasion. Player 1: [ 6 ] Player 2: [ 8 ] DM: The orc chief didn't buy it. Everybody roll initiative! _Three very bloody hours later..._ Player 1: Ugh! Thank God _that's_ over. DM: I swear, you guys are such murder-hobos!
There was a reason that it used to be multi class had to be within 1 level of the other class or lose 20% of your XP! 3.5 Faerun guide used to have bonuses you could choose based on what country you came from! AD&D had some great high level modules that messed with spells, magic items and abilities!
When I ran 3.5, players were allowed only to use two basic classes for multiclassing and only one prestige class to get into. It worked to keep twinks/munchkins (Not pervy terms) from abusing the system.
3.5 also had a full Unearthed arcana as well as BoS, though yeah Bo9S was a much more direct attempt to deal with issues of balance rather than a bunch of neat little things.
Racial Abilities/modifiers are a great thing that is a shame NOT to be there. It promotes playing different races having them. Pathfinder 2e's soluton of having it so you can pick between which bonuses work with it being unique for each race i think is a decent solution. DND could have it so instead of 2 ability bonuses and 1 negative, have it so you can pick between multiples so +2 Str OR +2 Dex for first, +2 Int or +2 Cha for the second, then the penalty could either be -2 Con or -2 Int. GIves reasons to pick different races while allowing them to be a bit more versitile WHILE also having their own racial traits. Heck it could even be extra simplified where you have options for bonuses and penalties to take (So +2 Str, +2 Int , -2 Wis vs +2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Con)
As you said at the beginning, no one RPG is perfect, and for one who is not one to focus on the negative you gave it a good go. That being said, tucked in amongst everything you found wrong there were good fixes that I agree with some of which I have already implemented in my games. I don’t allow multiclassing, I don’t allow races to come with spells, I don’t pay attention to CR, I insist on encumbrance and ammo tracking, intelligence determines how many languages you can know. (Negative modifier means your PC cannot read or write), I impose exhaustion penalties on any PC that is dropped to 0 and character level is capped at 12. These are just a few of my hose rules I use to fix the problems I subjectively feel need fixing.
They tried to simplify things too much, so it ended up shallow. Then they tried to add more options, but their toolbox was too shallow to expand meaningfully.
I hear people talking about how intelligence isn’t very useful, but whenever I want my players to learn about a magical effect, remember a piece of history, or investigate a trap I have them rolling a lot of intelligence saves. Is that just something that I’m doing?
You are entirely doing it right, 5E just shifted multiple skills away from Intelligence and removed one of its most significant traits: in older editions you were able to be trained in more skills, or got more skill points, if you had higher INT, and certain feats were locked behind an (admittedly small) INT paywall. Add in the fact that the core math is designed more around everyone having relatively similar numbers, and people can get by just by being trained in a skill and rolling high.
3.5E is only playable when you have the computer doing calculations for you Luckily we have a thing just for that, it's called running your campaigns through Neverwinter Nights private servers.
If you want a wishlist from me, go back to D&D3.5. I am a powergamer and I like to play in all the dungeons, accept quests, and follow them to completion because they grant rewards. D&D5e doesnt really have that. A lot of people moved away from Experience Points to Milestone Leveling. The levels of magic items in D&D5e are fewer meaning upgrading them is rarer. The number of effective abilities tends to be rare. Spells in particular can be very weak because enemies get new Saving Throws every turn, you can only Concentrate on one spell per turn, and nothing properly scales upwards as you level up. I want roleplaying games to encourage players to level up their characters. That generally means more character potential is needed. Higher statistic maximums, more slots for higher grade equipment. If D&D could take anything from another game, it would be the Skill Point system from Fallout. I want to be able to focus on skills I can use, and can reach a point where its practically impossible to fail, like 99% skill in Weapons. The Thief class in earlier editions of D&D used a d100 skill system, but the difference was you couldnt put points into skills you wanted. Thief skills were automatically upgraded according to their class skill chart..
@@samflood5631 are you asking me? I've never played it myself. I've looked at rules for it though. Its rules are a lot like Pathfinder 2nd edition. Funny because Pathfinder 1st edition was made because people didn't like D&D4e. 4th edition d&D seems much more like a Wargame. Non-combat skill usage was reduced. Its rules actually changes quite a bit. Every character is an Ability User with skills divided between At-will, Encounter, Daily, and Utility based around their cool down periods. Every character has a new feat/ability practically every level. I could like it, but it heavily reduced magic to mostly fixed stats. People say bad things about it but everything D&D related after it got altered to be like that. Unlimited Level 0 spells in Pathfinder and D&D5e are just the At-Will powers.
As someone who does also come froma background in 2nd and 3rd edition it's absurd to me that in 5e bad things are just not allowed to happen to PC. As a DM I feel like I'm getting shat on all the time, not by players but by the rules. I'm done with 5e after the nrlew books come out and shifting going all in on pathfinder and other systems
What i experienced and even played with , 5e is perfect for one-shots but horrible when soneone makes a campaign . There is no goals in going to adventures with your character when you always get new abilities automatically and abilities are much more important than magic items or good equipment at all . But what really limits the DM is that puzzles , social encounters and exploration can be easily avoided vy spells , abilities or skills without reading the room , making daring actions , using tactics or explore a different route . What really breaks 5e too is its Charakter creation at the beginning. Why should you have low attribute scores when there isnt any cool ideas to gives sonething for that ? Thats why people either take point-buy, standard-array or milestone leveling instead leveling the characters from the beginning. Better start at a higher level which you get great stuff from the get-go and thats it. This underlines the point that it is perfect for one-shots but horrible as a campaign rule-system.
Yup, this. I'll add one more gripe to the pile: 5e fundamentally misunderstood the purpose and implementation of a generic system. They tried to lower the bar and make a system that works across multiple worlds, fair enough. But you need to add in sockets with clear labels that say "Put world-specific detail here. Allow us to demonstrate." Instead you get basic books that contain snippets of multiple distinct worlds squeezed together with little context to end up with a world-agnostic slurry that we refer to as the RealmsOfForgottenGreyLance. Although... I've been astonished by how well 5e suits space opera. We've had great fun with the Star Wars and Mass Effect adaptations. I guess it's what you make it. But for fantasy, we're drilling down into PF2E.
So one of the biggest changes I made when I ran a 5th edition game was to strip the extra attacks and just add extra dice to your one attack as a martial character. I also made magical weapons add dice as well. So a high level fighter could do some massive damage in their swing. Did this fix everything? No but it was a good start. It speeds up combat a bit and makes martial classes closer to the high dpr single target battlemage would have without giving them magic casting.
It predates race in its modern use as well, for which our earliest confirmed use was in a 1670s American colony law code. It is far more accurate, too; race describes breeds within a species, not organisms of distinct species.
Currently I'm running a 5E conversion of the 3.5E Dungeon Magazine adventure path, Savage Tide, and I'm seeing the limits of the bounded accuracy already. In 3.5E it wasn't uncommon to see DC 30+ for skill checks but in 5E the DC is capped at 30, which isn't that hard to beat for level 10 rogues with Expertise, advantage, Guidance, and other buffs. It seemed like WotC want the players to always succeed with little to no chance of failure (see the removal of racial detriments like negative ability scores to counter positive ability bonuses). This makes it harder for DMs to have challenges when the PCs almost always succeed. This is made worse that high CR monsters are grossly underpowered if we use the suggested hp and damage output as laid out in the DMG.
Yes, they literally said it's expected that attack rolls will succeed but monsters and PCs are big sacks of HP. More hits happen but more are needed to achieve an objective. Same thing with death saves, multiple saves instead of a single save-or-petrified, really low monster save DCs for special abilities. In general I would argue that 5e is built with the expectation of PC triumph, to the extent that you'd have to play REALLY poorly to have a chance at failure. Loss rarely occurs, such as equipment damage or how familiars and paladin mounts are pokemon.
@@googiegress Having played all editions except for OD&D I find 5E "easy mode" and yet I've had players panic when their PCs are doing death saves (I've yet to have a PC die in the 2.5 years of my current 5E campaign)
@@crankysmurf It's the same as kids terrifying themselves in a dark room in front of a mirror. If you obfuscate the probabilities enough, any game element seems scary. What they're missing with death saves is how easy it is for someone to huck a Healing Word their way, and how unlikely it is for the DM to do what players would do and focus fire on the downed PC to give them 3 chips.
The one thing I disagree with it giving more powers to physical classes. Rage Powers to Barbarians, random bonuses to Monks, Special fighting styles to Fighters, etc. Player Characters in D&D arent really supposed to be inherently superpowered. Theyre just normal people that went adventuring to find equipment and items. I think it was better in earlier D&D when most warrior-types were just good with equipment and it was the equipment they could use that gave them powers. If someone found a Helm of Invisibility or Shield of Ray Reflection, that was how they got abilities. You werent Heracles with super-strength. You were any of the heroes from old-tales that beat monsters through trickery. Dual/Multiclassing in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was how those kinds of characters personally gained new powers, but becoming spellcasters. Spells were how anyone in Dungeons and Dragons gained powers. Making every class unique changes the idea of characters in the universe of D&D. I know Mystara and the BECMI rules allowed *anyone* to reach level 36 and eventually become an Immortal. To me Levels should more be able what kind of magic you have otherwise warriors should casually become warrior-gods just by killing and leveling. To me hardcore players should be roleplaying the cunning characters, with or without magic. I personally want spellcasters because I am a more mid-lane player. Challenge is nice, but only so long as youre actually succeeding. Using Illusion spells is easier than fashioning a disguise, and explaining to the GM how your characters knows how to make disguises. Nearly everything for me comes down to "Learn magic". Want special melee attacks? Learn a spell for that like Flame Blade I know this is a relatively easy route, but thats kind of the point. Player's dont really need to create an elaborate backstory to explain you found a scroll to learn a spell and so thats how you gained an ability. Growing up and having more spell options means you character got more versatile. Gaining more spell slots means you got more stamina.
I don't mind that wizards get fewer spells at high levels. They tried to scale back the high level abilities to make higher levels less bonkers overpowered. They mostly failed, though. For one, high level spells are still bonkers, regardless of the fact that you don't get as many anymore. And for another, it just encourages martial characters to multiclass because levels 9-15 of any martial class is way less impactful than adding 1-6 of some new class. I really think they never expected people to multiclass as much as they do. They designed all the classes from a single class point of view. I forgot about 3.x limiting multiclass to roughly equal... They really should have done that for 5e as well. I don't mind the bounded accuracy. I like that a bunch of low level creatures can actually be a threat to higher level characters out of sheer numbers. The big miss here, though, is hitpoints. They scale linearly, which means mid and high level characters have just massive amounts of hitpoints which leads to very unbelievable gameplay. The level 8 barbarian can just jump off a cliff knowing it can't possibly kill him from falling damage. I definitely agree about 5e needing a lot more restrictions on everything. Wizards shouldnt be able to cast in armor unless their subclass specifically says they can (like blade singer). And it's a great point about not being able to pick up more skills and that saves you don't have proficiency in never get better at all. They should have had some kind of default scaling, otherwise we're back at the 3.x thing where the person good at a save will basically auto pass and the person bad at it will auto fail. And that's not fun.
The lack of scaling and autopass/autofail has been an issue with the math of all editions. I remember the Swimming Non Weapon Proficiency. You were either an olympic athlete or a brick. My biggest problem with 5e is the lack of anything interesting for the higher level martials. They need some cool abilities at higher levels, not just +1 of what they already have.
Note that 1e AD&D fixed the HP bloat by fixing per-level HP gains after about 10th to 1 for Wizard-types, 2 for Rogue and Cleric types, and 3 for Fighter types - and nobody gains CON bonuses to HP for those levels. So a Cleric level 12 with a +2 from CON would have 10d8 + 20 for the first 10 levels, and 4 HP for 11th and 12th. 3e changed that. Among other things. Like removing a handful of very impactful restrictions that used to tamp down Wizard supremacy, and adding a ton of powerful Cleric spells which increased Cleric supremacy. They really screwed up in ways that are painfully obvious only in retrospect.
5:42 People complain about "Everyone gets Darkvision in 5E" but I checked every race that got Darkvision in 5E had it in previous editions, this is a generational problem that people only now noticed for some reason (probably the removal of stat bonuses, making other features stand out more) 19:20 Kobold Press did a great job fixing the Ranger for their Not5E Tales of the Valiant. Sure, Hunters Mark is part of it, but they improved the survival aspects and also fixed the Animal Companion subclass
Only if you ignore that prior editions had a very important distinction between Low Light Vision and Infravision. An AD&D2e High Elf in a lightless cavern was screwed, the Mountain Dwarf was just fine… Unless he had to read a book.
1:45 If we look to 4e for books that fit this criteria, I suggest that no better one exists then the twin pair of books known as Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms and Heroes of the Fallen Lands, they basically tried to 3e-ify 4e, and failed, the Essentials Classes (as they are known by in 4e space) were poorly balanced alongside their AEDU contemporaries and many (read: all) of the martials got gutted to being "Baby's First Character" who's gameplan was basically to spam Basic Attacks until something died, many others that escaped that had different problems Of course this isn't mentioning Essentials other sins, like its heavy promotion in Organized Play and how certain books that were promised were never delivered in favor of more Essentials slop
I was happy with how quick character creation could be and yet still gave some fun ways to add character depth in the form of backgrounds. But I am not a fan of how boring Advantage/Disadvantage is and how unflexable it is and they didn't really do much with the backgrounds beyond the core book, which left many characters feeling the same.
I've hated 5e from a mechanical perspective since it was still calling itself "D&D Next" (2013) so the fact you only came up with 12 points disappoints me. Edit: Correction, you come off a bit more like a greybeard than an apologist, my apologies. ...My personal stance still stands, I've always had a mind for statistics and I don't have flow charts big enough to explain how much I hate the Dis/Advantage system.
@@BDSquirrel Same to a lesser extent, I'm fine with heavily story driven games, I'm fine with player safe settings, I'm fine with comically lethal settings. What I don't like (and is more common in video games than tabletop) is "The Haunted House Effect" as I call it. Where it scares you into believing there's dangers, threats, etc. But if you catch a glance behind the curtain you'll forever know it's all just a show and you can do whatever you want without consequence. 5e threatens you with death and death saves, but they're so stacked against you actually dying that death is practically a non-issue. 13th Age (a D&D spinoff) is equally as less-lethal, but it wears that saturday morning cartoon bit on its sleeve by being unafraid to beat you down and let you live with the consequences of your failure (instead of sneakily stacking the game so heavily in your favor that you can't lose unless you go out of your way to try to.) I'll avoid a video game ramble, but first that come to mind when I think of this are ELEX, Deus Ex Human Revolution, and Darkest Dungeon. Fake threats, lying dialogue, and fake setbacks for each.
Ive been playing 5e for as long as its been out. Sadly i have only been in 2 campaigns that went above level 5....so i dont feel powerful ever really. I understand 5e characters are more powerful than other editions. However it does really sting when I hear one of my GMs recall a time when his wizard cut a castle out of mountain or when I watch your videos on owning a settlement after a career of adventuring, I can't help but be a little jealous and feel powerless. Only recently my spellcasters in the various campaigns I'm in can finally banish otherworldly entities.....which has never worked because the monster always beats my spell save. Yeah.....I'm a little bristled when people say 5e players get to have a power fantasy. While I get it in a vacuum. That's just not my experience at all.
If I had to make a list it would look something like this: 1.) It used anything, anything at all from 4E. 2.) The Saving Throws rules are just stupid. 3.) I did already mention 4E, but this is one of many that bears special spotlight, they made it damn hard to die. 4.) They let Dex be far, far too good. 5.) Back in the day, one of the few things D&D had going for it was that it was incredibly educational. Not in art or storytelling, but in real things like math or critical thinking. 5E, and 4E ignored all of this and did advantage and disadvantage. Worst concept ever. 6.) It played like a card game, exactly like 4E. 7.) It had absolutely no concept of economy. Buying a +2 item, armor or weapon should not be cheaper,. . . or easier then getting normal Full Plate. That is fucking retarded. 8.) This one is absolutely worth repeating, it is almost impossible to have a character die. Far, far too much healing, safe spaces, easy 9.) Failure is nearly impossible. 4E had a huge problem in tjat as long az you had a Bard, Rogue, or Dex-based character, no one else really mattered in Skill Checks. I don't recall the exact name for the entire party style challenge,. . . that really only involved Bards and Rogues. 10.) The more I read, play, listen, and watch, the more I see how shitty divorcing GP for XP, the lack of Prestge Classes, free healing, easy mode, or just setting the bar so damn low.
@@BDSquirrel Good shit. But Old WoD was my first love for chuckin' dice, so nothing really beats that for me. Dark Ages Malkavian is so fun to play. Pulling strings and turning nobility against one another for glorious bloodshed. And how Malkav sings along to the cacophany! Ah, how glorious indeed!
I've tried building different characters in 5e and the system basically screams "NO!" at me until I just give up and play a fantasy themed superhero. A Cleric who's goal was to finance a monastery. That got ignored because there's not real rules for building a "strong hold" (at least at the time. A Paladin who lead a Lance (a unit of 4 fighting men) and was supposed to be modeled after the ideal, historical knight. Nope, no rules for henchmen and hirelings. So, he was just a smite bot waiting to fight one foe. A Monk who was way to isolated because he lived in the Monastery too long. No, just a punch bot. A Plague Doctor who basically was modeled after professional conflict zone aid workers. Nope, just a wizard who makes shitty potions by using spell slot. No real goals. No real character progression. No real reason to play 5e at all. Many other games would allow characters like this for there settings. Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, even OSR games like Lamentations of the Flame Princess can do it better.
1st can be fixed by city and wild 2nd there are sidekicks and you can hire humanoid statblocks with some dm help 3rd doesn't make any sense shaolin monk do punchy thingy or else they no shaolin monk but flavor is free and there is a jojo subclass and a elemental one and the later may be a tad weak but it's a easy fix. plague doctor look up kingsmill materia medica yw and I hope u enjoy everything
@@HI-kb2cg Should I really have to run out and get a very specific book to do what many - if not most - RPGs can do right out of the box? Also GM help is modding the rules in some way. Sure that's possible but I can also use the old Marvel Superheros FACERIP system for dungeon delving in a fantasy setting. That's doing a LOT of modding to do what, again, can be done by other games right of out of the box. As for getting another book for the Plague Doctor we're using Grimhollow. That has a Plague Doctor in it which should offer something different. What you've tossed my way looks interesting but it also seems to be third party. Why does someone have to fix this - and probably for free - while Hasbro gets all the money? It all boils down to 5e needs to be fixed by somebody else in order to build something other than a fantasy themed superhero. That's not good enough and doubly so when you consider how much the game costs in the first place.
B.asic E.xpert C.hampion M.aster I.mmortal In the early 1980s, each of those was a box set and each one added additional information, rules and levels to D&D. This was not AD&D. Which was a confusing thing for many a young player or aspiring young player like myself.
This doesn't fix everything, but here's some ways I've found that assuages most of the issues we've found with 5: 1. Grim reality is in effect. 8 hour short rests, 7 day long rests. Barbs now recover rage on short rests, and you can make use of non-violent downtime activities during your long rests. Probably goes without saying, but long rests are only available in areas of safety. You'd be amazed how much this narrows the gap between martials and casters in and of itself. 2. Failed death saves linger until you get medical attention or a long rest. No, healing magic does not count as medical attention. 3. Every race and class from tasha's cauldron of everything and beyond is blanket banned. Design noticeably shifted with the release of this book, at least for me. Specifically, I could tell WotC just kind of gave up. There is some good things from the book I allow, but it's still a case of "banned until stated otherwise". 4. Martial characters gain a pool of d6 superiorty dice equal to their proficiency bonus, and 2+intmod battlemaster maneuvers. Half-casters (rangers and paladins) gain half of both. More can be learned with martial manuals or teachers in a similar manner to wizards scribing scrolls, albeit at double the listed cost. If a fighter takes the battle-master subclass, their d6s become d8s. 5. Martials gain cleave at level 5 and greater cleave at level 10. Half casters gain them at levels 10 and 20 respectively. Because martials deserve some kind of AoE given the shit casters can do at this point. 6. Casters no longer gain spells through level up (except sorcs). They instead learn new spells through delving their class's respective lore types, finding scrolls of primal, Divine, arcane, or occult magics, or by learning from a teacher. The cost for this is twice what it would take a wizard to scribe a new spell into their spellbook. The only one unaffected by the price increase is wizard. 7. Spellcasting focuses are common magic items, you may not start with them. Component pouches only. I also have a list of general costs for components based on spell level. Related topic: Goodberry consumes the mistletoe material. 8. More personal taste really, but I ban custom lineage(I know it's from tasha's, but this is more a case of 'you will never convince me, don't ask' specification) and variant human. However, every sentient creature gets a free feat at level 1. This allows for some customization and some self-expression of the character. However, those keen-eyed among you may notice that I didn't specify players. That's because I rebalance creatures quite a bit to make them more dynamic and less HP sponge-y. 9. Spears have the reach property instead of the thrown property. Related: Polearm master is limited to any *polearm* rather than what is listed. 10. Unarmed and natural weapons have their damage die increase one category to a max of 1d12. Monks benefit from this as well, so now they can get up to d12s. They also get wismod+level ki points instead of just level. It makes a few of their subclasses less ass and helps smooth out the transition. 11. Ammo tracking and carrying capacities will be enforced. I know they're tedious, but they're one of the only balancing factors of ranged fighting and strength vs dex. I personally use a slot-based carry-weight system rather than the default rules. It makes it far less tedious, but sadly there is no full removal of tedium. If you really don't want to track it, get mules. They're like 10gp. 12. Firearms are allowed. You seriously look at the stats of those, look at the cantrip firebolt, and tell me paying 250gp for a *worse* firebolt that consumes ammo you *cannot* recover is broken. Granted, only rennaissance firearms are available for purchase. If you want something more advanced, take tinkering tool proficiency and be prepared for a multi-stage plan for making your revolver. 13. No multiclassing in character creation, and if you want to multi-class, you have to guide your character onto the path of the class you want to invest into. I've got a lot of other small rules like how I tweak specific spells, most of which are just a case of "That is dumb, it should not be concentration, it is no longer concentration", and vastly expanding the exploration and social pillars of play. 5e does actually have decent *basic* rules for socialization in the DMG. Seriously, they do exist. However, they do need the renown/piety system mixed with the boons system from WoD tied into them to be actually worth using. The exploration pillar is just... Ass. There's nothing a ranger can do that a fighter with the outlander background can't do better while also being better at combat. I wrote up some basic rules for it that make current options still viable, but actually speccing for exploration (and by that I mean survival and pathfinding) will still leave you superior to those with entry-level, low-hanging fruit kind of options.
I want to chip in my own two cents on the magic front. Magic is not only oversaturated, but magic itself frankly blows and it only appears otherwise because of the magic saturation. Magic in 5e is weak, in fact the only good way to use magic (outside of a handful of broken spells relessed by tashas) is as a blaster caster. Unless you want to kill something. Your magic is utterly ephemeral until you get to 9th level spells, and even than its only barely. Want to enchant someone to get a better deal? Well you can but even if they have no bonus to resist, and you have an optimal spellcasting bonus for early levels. They still have a 30% chance to pass a saving throw... oh and they will have seen you casting the spell unless you used a spell point to cast it subtly. Oh and to top it off even if you do succeed. It only lasts a hour, and after thay hour they 1000% know you charmed them, and will be hostile to you. I really hope you never were planning on coming back there. Oh and top it off they only act like your a good aquaintance or friend. So odds are if you asked them to do anything really serious like letting you into the kings palace to rob and or kill the man. The guard will almost certiantly still say no regardless. Now, there are higher level enchantment spells, but nearly all of them also only have a duration of 1 hour or less, or in the case of dominate person a duration of 1 minute. Which might aswell have a stamp on it saying "for combat only" And as for Geas, arguably the best enchantment spell in 5e. It can only give you control over extremely low level monsters and NPCs anyone with more then 30 hp (which is most things in 5e) can possibly can possibly refuse your order suffering a once per day 5d10 psychic damage. (Range of 5-50 damage with an average of around 27.5) and if the monster or NPC has more then 50 hp they litterally can ignore your single order to them at the cost of aome hp and some health potions... or a short rest. Oh yeah its also only going to be a single order you can give them. They can otherwise act exactly as normal. The duration is 30 days which is a welcome change from most spells, but it can be undone by a remove curse, or greator restoration. What makes this all worse is that this is a 5th level spell. Your arent going to be casting this alot, and your character is already a minimum of 9th level to have this spell, and this is the best you can do with it. Higher level casts inly extends the duration with 9th level being until the command is filled or undone by one of several methods to undo it. Which might be perfectly acceptable if a 3rd level spell couldn't undo this thing in one go, and it wasnt so limited in ability and scope. Keep in mind that spell is one of the best examples aginst my position, and its still not great. Unless you want to murder people, all your magic is temporary, and thats assuming it works in the first place. As many spells you have to pay gold, gems, or otherwise to cast, but if they dont work you still spent that gold for nothing, and wven if it does the effect is still extremely temporary, and often lackluster.
It says a lot about how badly 5e was put together that you can actually run a better Low Fantasy game in 4e than in 5e. Martial Classes only for players, maybe let them learn Ritual Magic IF you want to be generous to PCs, stick with Heroic to Paragon Tier, and make sure to grab the Unearthed Arcana rules for strongholds, henchmen, hirelings, grittier play, alternative combat endings (interruption, flight, surrender), fumbles, lasting injuries, and curses.
Gonna be honest and tell you that not long after giving 4e a shot that I saw it was a mash up of Shining Force and Diablo 2 with other video game elements thrown in, I came to HATE it and those that came up with it. It is, by far, the worst system that I have ever personally played and I wish it NEVER came to fruition.
@@BurghezulDjentilom No, I'm not parroting anything. That is my own assessment. I'll state that it pulled from video games from the 1990's. Shining Force and Diablo II are the two main sources for this raw sewage system. I have BOTH of these games and have played them to completion. They also threw in a few other video game elements. Not only that, they ripped off dragonnewts from Discworld and Albert Odyssey and also ripped off the name of dragonborn from the Elder Scrolls series to name what is essentially a half dragon. There was already a template for a half dragon. The whole system is a bunch of video game ripoffs by a batch of unimaginative, mentally deficient rhesus monkeys.
A house rule that I am trying in my group has you add your proficiency bonus to AC and all of your saving throws. This helps you to have a chance with your saves and scales with the monsters as the campaign goes up in level. But it is not just for PCs, the enemies also get to use their proficiency bonus, which is good as many monsters have no saves.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The best way to begin fixing the official DnD system is to choose one of the following: 1) make level 14 the capstone (6th level spells). Anything beyond that is considered epic play. 2) keep it at level 20, and start removing the upfront power gains; spreading the out past level 10. You cannot have high level play with the current upfront power gains, it would be so out of control; a literal Wild West. WoTC says “our data shows most campaigns end between level 6 and 10”; could it possibly be that all content you’ve written falls within those levels (or there about)? If you run the shattered obelisk and Vecna: eve of ruin back to back, it takes you from 1st level to 20th. But it quickly devolved into “x spells don’t work here cause Tuesday”. Even they have no clue how to run the 4th tier of play in its current state. They really should bring back multiclassing penalties. For instance, you can’t take any levels in your original class until your second class is caught up to it; they need to be within 2 levels of each other. At least that would cut out the “dips for combat mechanics” leaving mostly “my character had a change of interest cause of story” etc. They’ve gone above and beyond to strip away flavor from just about everything. And I absolutely agree that developing classes that hang their hats on a single ability is poor design.
@@googiegress indeed! While the game has evolved in many ways since then (and I can appreciate many of the iterative evolutions and understand why they were made); I also feel that if you have a problem long enough and do not address it, then it’s a problem you’re both aware of and have accepted. And that’s just poor product development. To release something in a form that you know will not truly be supported. Which is why I felt they should’ve shortened it to 14 levels. That would’ve been the least impactful to the widest set of the community. Allow those with the skill to create 3rd party content for tier 4; and they could of course make the changes needed to fully support it. For example: save vs death sucked. Save vs suck… well, still sucks lol. And I say this as a DM. I don’t want a player sitting out of the action for even a single round; they can quickly find themselves disengaged from the action. And so I avoid those types of spells. Then again, what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander. Anything that does so should have a new save rolled at the start of the creatures turn. And any force objects (force wall, tiny hut, force cage, etc) should simply have an AC and hit points (perhaps char level x prof bonus x 10?). That way whether it be PC or creature.. they’re still active on their turn, even if they are only attacking a magic object… they still have agency and are still engaged. Just my 2c.
@@jonsaucy8440 I think that making such deep gameplay decisions as in the latter two paragraphs, on the basis of valuing player attentiveness and player agency over concepts such as paralysis, petrification, death magic, instant-death poison, et al. is ... definitely a choice. I don't want to make assumptions or go farther than you meant here. But as a specific example: Hold Person as a save negates, 2 rounds per caster level, and if you're paralyzed then you really are out of the fight and could be slain instantly out of combat or just take more damage in a general melee (as 1e handles it). I think that's a proper ability for a PC Cleric to have, and a proper ability for some NPC enemies to have. And if that means the PC who fails has a player who can't give orders to them, and might be frustrated or bored, that's totally fine to me. If a player can't handle that, it's a personal failing. They have the opportunity to learn how to deal with it, and improve as a human being. That's a common thread in D&D: dealing with loss, improving lateral thinking, overcoming reasonable challenges, thinking ahead and preparing, making difficult choices by balancing the likelihood and impact of possible future hazards, negotiating with friends, etc. I will say that if a player seriously doesn't have the ability to just chill for 5 minutes until the fight is over (and yes, fights are fast if people don't hem and haw depending on your edition), and then only once in a while because he won't encounter a sidelining attack every fight nor fail his save every time. That's a player who doesn't have the maturity level I expect at my table. Furthermore, that player needs to improve so they have that skill. If only to survive such difficult life experiences as boring dinner parties, a typical workday, and really any situation where they're not being overtly stimulated by others.
just one nit-pick, WotC may say "ampaigns end between level 6 and 10", but according to their quarterly data reports, at least the latest I've seen on D&D beyond, some 92% of their active player sheets never play beyond level 3.
@@Ultrox007 yeah I don’t see that as a nit pick at all. I was just referring to what they publicly released.. hell it must’ve been a year or two ago. I’d have to assume that’s changed quite a bit. And one also has to assume the presence of players who just like creating PCs who never get to play them as well. So fair play.
Oof. There is a lot to unpack here. @docnecrotic is right about bounded accuracy but its honestly a really good mechanic as it makes higher level types feel grounded in the world a bit. Races are easy to fix if its a bad for your world Humans only, Done As for death saves, yes but younger players, heck maybe many older ones are less interested in roll and throw them away and they make up most players . Even Traveller where you could die in character generation makes that entirely optional Now re: class abilities. Yes but the problem with high level play is that it is a rare. Few groups meet often enough or play enough to ever get there. This is why Castle and Crusades stopped at 12 and Old School Essentials like B/X at 14. Abilities that are never used are a waste of space. At a very fast rate of advancement it would take a year to hit L20 and few groups have that much patience . Reality is best case its 2-3 years of play with one DM and players . Not gonna happen I found honestly that Epic 6 Pathfinder (stops at 6 limited special abilities after) fit real play very well. Its tends to milestone advancement of session advancement but was just enough. Mainline D&D needs to be bigger but still taking into account the rarity if high level play in its design
If your fix for races is to drop them all, that only further emphasizes how terrible their design is. Having content in the game rules that is accessible regularly to 20th level PCs is sensible even if the game is really built for play up to 14th. Some good reasons: It shows where an ability ought to show up, so there's no danger of a group houseruling it in too low. Sometimes you get limited access to something, like an 8th level spell on a scroll, when you're only 10th level. Enemies may be smaller in number but higher level, so you might have a 10th level party fighting a 16th level Wizard with some crummy minions around or special lair things so everyone can't just run up and dogpile him on Round 1. SO, abilities that are for higher-level characters are definitely not a waste of space! PF is a scrappy little scamp that likes to get a lot of attention, but let's not forget that E7 was a houserule in a 3e forum post, and access to 4th level spells in E7 has a salutary effect on the campaign setting that E6 loses. PF started out as a mild smattering of houserules on the 3e OGL and hasn't offered much in its 2nd edition to make us think its designers earned their air.
@@googiegress Broken stuff existed back in 0E when DM's let players be vampires and what not. Sir Fang is why we even have clerics The easy fix is to limit the stuff rather than trying to create whole new builds. Still players love options and buy books I see you point re: 20th its just so little used it would make more sense to stop earlier but as the game is meant for imagination as much as play tradition wins that fight I know the E6 origin. As it happens I used Lean Up E6 myself so you can have a L4 spells as a feat It combined amazingly with multi variable spells, 5E before 5e in a way
@@simonacerton3478 To be fair, the 0e note about players with nonstandard characters is a single line that spends half its time exhorting the DM to balance the special character by having them start very weak and get stronger over time. Sir Fang just got too strong too fast. Same could be said of 1e's UA, 2e's Elves' Handbook, and basically every 3e-era OGL splat. 5e's ridiculousness is an infection riddling its core books. It's a deep-seated failure of game design, a bottle full of sweet pap for the absolute whiniest of babies.
1: Bounded accuracy was a lie. Are spells bounded? No? Then it's a lie, and pointless. Late-level spellcasters have always been where the game is unbalanced. 2: Poor design of Races: They immediately gave up on design after the core and SCAG. This goes above and beyond races, but most races are just variants of Elves. Endless bland variants. It doesn't matter that every race has darkvision, most in previous editions did too. The problem is that every race was fundamentally similar other than a few standouts, and with Tasha's the standouts were practically burned to the ground. 3: Broken Action Economy: The problem being there's an action economy in the first place. Move/strike served the game for most of its editions, it had no need to change with 4E. This was an element built gradually by the build-culture that late-stage 2.5 and 3.X implemented which ultimately ruined "current edition" including 6E coming out now. "Bonus actions" are trash to the point that everybody knows they are trash and cringe at their very mention. 4: The New Nothing: Skills overall were a mistake to be added to the game in late-stage 1E. The game was far better off without them, as they are more apt to explain what a character CAN'T do than what they can do. The more granular the skill system, the more incompetent the resulting characters. 4a: Saving throws have been pointless since 3E. We already had abilities to check against. There is no meaningful substantive difference between a Constitution Check and a Fortitude Save (etc). Save vs Poison WASN'T a Constitution check. Poison effectiveness isn't dependent on a character's Constitution. It circumvents it. We effectively lost saving throws in 3E and gained redundancies. We didn't get them back in 5E, we simply lost the redundancies (thanks Castles & Crusades, the game 5E stole this from). Everything is an ability check now, nothing depends on your skills (class) and training (exp level), which were what Saving Throws represented initially. 3E designers thought they knew better than the OGs on saving throws and didn't even know what Saving Throws were for. Typical. 5: Ability Imbalance: the solution to this was again in TSR editions. Roll abilities randomly, in order, and they never change over time. This all makes the imbalances moot. There's never an economy of investing in one ability, never a comparison of this vs that other than maybe OD&D and B/X allowing you to burn scores in excess of 9 to improve your Prime Requisite. This is, again, exacerbated by Build culture. 5a: The "dump stat" of D&D changing from Charisma to Intelligence is both apropos and humorous, contextually speaking. 5b: Want to know why we don't have Dark Sun 5E? Because it would require actually limiting player options from some of the books that have come out. That's why. Every 5E world is Planescape. That's also why the 5E version of Planescape seems so hollow and meh. Because it's no different than Forgotten Realms now. 6: Diplomacy and Exploration Blow: Casualties of Build Culture. Both were more effective and emphasized in earlier editions. 6a: "Rolling to talk to people" is a legit problem with the game now. Older editions had Reaction rolls, sure, but communicating was down to a conversation between Players and DM and you were expected to potentially work with the Goblins to kill the nearby Orcs etc. Faction play is all but dead because why talk to the Goblins when you can roll dice to kill them super easy? Why talk to any NPCs when you can just roll dice to win friends and influence people super easy? The game had a social element that including more social people somehow minimized over time. 7: Stale Combat: This is also a side effect of build culture. They have to make combat last longer, and without any design skill the easy way is x gonna give it to the HP. This has been true for every edition since 3E and possibly to a lesser extent 2E, or at least late stage 2E. Combat used to be punchy and elegant because wargamers invented it and wanted to skip to the end quick. The baseline of "just knock numbers off until somebody falls down" is still there, but the numbers are bigger and there are a bunch of jangling keys (additional systemics) to keep the players mildly entertained while it takes longer to resolve overall combats. 7a: Moving around like a hyper monkey in combat is frankly silly and ignores basic tactics in favor of flashy cinematics IE more jangling keys. Better to have combats resolve quickly and appear at least somewhat logical in the semi-abstract view, that way tactical choices remain consistent and effective. You know, like it's a game. 7b: I don't buy that the solution for semi-complicated action economy build combat is trying to even out every classes semi-complicated action economy build to be even with every other classes semi-complicated action economy build. Better to just drop all that mess. 8: Crutch Mechanics: Most classes are just a schtick nowadays, not an archetype. The Ranger and the Barbarian are just wilderness-y Fighters. So why not just be Fighters? What's the difference between a Paladin and Cleric? Nearly nothing thematically other than one is for whatever reason allowed to use a sword and the other is forced to use a baseball bat because it's more humanitarian. Looked real humanitarian in Inglorious Basterds. 9: Pillow Fisted: Completely agreed, but there's no fixing this without a substantial rewrite of the majority of the current edition that players frankly would freak out at the mere notion of. Of course TSR did this right too. They had people who were born when video games weren't a thing designing the game. 10: Low Quality High Level Play: To be fair, no edition has been great at high level play, really. Not even BECMI where it was specifically systemically supported. Older editions stereo-graphed this drop off by having HP accumulation die off at Name (9th) level. There were more levels after that but you were in the End Game at that point, looking for a heroic death or a nice little cottage somewhere to settle down. It helped that it took about as long for the average current character to get to 20th level for an old school character to get to 7th or so. 11: Everything's Front Loaded: Build culture is the culprit again. Nothing else need be said. 12: Magic Oversaturation: Agreed again, and I believe it's too built in to the system to be fixable. Just an opinion, there is no righting this ship. There is no turning it around. It's already hit the iceberg. We've counted the lifeboats. Not everybody's gonna make it. Just save who you can and the sea takes the rest.
TL;DW: 1. Bounded Accuracy (and adv/disad). 2. Poor race design. 3. Broken action economy. 4. Proficiencies hard to acquire. 5. Ability Imbalance (DEX OP). 6. Diplomacy and Exploration Blow. 7. Stale combat. 8. Crutch mechanics. 9. Pillow fisted. 10. Low quality high level play. 11. Everything's front-loaded. 12. Magic oversaturation. I'd suggest some rule corrections, but honestly just play a better game. One that doesn't include Finesse weapons, that allows only one action per character per round, etc. As for #6, it's hilarious that 5e claims to be at least a combat simulator, but it does that in a very wiggly and unsatisfying manner. The reason why diplomacy and exploration suck in 3e onward is because the interaction, from start to completion, is one roll. Whereas combat is a constellation of rolls that result in an outcome on a broad scale; you could win an overwhelming victory, or win but consume a lot of resources, or lose but flee or surrender, or die. And a lot in between! If your game offers one roll for a thing, it means the game doesn't care about it. Imagine rolling once for the resolution of an entire combat. As for Barbarian rage as a crutch mechanic, consider the fact that it's supposed to be a resource that the player must choose whether to use up or not, depending on whether that battle appears hazardous enough. Or whether you want to bash down a particular door. So this illuminates the real problem: a combination of the DM allowing and the players expecting a 15-minute adventuring day, and too-generous resource capacity and recovery rules. Consider the "hardcore" resting houserule as the standard, meaning short rests go away and a long rest takes 8 hours. Even that is far too fast for healing. My personal gripe with 5e is that the XP advancement is basically instantaneous through level 4, slows down, and then in your teens it speeds up! Seems dumb. And the XP advancement is weird enough and lame enough that a surprising number of DMs just do milestone advancement. That's complete crap. That's like just taking arbitrary amounts of money from the bank in Monopoly. And they need to finally just implement a good and fully-integrated encumbrance system that is so easy and impactful that players and DMs who don't want to use it must admit to themselves that they're just too lazy and stupid.
@@SilverDragoon7395 currently working on it. One of the guys that was working with me is having some medical issues so that's kind of put a damper on things
I second that sentiment, I really wish these Pandius guys, Mr. Welch, etc. would get together and build out some open-source style setting similar to Mystara and a variant of the OSE rules, something like Ministara or something, with some high priest council of architects picking and choosing actual canon from the mass of solo and small team projects that get self-published around it. Sooo much great effort is being spent on this, its a shame they can't control the kernel of it.
GoodmanGames (makers of DCC) have atrocious community policing and are explicitly anti-consumer. Going out of their way to use jank dice to try and make consumers purchase specialized sets even. Not to mention the 23 page contract that blatantly says "we reserve the right to doxx you if we don't like you" that you have to sign to run games for them at conventions.
bonded is fine u after all did say 3.5 couldn't handle its own weight with ever expanding bonuses I think tasha's did let u pick a new tool prof but if not it's a insanely easy fix as is getting rid of some dark vision but as for spells take away a asi or 2 easy enough nerf. not the most big brain fix but i do believe in order to like 5e your changes need to not fight it. i'd prefer the asi fix because it still allows race to be a factor for multiclassing. add some bg3 changes to the game maybe bonus jump florish ect with saving throws I think magic items, feats are the thing they want you to look at. you can bring back some int benefits like extra tools language ect not the most exciting thing but I did find a small add on that does this. idk about combat being stale because from a cursory glance at pathfinder I can more or less do the same thing as some actions i saw over there in 5e with just the bonus and action but for 5e's goal of making this accessible they hit the mark big time and it shows. u are right though but combat is slow enough with some ppl on 5e. I did add 4e bonuses to weapons and added the cleave variant rule to the greatsword and axe and a few special martial maneuvers as for weapon weaknesses take 3/4e just add those back in. nothing really touches BA mostly good fix imo I know dex is better but lets be honest casters make this a mute point. this is mainly because the pillar of exploration and carrying weight is kind of ignored. bag of holding.jpg rangers yeah they do need that exploration pillar but combat is the only one with meat on it and I have heard bringing back old edition exploration does enough but it should of been there out the box. btw most 3rd party 1 shots don't really have exploration at all. the blast + invocations is a trap u really shouldn't be using that once u get some nasty spells and UA does allow more invocations but it is stupid simple and effective. blast + invoc is simply players playing the game in the least fun way which good design is supposed to discourage but it is a easy my 1st warlock player build and I kind of like that cause the new player who wants a nice edgy anti hero to play doesn't have to think to much the first go around hunters mark + rage is also kind of the same thing. dps wise its a nice standard that treeant monk uses as a dps baseline btw. do a con save after coming back from going down and add exhaustion on fail. Making services more expensive for things like this is nice, maybe bump up the lvl of spells that deal with curses and disease by 1 this is a thing for hardcore players 5e is focusing on being casual is not to surprising. high lvl is not focused on because no one makes anything for epic tier as far as adventures and most campaigns fizzle out for one reason or another before getting to that point. cantrips + front loads are fine though they make multiclassing the variety buffet check out d4 dnd deep dive. odddly enough scaling cantrips actually are the thing helping martials keep up with by using gfb bb sb depending on the amount of targets and weapon ect ect I do think not allowing med/heavy or just heavy armor + martial weapons would be a nice change but then how do they get them at all? your pretty well saying a big no which is fine but maybe adding point blank spells giving a opportunity attack + nerfing the hit die back to d4 is enough. Because it will feel pretty bad as a player being the only class that gets told NO but it will help martials quite substantially I think the armor is fine by just gatekeeping only the heavy armor and martial weapons. allows weapon master a reason to be picked for once I guess.
@@armorclasshero2103 Wizards were balanced by a verity of factors from early game weakness to the rules around casting. It's touched on in the video, but Mr. Welsh also made a dedicated video about the subject. The upshoot is that in 1st and 2nd Edition, spells took two turns to cast, the first to start casting and the second to 'resolve' the spell and if the caster was hit any time in the process the spell was lost
@@cyberninjazero5659 all of that is fine and well, but in practical play they didn't make much difference beyond about level 5. Quantum caster has always been a problem, as Mr Welch said in the video.
Some classes were more equal than others. Sideeyes the druid. With prestige classes you could break the game rather easily. There was a variant of the arcane archer that ignored range. Not range penalties, if they could see it they could shoot it. Clerics could outfight fighters once they got a certain spell. It had so much mix-and-match that it was easy to break it. I found a way to deal 200+ points of damage with magic missile. The Order of the Stick forums outdid me with a build that did 450+ points of damage with the same spell. It was stuff like that.
Can't we just get rid of that ascending hit->to hit thing. Can't we just have easy to hit, middle to hit and hard to hit. Scale up with hit points versus damage? Make it pretty much certain that you ARE going to hit, but the better you are versus how good the target is determines how much you hit. That way you don't wait ages for your turn only to whiff and you can always use any target/monsters in an encounter no matter what level they are, but you can increase their numbers etc.
I just need to say this: There might have been more to exploration and social pillar support if DMs, players, and internet forums/YT videos had stopped focusing entirely on character building/play with combat capability as the only consideration. This nonsense seemed to have started in 4e, then migrated to 5e, and has lived there ever since. I expect some RP in my TTRPG.
I don’t like the idea of locking certain subclasses into certain races/subraces (outside of BECMI or setting-specific stuff like the Echo Knight being exclusive to Exandria), but the next edition SHOULD cut back on the magical martial subclasses. Players Handbook fighter had 3 subclasses and only 1 have you spells. That’s a perfectly fine ration, and Wizards should have stuck to it.
@@Mr_Welch fella you're saying all the right things also something I only thought of after I posted this comment I don't know if you're aware of this you are the most Grogan are of grognard a lot of like kids like kids in their twenties Define 5th edition to be a very useful template for their own home crew worlds a lot of it is Anime based you know which obviously
The bit about long-term consequences... no, not really. Long-term curses and other stuff were always just unmitigated suck because GMs would ensure that not only was there no way to mitigate or prevent, but that there were no cures at all. It's all the suck with none of the thrill or benefit. Experience drain and permanent stat damage are things that needed to die way quicker than they actually did, because they just sucked, and added nothing to the game And enough with the performative outrage about the wheelchairs. You can't complain about including how people with such injuries or conditions can still be characters while also complaining that the magic that would (possibly) prevent those injuries and conditions is too widespread. You're not the target audience for that, acknowledge that and move on, rather than demanding that everything should be geared toward you. As for the magic thing... I don't see the issue. They turned a lot of stuff that was odd abilities got turned into spells as some attempt to unify mechanics. Fine. I don't like it, but it's fine. Is the Ranger or Artificer actually casting magic or are they just pulling odd stuff out their pack and making the same effect happen? Depends on the character concept, and how the player chooses to play it.
regarding the 1st point: that's a GM issue, not a game issue. Plus there were ways to recover lost xp and/or levels that weren't just "regain those back". regarding the 3rd: why then would whatever interferes with magic impede the ranger from fishing stuff out of his bag or the artificer's autocrossbow's function? You can refluff them as you like, but the core issue is mechanical in origin. I'm not touching the 2nd point you made even if I had a 10 foot adamantine pole.
@@mistery8363 Stay away from it all you want. Like I said, acknowledging that someone isn't for you and not saying anything is far better than complaining. As for the anti-magic... yes, but anti-magic stuff, RAW, also affects psionics. Arcane and Divine magic are equally affected, and even back in 3.X there were creature abilities and traits that an anti-magic field would negate. So it's not THAT much of a stretch, still.
I've only ever played 5E. I have some very fun memories with the game, and I am about to start a new campaign next week playing a Bard for the first time.
Do yourself a favor and try to get into a 2nd edition/AD&D game and see how you like it. I guarantee that you'll come back with a different perspective when you have to role play rather than roll play as the only system you have known does only the latter.
@BDSquirrel I live in the middle of nowhere, WV. It is literally the only game in town, and two of the members get pissy if there isn't regular combat. When we get into a stretch of more role play, one even tells me he's getting bored with it and thinking of quitting.
@@ewfisher89 As long as you have the internet, you can get a download of 2e/AD&D stuff. There is also print on demand. To avoid wokejobs of the coast whiny little b1+ching of the original stuff being "racist", "mysoginist", etc., (We all know that the original stuff isn't) try to find those books on sale via ebay, waynesbooks, noble knight games, TSR archieve, and other sites that may have the original stuff. Should there be a convention, you can check those out too. A lot of people are selling their old stuff as they either cannot find players/GMs or they're just getting out of gaming completely. If you have a problem with THAC0, just replace it with the D20 combat table. Mathematically, they're the same. Any problems with any other parts, you can make house rules and you can actually build classes that do not exist within the system. There is a section in the books for that.
2e had its own laundry list of problems, mostly upper management sticking their hands where they didn't belong. Always fun to teach someone that the reason the 'fiend folio' exists was to bypass a catholic-compliant censor imposed by a woman.
Pathfinder 2e has the opposite problem of giving class-defining abilities at way too high levels, along with being bloated with feats that used to be relegated to a skill check at least and asking the DM if you could do that with him accepting if it made sense (or denying otherwise) at most. Do you really need a feat to spread rumors or tying bells to a string?
What is wrong with it... it is a TTJRPG light system. All classes get magical powers (NOT SPELLS YOU DINGUSES) starting at level one, using the ripoff of dragonnewts from Discworld and ripping off the name of Dragonborn from the Elder Scrolls series to name what are basically half dragons, still using point buy (a crutch for people that whine and cry about not getting "good stats" with dice rolls) that makes for roll play and not role play, infinite 0 level spells for casters, magic item attunement, any stats are dump stats that don't correlate to your class and your HP, short and long rests heal the party which makes preparing healing spells for in between encounters pointless and takes away role playing preparation in game, and I could go on and on about more problems.
Whenever I see 5e's terrible race design brought up as a complaint, and let's face it, 5e does have the worst race design, it reminds me of how lucky I am to play 4e, because 4e flat out does races better. No other edition has gotten so close to finding that sweet spot between keeping races on relatively equal footing on a mechanical level, but also keeping their racial abilities flavorful and unique. Even just the basic profiles manage to capture a lot of lore in their mechanics, thought admittedly that works better with some races than others, but the best races also benefit from racial feats, racial utility powers, and even racial paragon paths - all the strengths of the old race-as-class approach, without forcing every single character of that race to play almost exactly the same. I can make the dwarfiest dwarf who ever dwarfed and his fighter class abilities almost an afterthought, or I can make a fighter who just happens to be a dwarf, or I can make almost anything on that spectrum of Dwarf to Fighter ratio that I want. Can't do THAT with 5e.
I find this genre of bitching about D&D (including wildly ignorant opinions like complaining about bounded accuracy) so incredibly trite and bitchy. Some of these are NOT problems. Some are solved in the new edition. But I just find the tone of this video condescending and off-putting.
