Why D&D Doesn’t Care about Gameplay Depth | Critical Eye 

Hi Trekiros The third way to "fix" your spell is to add a description to the beginning (many core 5e spells have one). This allows you to communicate intent without writing something that will be confused as a rule or exception. "You manifest a current of wind allowing you to push enemies, reposition allies, buffer falls, lengthen jumps, or toss hapless foes into the air."

Another way to clarify Dissonant Whispers without a sidebar, is to say "triggering opportunity attacks as normal," to communicate that it is not an exception.

Pathfinder often uses wording "as usual" to mark part of the description, which is reminder, not exception. It's a bit crunchy, but works.

I've had to reckon with this as someone who migrated to PF2e about a year ago. I remember being shocked when a Moderate (80 XP) encounter I designed required players to engage with the monster on its own terms; just doing "their thing" individually might not have led to a TPK, but it would've been _uncomfortably_ close. In 5e, "just doing your thing" is how you win! The most impactful "tactical" lever in 5e is simply a gear-shift - you either conserve your resources, or you burn through them. The latter reliably gets you results, and expresses your individual character fantasy - the paladin smites, the barbarian rages, the monk uses ki, the sorcerer uses metamagic, etc. It's not so much a tactical decision (because it works equally well in any combat environment and against any opponent, regardless of their statblock), but rather a strategic one - how far can I stretch my resource-bag? You don't need other PCs to set you up for that, you rarely need to care about position, enemy counterplay, knock-on effects on other people's turns, etc. You just go "I'm spending my player-dosh!" and it works. PF2e is not like that. A spell or ability that is just thrown out heedlessly at a target is very likely to whiff. You _need_ to first create the conditions of your own success - go for what the enemy is weak to, target their weakest defense, and swing the math in your favor with buffs & debuffs. Moreover, the best way to do all that is to rely on your allies; have the sorcerer cast Fear, have the cleric cast Heroism, have the swashbuckler move into a flank, and have the investigator Aid you when you move in to strike. Every victory is shared. I realized that most of my 5e encounters, up to the Deadly ones, would be considered Low (60 XP) PF2e encounters at best. Only at Deadly × 2 and above do tactics and teamwork become felt in 5e. Everything below that, you can just "pay to skip" the encounter. There _is_ a game to be played there, but it's more of a logistics game - how do we push through all the Medium/Hard encounters in our adventuring day while conserving resources for the boss fight? I can see some logic to this kind of design: it makes for a very _expressive_ game. Everyone can express their 5e character's power fantasy and get consistent rewards from doing so. There is room for "good play" but it's mostly felt on the macro level, in efficient resource use and the longevity of your adventuring day. You _can_ express your character in PF2e like that, but the game really wants you to go about it cleverly - to keep in mind who your enemy is, what you know about them, what they're doing, where your allies are, and what _they're_ doing. You're always succeeding in the context of the current battle, and never just on your sheet.

5E D&D tends to not have a ton of tactical depth because it's designed as a compromise game. Some players love tactics, other people don't want to be bothered by the chess game, so 5E tries to compromise by having just enough tactics so the tactical players don't get bored.

When you say that players make character expression based choices above tactical choices, you should implement that into class design. Like, a player builds a raider; they get to pick "raider-y" abilities with titles that evoke "fire", "sharpness", "apocalyptic". And which allow the player to *briefly* make reckless decisions without consequence.

Not really related to the thesis of the video, but the idea that players make a deliberate choice of not going for the optimized tactics and instead choosing something that is cooler for that character reminded me of something that happened last wednesday: My first TPK as a player in 12 years of D&D. The party was at level 9, and about to fight the BBEG of the campaign. A powerful wizard who commanded many undead and had some warlocks serving him as well. Our group wasn't very interested in optimization, but before facing the wizard, my character (a barbarian) asked the lore bard to cast spirit guardians to help against the cannon fodder between us and the wizard. The bard agreed. We rolled initiative, the wizard rolled a 19. His action on the first round was to cast Cloudkill. Since that spell isn't even close to what it once was, I was under the impression that the GM made the decision of not using the big guns right from the start to give the players an opportunity to shine. And I wasn't wrong, honestly. But it made me feel confident. Next turn is my turn. I knew that the optimal choice was to get closer, throw some javelins at the minions, and then retreat to a place where they couldn't reach my character. That or to stay close to the bard and use the dodge action. But I didn't do any of that. I thought that charging at the minions would send the message that my character wasn't afraid of him. And that's what I did. I didn't use reckless attack, though. Too many minions, that would be way too reckless. I did some decent damage, but the minion I attacked wasn't even at half health. Next turn, the minions attack. First attack hits, 23 damage. Second attack also hits. "Wait, wait. I've got 21 AC. Did he really hit with a roll of 10?"" "Yeah, he did." Third hit also hits, fourth misses, but fifth hits again. 40 damage after damage reduction. The other PCs do their thing, the enemy warlocks eldritch blast the PCs with very low AC at the back, and the first round ends. "You know, I think that those enemies I chose are a bit too strong", said the GM After that, the obvious happened. My character asked the others PC to retreat and regroup with the reinforcements that were coming, while he held the enemies back for about 2 rounds, the other PCs decided to stay, we struggled a bit, and eventually everyone died. It was really cool. I think that what I'm trying to say is that players many times believe that the DM designed a fair fight, and therefore, come to the conclusion that you don't need to tryhard in order to win. That isn't a bad thing (necessarily), it allows the players to express their creativity in combat. Many times before that same barbarian got into a grapple with a large enemy just because I thought that it would look cooler than doing that to a smaller, lower strength enemy. But sometimes it ends up being a trap, and you only notice after it's too late. Also, it gets me very concerned as a DM when players choose to tackle every encounter with that huge confidence, even when I TRY to sign that this encounter can be too much for them. Well, anyway. Sorry about that long rant. That was a very interesting video, I'll probably check others in the future.

Reminder text seems appropriate for Dissonant Whispers. Magic: The Gathering is also an exceptions-based rules system, but whenever it references a new mechanic or deals with a potentially confusing interaction, it adds text in parentheses clarifying the rule that is otherwise inherent in the game rules. It is generally understood by players that any text in parentheses is just reminder text for things in the rules of the game, and this would similarly avoid the issue of players misinterpreting how Dissonant Whispers works without causing the problem Kibbles highlighted.

For the record, i _hate_ opportunity attacks. People involved in fencing, martial arts, & SCA say they just aren’t real. A combatant can back off & flee at any time, & the opponent’s only choice is to chase them. Opportunity attacks make D&D worse by making combat static.

D&D 5e would be a lot less confusing if the general rules for how to play weren't haphazardly scattered across the PHB. A simple page of common rules to abide by: (Round down when dividing damage numbers, Advantage/Disadvantage cancel out and don't stack, BonusActions are a type of Action and can't be used when Incapacitated, etc.) When it comes to game rules, consistency is key, both in terms of mechanics and the language used to convey them.

This is such a good video about design philosophy. With TTRPGs, I like to use what Matt Colville's said before, and try to hone in on what fantasy players want to embody, and try to figure out what mechanics and options can emphasize that first and foremost. Abilities may sound cool in a vacuum, but having a heading helps a lot to make sure that players 'stumble' into using them well. WRT movement, I feel like just clarifying the base rules for attacks of opportunity is another way to go about it. "If a creature uses its own movement, even if it is compelled to via an effect, it provokes unless otherwise stated. Movement that is forced and comes from an external source, such as from being pushed, falling, or grabbed, does not provoke." Something like that I feel would summarize a lot of the details that 4e defined. Unfortunately at its core it's really another case of 5e being hampered by its insistence upon natural language and refusal to use keywords.

I would like to make a brief side-tangent about the idea of a character concept not being considered "valid". Obviously, it's nice to allow players to express their characters in interesting ways, but I don't think that in a game that has mechanics any crunchier than, say, Fate, that you can make it impossible to "make a character wrong". Classic example: a low-Intelligence wizard without any other shenanigans to compensate is something that is rules-legal to build, but absolutely counterproductive to almost every game of D&D. Not only will you just be failing constantly (not as fun as some "DM advice" channels like to pretend), but you will be an active hinderance to the rest of your party, and I doubt they'll be finding your -1 Int modifier so funny when its the cause of a tpk. It's entirely OK for a game to encourage certain playstyles and character builds, in fact, I would argue that this is partly what allows for a more cohesive party with "roles" that players can fill in a team, and helps give a game some additional identity. We can say "every character concept is valid" but it would almost certainly be lying to ourselves and our players, however warm and fuzzy the lie might make people feel.

FYI, "infamous" is not pronounced the same as "famous". Confusing, I know, but it's "in-fuh-mus"

Lately, I've been trying to figure out how to foster more creative problem solving at my table, and I've stumbled into a lot of the same issues. Adding open-ended scenarios and versatile magic items has led to more confusion than anything. I have suspected that the very specific language, and plethora of abilities in 5e has created this aversion to making off-sheet choices (which is where creative problem solving lives). Thank you for sharing your design experience with us here!

"You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction." -phb, page 195 While it could be argued that the spell isn't "using your movement" but is rather referencing your speed, it is also using the target's reaction to make that movement. in the same section that teaches you about the existence of opportunity attacks, it clearly implies that there may be things that use your reaction to move and such things will provoke an AoO. So then we come to the intent of the mechanics; Consider the spell Command. Instead of using the target's reaction and dealing a chunk of damage, Command can be used to consume a creature's turn fleeing. There is no reason to believe, with the rule above, that a creature that is being compelled to run via command wouldn't provoke an AoO. Yet the Command spell similarly makes no mention of AoOs. Are we to believe that just because the creature is moving outside of its turn that it suddenly doesn't provoke an AoO? There is no precedent for that interpretation. The spell Dissonant Whispers is designed in such a way that it describes the exact conditions for an AoO to happen. If this was not intended, then the wording of the spell is no only misleading but flat out incorrect as per the rules of the game. Given that Jeremy Crawford spoke in favor of it provoking an AoO back in 2016, the design team has had well too long to update the spell like they have with many other mechanics for it to anything but intended. Simply put, there is no room for debate on either RAW or RAI. That said, don't let that stop you from changing the rules to fit your table.

I was thinking to myself "Why would a player not use the rules of the game to inform their character concept?" It seemed absurd. And then I remembered that I had the exact same issue when I played Elden Ring. My character concept was not fully supported by the "rules" of Elden Ring. The game was frustrating in many places for me because my concept clashed with the limitations and challenges the game set on me. I begrudgingly decided to change my build multiple times to better fit the expectations the system had on player characters, but it didn't feel right. I had de-optimized the fun out of the game, and optimizing it back in clashed with my expectations, although it made the game less frustrating.

Good video french robot man! When I click off of this video, I provoke opportunity attacks.

Best smelling D&D players. That’s kinda like being valedictorian at summer school, innit?

Rules reminders are fantastic for clarity! Also, worth noting that flavor (whether it be feature names or flavor text) is particularly important in game design in the way it paints over the design skeleton of your game. If the form doesnt match the function something is off. This is particularly difficult when the players are responsible for both visualization of what these things mean and the interpretation/play of mechanics.

There is a rabbit hole of dumb 5e rulings. The system is not does follow a logical through-line with its rulings, which means you can't extrapolate anything, which I find unsatisfying. In that way, 5e is very much against depth.

You could do what a system like GURPS does. Dissonant whispers were in GURPS, and GURPS had opportunity attacks, it would probably have something like this in its' text "... this movement provokes opportunity attacks as normal (see page 341)... " by referencing the oppotunity attack rules, you make it clear that it works under the opportunity attack rules, and you indicate to the player, that if they went and read that section, they would come to the same conclussion as what the spell is reminding you of here. But for some reason DnD hates page references to relevant rules.

the example with the cleric had me furious by the end with how often it happens to me, shooting my monks is pointless I've started rewarding knowledge checks with additional information so the players know more about the monsters they're facing edit:context, I've never played 5e, I GM pathfinder. a big difficulty in that system is getting people out of the dnd "i attack 3 times" mentality.

The best example I can think of this is how, because of how they feature and spell are worded, is completely valid to believe that Silvery Barbs can force a creature to reroll a saving throw *after* it has used its Legendary Resistance.

Regarding the attack of opportunity, (aoo) I see it like this: if something pushes you away, like a kick or an explosion, the other person also doesn’t have time to react, because you couldn’t/lost your ability to with a failed check. With dissonant whispers, you are affected, see an illusion and make the conscious decision to run away, which gives time (or an opportunity) for others to attack.

I am not familiar with the details of most spells. When you posted the poll I had no idea what Dissonant Whispers did but knowing the opportunity attack rule it seemed very clear while reading the spell that it did provoke opportunity attacks. Further, failing the spell save expend the targets Reaction I look at this as a key piece to the strategy of using the spell. I would warn the tweak about every OA getting extra d6 damage could result in more than double digit d6 rolls if the creature is big enough and moving past enough enemies. For a 1st level spell that would seem to be overly powered Keep up the good work

Having been in the TTRPG hobby for a good while, it's been interesting seeing this dynamic develop in real time over the years. Because it's not like things have always been the way that you describe -- quite the contrary! TTRPGs, particularly D&D, had traditionally been a game for huge nerds, the sort of nerds who would *absolutely* be thinking about tactical depth and not just creative expression. Certainly, the creative expression side was always there, but it wasn't as prominently focused. Older editions of D&D were very much designed to provide tactical depth, to be "easy to learn, hard to master", perhaps even to a fault. 3.5 notoriously stirred some controversy when one of the designers admitted that they had deliberately made "trap options", feats and such that sound superficially good but in reality are pretty clearly mechanically inferior. This was done precisely with the intent of creating a mastery curve, where new players can feel like they're getting better as they figure out that things they thought were good at first in fact are pretty terrible. (WotC had long been using that approach for card design in MtG, but didn't realize how much more frustrating it would be in a TTRPG.) The playerbase these days favoring creative expression over tactical depth is something that 5e was deliberately *designed* to cultivate. In making 5e, WotC consciously focused on making it appealing for that style of play, because they wanted to expand their customer base beyond the traditional D&D target demographic of tactical gaming nerds. And it has clearly succeeded, as D&D now enjoys far greater public spotlight and marketing success than ever before! I'm personally a fan of the older, more tactically rich style of play myself, so I prefer to play other systems that lean in that direction more than 5e, but I won't begrudge WotC for their success in tapping into an entirely new market of players.

The thing that gets me about 5e is that there is so much ambiguity baked into the system, to the point that people needed to go ask a game dev to tweet out the intended interaction. You say the rules are exceptions based, but often times the rules on something are never explicitly stated to begin with or too ambiguous for it to matter. In your example on having text in Dissonant Whispers that clarifies that it does trigger AoO, the idea that a clarification then implicitly causes rules confusion in other situations is nuts to me. Pathfinder 2e is also exception-based, but the expectation is clearly spelled out. In Pathfinder, it would likely be worded as " On a failed save, the creature takes 3d6 psychic damage and must immediately use its reaction, if available, to Stride up to its speed away from you, ending it's movement further away from you than it began." The specification of a Stride action immediately makes it clear that it would trigger an Attack of Opportunity, because Stride is a codified action with the Move trait, and Attacks of Opportunity (Reactive Strikes) list actions with the Move trait as a trigger. There is no room for ambiguity. Similarly, if it were intended NOT to trigger a Reactive Strike, it would have the exception text "this movement does not trigger reactions". A common thing you hear from DnD players who bounced off of Pathfinder was that there were "too many/strict rules" but the thing is that DnD has just as many. The only difference is that DnD's rules are so poorly thought out and ambiguous that people just make a guess on the spot. In Pathfinder you can generally tell what an intended interaction is without *needing* to look up the rules, similar to my example above.

Yeah, Treantmonk as a player would scare me too.

"one of the most famous game designers" My perspective is whack, my first three thoughts when I heard this were Richard Garfield, Mark Rosewater, and Monte Cook, in that order.

To be clear, Jeremy Crawford quoted the rule that explains why it provokes. He didn't just declare that it does. The rule is that when a creature moves out of reach, it provokes an opportunity attack. Then it lists 3 exceptions. First, when the creature uses the disengage action. Second, if the creature teleports. Third, if the creature is forced to move by someone or something without using their movement, action, or reaction to do so. Dissonant whispers doesn't qualify for any of the exceptions in the general rule because it requires the creature to use its reaction to move away from you. Therefore, it clearly provokes RAW.

im still meeting people that unironically say "you can play the game without reading the rules at all" and then these people turn around and ask if a spell that makes someone use their reaction to run away provokes attacks of opportunity or get surprised when they cast jump and learn that they can't actually jump further than their remaining walking speed

As someone who has never GMed, I cannot comprehend this player mindset: it just seems obvious that your personal idea for your character should be an ideal which you build towards using the rules as building blocks. I have made sub-optimal decisions for flavour when making characters, but always with full knowledge of what I was doing and still in a way that yielded a functional build.

About nimble: I design such combos for almost every single one of the monsters that I use in my games, however the players sadly never had tried to stop it

One of the best examples of cheesing (which I love to do) in 5e is the following combination: Take V. Human -> PAM (Polearm Master for the extra bonus attack and opportunity attacks when enemies enter your reach). --Take Hexblade. --Take Pact of the Blade. --Take Repelling Blast. --Take Improved Pact Weapon (to use your pact weapon as your spellcasting focus and gain 10ft reach). --Take War Caster at level 4 (for better concentration saves and the ability to cast spells as opportunity attacks). --Take Thirsting Blade. --Take Spirit Shroud (Negating heals, boosting damage, and slowing down enemies all at once? Dude, just pick this). Now, enjoy hitting: -Attack Action: 2*(1d10 + CHA + PB + 1d8). -Bonus Attack: 1d4 + CHA + PB + 1d8 (if you don't mind risking an AoO- or just go Darkness, F U DM). Get distance, -Reaction: 2*(1d10 + PB + 1d8) with Eldritch Blast and War Caster. --Repelling Blast: Push enemies that charge you up to 20ft with Eldritch Blast, taking 10ft of movement due to Spirit Shroud. --10 ft Range (Polearm MR): No disadvantage on Eldritch Blast. All of this at level 5. And if you want to be a real pain in the ass, you can even toss in GWM later, adding to the infamous BS combo of Devil's Sight + Darkness instead of Repelling Blast, while moving around without provoking opportunity attacks (thanks to Darkness, duh). Does it unbalance the game? No, any DM who talks with their players and knows what's up has SO MANY WAYS to counter this. Does it make a difference between a player who spams Eldritch Blast like there's no tomorrow as a Warlock and a player who knows what they're doing? Absolutely. The player will feel rewarded for their planning and HUGE investment (Dude is using like 2/3 feats). Have I had discussions about whether it is "RAW" or not? Yes, several. Do I think it's broken? No, I actually think D&D should have more of that. Since the mechanics reward those who build their character for social encounters, why shouldn’t combat-oriented characters be rewarded too? It’s sad that lots of cool synergies that can be done if you give it a minute are killed due to RAW rules made specifically so that those not as invested in combat don’t feel underpowered when it happens. But later they give your fighter 4 (or 8) attacks to mop up whatever they face. Wow, such a nice way to spice combat, right? Thanks for the homebrew, man. It’s sad that the community often has a WAY more entertaining look at combat than the company that made the rules, but this is becoming the norm with almost everything lately, which makes it even sadder.

I really don't understand a rule that prevents other characters from talking to each other in combat. You're on a team. Team members talk to each other to accopmplish goals; your pc's are in the room with each and they're supposed to be real people. Real people on a team must communicate. That doesn't mean they have to take the advice but a rule block people from talking to each other in a roleplaying game misses the whole point of roleplaying.

I also got unreasonably excited about sidebars. So much of 5e is left to interpretation because they try to rely solely on natural language for conceying intent. In my own system I've been using a consistent form of sidebar: "For example, blah blah blah.... " which incorporates a different background and text colour. Example use cases of rules embedded in the text itself is so helpful for clarifying intent and teaching the game!

I've faced the exact same problem developing my own TTRPG system (based on 5e, started like a homebrew, but evolved into its own thing; very similar to DC20 in this regard). And I wholeheartedly agree with your solutions and reasonings, but I've also came up with another simple one: use brackets for clarification. If you define the use of brackets beforehand and then use them consistently this way, you won't break the "rules are exceptions" logic and won't confuse your players, since you teach your players that the info in brackets is ONLY here for clarification. This way the Dissonant Whisper spell can be solved by simply adding "... (this movement provokes opportunity attacks as always)". Bonus points if you'll leave a link to a general rule

I wish i didn't have to bring this up. But the "Bounded Accuracy" that DND uses isn't uniformly applied. And it isn't even properly implemented into the game. It applies to some stats, but not for others. Which is why some classes are just so good at blowing the game way open and make others incredibly redundant. It doesn't even cover the monsters properly.

11:30 The "my first TPK" followed by the quick clip of you marking the last player token with a Red X was so funny and I think deserves more praise.

Emotional Damange run refrence in the Video what a time to be alive.

In regards to issues with tactical games culture of puzzle solving vs character expression, these problems are beyond dnd. Fire emblem, for example, heavily favours player expression, and that's because that's what people prefer, and consider to be good design. They prefer to be able to build characters that can solo an area by themselves, they prefer to use units that are inefficient but cool (Lyn-like and Est-like unit are fan favorites), and they complain about 3% crit chance that kills their favourite character, even if the whole scenario was avoidable from the get go. However, if you play tactics games that has no leveling, like advance wars, the player base are far more optimised. Which, if you're a fan of both, you know that advance wars has a much smaller player base. So as long as there's characters for players to get attached to, and levels and builds for players to grind, the general player base would often prefer player expression over solving puzzles the way the designer intended. This is basically the source of the mentality with souls like and magic builds as well. And this is why I've always advised DMs, challenge in dnd doesn't necessarily the raw numbers are against the players, or that the encounter is complicated, but rather, that there's more choices, and more barriers needed for players to do what they want. Encourage the players to play their play style, but give them a few extra conditions to get there, and they will feel like the combat is very tactical. It's easier to trick turn to thinking the combat was hard, then to balance a near death encounter with alot of layers of interactions.

This kind of rule minutia is why I left all versions of d&d for other rpgs 30 years ago.

Might be some of the players I’ve met recently but it seems like D&D players can be split into two groups. The old school players who started in 3.5/pathfinder who treat the game like a tub of random Lego. We built whatever our imagination comes up with and see what the GM lets us get away with. The new players treat the game as a Lego set. There are instructions on how to put the pieces together. They run their character by what it says they can do on the sheet and act lost when they don’t have an obvious ability to help with a situation. Like we had a guy In my group playing a Druid for his first character. He couldn’t understand any ability that didn’t have a direct damage effect so he spent 90% of the game using shellie to hit things or trying to pull a poison ivy with talk to plants.

Manifest wind is very powerful at low levels. Strength save to knock up all enemies in a 30ft line, they fall back down dealing 1d6 bludgeoning and knocking them prone. You can continue to do this for 1 minute for a bonus action as a cantrip. If you can end the effect in a choke point the enemy(ies) would have to use half their movement to get up then risk getting knocked down again, which would make it impossible to reach you, deal another 1d6 and you can do it all over again for a bonus action. The knock up option also obsoletes the push back option unless you’re in a low ceiling space as being knocked prone will pretty much always cost at least 10’ of movement, usually 15’, and you get 1d6 damage. I don’t have any context for this, maybe it’s balanced against a lack of other features, just noting some potential.

I'll admit I'm one of the people who got the question about dissonant whispers wrong. Funny enough I was thinking of that exact phrase you used "Forced movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks" at the time.

Reminder that there ARE other combat/rollplay systems out there that have such different mechanics that they make for great inspiration for changing/improving things. Savage Worlds has a BLAZING fast combat system. Random extras don't need to carefully track their hitpoints. They are healthy, "Shaken"(Stunned by a close blow/knocked off the feet/flavor text here) or out. Easily kept track using a basic mini with upright, knocked down, or removed. Huge battles can be quickly tracked and updated. All while the game still encourages and allows wild shenanigans and intricate plots mid-battle. (The bomb is ticking, don't let the EOD tech be jostled while he's working!)

I think a helpful side bar is a good solution. As a fellow tabletop RPG designer I’m also afraid of people not considering use cases or forgetting important rules.

Maybe my table was unusual, but in the group I used to be part of players absolutely would help each other strategize. Each player still had the final say on what their character did, but it was entirely acceptable for other players to make suggestions. Then again this was also many years ago, at an actual physical table, and all of us were also friends outside the game. I could see how in an increasingly online ecosystem where some player might never interact with each other outside the game that kind of friendly "advice" might instead be considered rude or condescending.

Can a spell pushback trigger an opportunity attack? No. It is stated in the PHB that it doesn't. However, dissonant whispers says the enemy "moves" away, as in runs away. It isn't a knockback. Therefore you can use an opportunity attack.

I think flavour text can be really useful when trying to convey design intent without overcomplicating the rules themselves. Especially when you separate mechanics and flavour text as much as 4e did.

The fact that good decision making is NOT rewarded is a very serious problem.

For the campaign I'm running right now I just fully took away opportunity attacks from all enemies except a few as a special trait to that creature. I replaced any instance of the disengage action or things that affect opportunity attacks as giving disadvantage on the first melee attack made against them. It's been great. Players actually use the maps and move freely, and combat feels a lot more fluid. It's not a change I'd recommend everyone implement because it does take a significant amount work to rebalance encounters. But if you're willing to do the work, it's a solution I recommend.

Instructions unclear, deleted everything except health and Attack actions.

"I've seen treantmonk play, and I'm kinda scared of him now"

I think you are misinterpreting feedback. The feedback that the wind subclass should have more than 1 ability is not saying your spell is bad. Its saying that the players want a choice of spells. Leave that spell as something that people can use creatively and add a couple more. Perhaps a simple damage spell with slighter more range and some sort of defensive spell. Once people have options they will start finding the best option and using it to its fullest, but when they feel like they do not have options they get stubborn. If anything, you need to clarify how far characters are moved on the subsequent turn. Can you move them 10 feet into where you are moving the new position of the cube that moves them again? That is unclear from the text. I would expect to only be allowed to move a target 10ft, not 20ft based on a quick read and not trying to get around dedigners intent.

" DnD isnt a game where a player is judged wether a player makes good or bad decisions, Not really* " meanwhile in the footnote. *DnD has repeatedly released options, subclasses and feats which are so good or bad that it becomes a cointoss wether the table will judge you, both for picking said options or not picking said options. The result on the Dissonant Whispers poll is something that I would guess, Comes not from the idea that this is a way to cool combo to not be intended. As it is from the typical DnD language trying to obfuscate the intention. You could argue as much as you want on wether Dissonant Whispers is forced movement or not but there is nothing to confirm or deny this outright from a surface reading. Where in most other systems that I personally play clarify if it is forced movement when effects don't push as much as they make a creative move of its own accord.

The more a game leans on the mechanics, the flatter its tactics become. Your insight of easy to learn, hard to maste is not wrong. The thing is, dnd design philosophy is like you described. Most of the text is just about combat, but the game is really about expression of character. I would suggest you look into tactical infinity and fruitful void, two core concepts of older dnd editions that cover a lot of this video's reflections.

Attacks of opportunity were much better in 3.5 if you actually understood how they worked, namely that almost no one got more than one for each of their own turns, not one per enemy, so there were a variety of valid strategies where tanky characters provoke them deliberately. Sadly, the concept of reactions was not well fleshed out in 3.5; the only other reaction was feather fall. When they dusted it off and tried to "fix" reactions, they messed up a lot.

"Arguing" over rules is a feature, not a bug. Is why I play other TTRPGs now a days.

Yeeeeees! I am super excited for nimble 5e, they just previewed the shadowmancer and it seems amazing

I’m glad you made a video about this, I’m designing a campaign that’s intended to be difficult and tactical. I ran into these problems along the way and I’m fixing them one by one with home brew rules. The first major problem was making the monsters fit the setting (so I made a monster manual from scratch) then I fixed travel (by making different biomes have fundamentally different challenges that act as encounters) and now I’m trying to encourage my players to use actual tactics and think creatively. I’m likely going to use a very lenient system here and mostly rework things like opportunity attacks and the like.

I’m a Magic: the Gathering player, and MTG is also an exception-based game. Sometimes, when MTG design wants to convey something that may not be immediately clear about an ability or clarify something, without putting it *in* the ability itself (thus implying that it is an exception), it employs reminder text, which is italicized parentheses after the ability. If you wanted to employ it in this case, you could say “…A willing creature can choose to fail this save. _(The direction you choose does not have to be horizontal, so choosing directly up, directly down, or at a diagonal is valid.)_ “ This enables you to prompt the viewer to look for unorthodox uses while keeping it simple.

I never would have questioned the idea of Dissonant Whispers provoking opportunity attacks. I long ago concluded that was a designed intent of the spell, and if it wasn't intended, then it should have been intended. In any case, that's the way my clever NPCs use it while I DM.

DnD5e has a serious problem of simplicity and rule lawyers who read a lot of internet weird stuff and get all messed up. They choose 2 paths: break the game or paralyze the game in the middle of a combat or dialogue for half an hour to discuss a rule they actually get wrong but can't accept.

“Slow down an enemy during a chase-“ During a what now? In D&D? 🤣 (Now I want to play with the Parrs)

This seems like more of a reading comprehension problem, right? The opportunity attack happens because the movement is using the Wyverns Reaction, but it can only be a melee attack So if the wyvern is flying, no opportunity. If the wyvern is grounded, then you get opportunity I dunno, it seems pretty straight forward

When I first used the dissonant whisper combo in a game (having looked the ruling up beforehand) a player called me out and said "that doesn't work". I said "no, it does". He said "no, I'm sure you can't Opportunity Attack a creature that is forced to walk away from you". A recitation of Jeremy Crawford's tweet ended the discussion. xD

I think the simplest way to solve the problem here is to stack rules. Dissonant whisper: causes the target to do a Force Movement (page x) If you don't remember what a Forced movement is, on page X you can read: Forced Movement: doesn't trigger opportunity attacks

Maybe you could list out the possible effects of manifest wind the same way prestidigitation and similar cantrips does. It might be a long list but you can also combine to keep it fairly concise. Something like; Choose one the following. - Wind of Jumping. Place wind in a space you can see, it prevents fall damage and safely propels creatures upwards or forwards. - Wind of Propelling. Launch a creature upwards taking fall damage or away.

The reason why i said yes is because i actually looked up the interaction for stuff like repelling blast and polearm master. Since i found out forced movement didn't trigger opportunity attacks and thus made that part of the Sentinel/Polearm master combo a non-issue. Since Dissonant Whispers makes them use their movement to get away from you, its not forcing extra movement, which means it is taking their movement action and triggering opportunity attacks. But yes, interactions like that are why ive been looking at old 2e stuff to see if i could possibly port it over to 5e since its a system I've gotten more used to modding lately. I have the Council of Wyrms setting and absolutely wanted to try and make a 5e version of it... But I've got to practice a bit more with the 2e system before i see what can stay and what can go

The white dragon breathes on you. noob: takes half damage on successful save. Master: Takes cover. Wasn't there, dragon breathes on illusion or decoy. Got the jump on the dragon, didn't allow it to get a chance to attack. Had already taken a potion of resist cold. lured the dragon in a trap. But its up to the DM to present the subtle opportunities to take actual tactical options, by starting combat long before initiative is rolled. Survival checks, stealth checks, nature checks, perception checks... Skill challenges are the key to tactical gameplay in D&D. add in knowing when to run away and double back, and Finding ways to attack without exposing yourself. And as a player, the most powerful way to make sure your party is able to play tactically is this: When immature players try to ruin your fun, let them suffer the consequences. Don't save them. When one of your less experienced party members decides to act in a way that is not tactically optimal, you need to let them get spanked. Let the player learn from their mistakes. Barbarian gives away your position, running into a combat situation where you could have picked off enemies from cover? You just have to abandon them. Retreat, double back, and stage a proper ambush.

That’s because most people who want any sort of depth or complexity don’t stay either 5E. They go to a previous edition, or a different game system, or heavily homebrew it. And even then, 5E onwards seems like it’s caught between stripping options down, even if just flavor, to handful of choices, or just saying “I don’t know, do whatever you want”. Modern D&D seems to be catering to the lowest, most casual audience (not inherently bad, but a bit of a bait and switch from what was promised early in 5E), yet still have bad balance to the point where you can feel how some options trivialize things and others make you a burden for the party.

My nost hated spells in 5e are continuous AOEs like Moonbeam and the elemental walls, with their "when entering the area for the first time or starting their turn in it". Every time one was used at a table around me there was confusion about how many times a creature should be procking it.

I actually disagree with most of the thesis here- I can accept that DnD's designers are probably not _intentionally_ trying to give the game a ton of depth and room for character optimization, but I also think you are wildly underestimating the degree to which such things are present (especially once you get beyond the first handful of levels.) You mentioned Treantmonk, who is a very good example of this- the difference between one of his characters and a bog-standard "I took 20 levels in the same class and picked whatever spells seemed fun" character designed by a non-optimizer is absolutely night and day. Optimized characters can, in many cases, solo an equal-CR monster _by themselves_, something that is supposed to be "a hard fight" for an entire party of that level according to the DMG. What I would say instead is that DnD, while having a decent amount of depth (though certainly far from the most of its style of TTRPG) has a fairly low skill floor. The absolute worst, trashiest DnD character you can make at low-ish levels (below 7, we'll say) is gonna have a pretty reasonable output no matter how hard you try to mess them up. Sure, you can put your stats in silly places, but if you are bringing a +2 or +3 in your primary then you are doing Just Fine for the most part, and that level of optimization ("my Barbarian should probably be strong and tough") is well within the capability of even the most inexperienced players. That's not to say designing against depth is a bad thing- I think it's a valid game philosophy, and there absolutely are games that utilize it. Apocalypse World and similar narrative-focused systems jump to mind as games where system mastery is all but irrelevant and tends to be actively discouraged; you can absolutely make a great game that way, or a great supplement. But I think you're drastically underestimating the degree to which system mastery and optimization are both possible and beneficial in DnD, and I don't think it's a good example of the sort of design argument that you're making.

In my LGS, I've noticed a lot of people who started with D&D 5e move over to pathfinder or 3.5 once they became experienced enough to know exactly what stories they want to tell. 5e does a lot right when it comes to acquainting a new player starting from nothing to TTRPGS but once those new players start getting comfortable, they find themselves growing out of the tools provided by 5e's simplicity.

“, provoking opportunity attacks as normal.” Doesn’t create an exception, does clarify the intent.

That fix for Dissonant Whispers would only encourage casters to not cast it unless there was an ally that could take advantage of the OA. They would understand that the spell was only worth it if the situation was present.

"Provoking opportunity attacks, as usual". Sometimes the players need to be reminded, and yes, that means that sometimes a rule will be repeated, but that's better than expecting everyone to remember everything. I vaguely remember an item or spell that refered to the potion of heroism, that itself has a link to bless, so to understand that option you had to search two extra options. Which is a bit of time if your player doesn't know how their abilities work (which happens) so you have to spend five minutes looking up rules. All to save a single sentence.

Although I agree with the rule and exception model, some non clear interactions should have flavor text to clarify. Kind of mtg inspired. For instance, dissonant wispers triggers opportunity attack but not booming blade extra damage, what is weird.

I've been framed... Anyone would know I'm never so succinct as to say something in four words that could be said in four paragraphs. This interesting thing about this one is that the rules themselves are pretty clear how the interaction works, but so many people have this term "forced movement" in their mind. Any time this conversation comes up, you'll see something like "forced movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks", but that's not a term the ever rules use. Off the top of my head, "forced movement" isn't a thing in 5e; somehow somewhere people have found this term and grafted onto the rules, and then used that term that doesn't exist to confuse themselves about the rules. It is a fascinating example of how even when you specify the interaction directly and specific, that is sometimes not good enough. My theory is that because the rules text is clunky ("You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction") people just needed a term to summarize that, so used the term "Forced Movement" (which I think comes from 4e), and because that term has no definition in 5e, it causes some degree of confusion what falls into that term. The rules themselves were very clear, but not easy to summarize briefly, so got garbled. I feel like the lesson here is that if you don't summarize the rules into catchy and specific one/two word terms, the players are going to do that for you. You can be as specific as you want with the rules, but if that's not how a player would teach it to another player, you'll get rules-drift where new terms are invented and misunderstood all before anyone actually reads the rules. The term "forced movement" being so widespread despite not being in the rules is good example of this.

"they would take damage I think" Personally, if a party of optimizers really tried, I think they would take minimal damage in most situations, I would like to refer to the gauntlet run on CMCC's builds titled "Treantmonk (and friends) vs THE NEW Gauntlet". It shreds things. Besides that, it is possible to optimize or strategize for silly things, like over 30 armor class, long range or ending the turn inside of a pocket dimension. You do have a point though, the floor and ceiling, especially of what is reasonable, is way closer than in some other games.

Honestly I was both shocked, but also not surprised how many people got the thing about dissonate whispers wrong. The PHB is very clear about what provokes an attack of opportunity and what doesnt. That said, I feel like the way 5e is written makes it very difficult for people to internalize these rulings, because lets face it, your average player is not going to remember all of those pages of rules. Honestly those side panel reminders of base rules should be ultilized way more often then they are just because of how difficult it is to keep track of everything. A common example at my table is how often I have to remind some of my players who are spell casters that they cannot cast 2 spells per turn, even if one is a bonus action.

One reason i wont be replaying BG3 despite my great love for it is simply because every single battle is "life or death" and by 40 hrs of "hard fought" battles its just extremely exhausting

Reminds me of the way Portal and Portal 2 made implementing the puzzle solutions relatively easy, giving you no opportunity to run too slowly or jump two pixels to the left. Sometimes an aspect of game design is about not making it frustrating for the average player, not allowing the exceptional player to feel extra skilled.

Here is general rule of thumb for opportunity attacks: If they are forefully shoved (feet not walking), there is no opportunity attack. If they use their feet to walk out of range, its an opportunity attack. So dissonant whispers causes an opportunity attack, and the homebrew ability doesn't.

I heard this was a channel that got excited about sidebars; subscribed immediately.

Great video. The idea that players are more interested in making characters that fit a theme is true. The last time I made a druid I made sure his abilities and equipment matched the character I was creating, even if it hindered my combat abilities. That is way more interesting than trying to min-max combat potential

The third method of explanation would be to have an example paragraph. i.e., describe what happens when Bob uses the ability, and mention that it causes an opportunity attack as part of the example. It's not rules, so it doesn't turn into assuming the opposite is generally true thanks to exception-based design, and it doesn't generate a sidebar (handy if sidebars are not a normal part of your layout design).

This video is wild for a number of reasons, but Changing Dissonant whispers damage and adding it back to a possible opportunity attack instead of just putting reminder text in parentheses is actually crazy, even as an example. The Game(and the spell in this particular case)assumes the player understands the the basic rules of the game they're playing, which is pretty common among most games. D&D tends to use natural language mixed with specific game terms to wright its books/spells/features ect. It could have reminder text in parenthesis, but you gotta keep in mind that doing that dozens (in not hundreds) of times in a physical book takes up a lot of space, that could be used for more important things. Interesting topic thou.

Excellent video content! I've undoubtedly fallen into some of those same traps. I think the title is a little misleading (although possibly on purpose to reinforce the point(?))

Can’t find my original post to add, but… I’d be fascinated to see your take on Mage the Ascension. Its magic system is 90% player expression.

12:30 As the Philosopher Adam Savage (more than) once said: Well, there's your problem. Don't get it twisted. I am not claiming that the thesis of this video is wrong. I am claiming it is a mistake to assume players are going to grasp the intention from your rule. They are looking at a sea of options, usually in a hurry. They might spot your intentions but mostly likely, they will read the name of the rule and decide if it applies to their concept. Loose Cannon is a terrible name for this power. A loose cannon is a heavy object that is not securely lashed to the deck of a ship. In anything but calm seas, the object moves unpredictably and leaves a path of destruction in its wake. The metaphor of loose cannon is a person whose actions are unpredictable, and dangerous. Often in the sense that they don't follow instructions. They either leave an actual path of destruction or they are a detriment to whatever project they are a part of. Your sense that people fear and want to escape loose cannons is correct. But not because of how quickly they cause harm. Instead, they are dangerous just by existing. The player who picks the ability doesn't care about the details. They are drawn to the flavor. Rules lawyers who like flavor will likely skip the ability because "it doesn't do what it says on the tin." Only the optimizer is going to consider how the rules define the ability. I might call the ability terrifying prowess. Not because I saw the issue instantly. Rather because play testing demonstrated that players missinterpret what it does. A more flavorful name might be Tatsumaki or Terrible Tornado. But it wouldn't be the best choice because it relies on the player "getting the reference." tl;dr What you call the rule is probably slightly more important than what the rule says. If you understand why players missinterpret the intention based on the name, the problem isn't the players. It's the name.

1 - Manifest wind very OP for a cantrip. For the amount of options it should be level-1. Because cantrips are Gust and Lighting Lure 2 - Players makes choices for expression themselves becauae they want to play unoptimized and cool. That is a type of players. But there are other types. Like "pro max-min challengers" or "explorers"

Ya know, I'm half way through and listening to how shallow it can be when I wondered if DnD just reached into cyberpunk's pocket and took their tagline. "STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE"

Argument: half of me is surprised people didn't choose to simply believe Dissonant Whispers could provoke opportunity, or ask their DM if it could at all (in my eyes, that's why they are there for, to moderate the play). On the other half, I am surprised that people can also just be too shy or otherwise to speak about rules like that. I am a player of 2 full fledged DnD campigns with DMs who don't know each other personally and in both the DM assures you that you can just say what you want to do, and they can say yes or no or "you can do this but not enough x for this". Other times they wanted me to read spells to make sure what they do and to interpret should it be more than just that. But then again, I done my coolest stuff as a player with a Mage Hand trying to push a total of 3 hostile NPCs off a ship, succeeding only once and the third time the guy eventually threw himself into the water. Aka. I feel like the spells should be a vessel for creativity with only some limitations, unless a damaging spell. On one hand, moderate the power level but on the other, this magic system of DnD isn't really grounded (especially that if you wanted to bullshit everyone, play Sorcerer), so might as well go to town with the fun and silly stuff, and what's hybrid is a mix of both.

The problem is that after 3.5e the designers traded complex but logical functions for simpler but more "gaming" functions. When the whole game is based on character expression you are bound to lose some of that expression when you go all out on the simplistic approach. E.g. in 3.5e there was move silently and hide, and were countered by listen and spot. When you played a rogue you had to hide and remain stationary or move hidden and silently to the next place you wanted to go. This was logical. Stealth and Perception in 5e can be played that way but although is simpler it leaves a lot to interpretation and players sometimes forget that their characters make noise and sound even exists in the world.

All of these examples were from players misinterpreting rules or making bad build decisions, it doesn't reflect on the game itself. AoO on dissonant whispers is very clear and if a table thinks it is too broken so it must be a mistake, then I feel bad for that table because there's probably a bunch of stuff they don't allow that are part of the rules, which makes the game more dumbed down to simpler options from their perspective. For loose cannon, it's not your game's fault for players judging a book by its cover and not thinking. PF2 does this a lot too, where there are options that look really flavorful on the surface but just don't work well at all. For example there is the feat Charlatan which you may think by the name you want on your charisma rogue to do something involving social trickery, but in reality the feat just let's you make your spellcasting look like it came from a magic item instead of cast by you, something literally completely useless on a rogue with no spells. If a player picks it anyway based purely on the name and then complains they never use it, that is a failing on the players part, not the game's

I really like Manifest Wind and, frankly, the sidebar is the easiest option.

As an old school Dm, c1980, I don't see a problem or what's being solved. I haven't ever had a character request an opportunity attack, nor have I suggested. No problem, no solution needed.

This is why I still play 3.5