Why do people call it bland?

Super generic fantasy setting. Granted, some of this has to do with D&D's own popularity and influence, so that the things that once set it apart have become old hat.

Tangent: my brother's never been very into fantasy stuff, and when the LotR movies were coming out, he was mocking them for being super cliche and trite, with bow-shooting elves, gruff dwarves and so forth. I had to politely inform him that Tolkien is where a lot of those tropes came from.

Bounded accuracy completely destroys the "zero to hero" feel of 2e, 3.X, and 4e and makes "throw several dozen CR 1/2 longbowmen at the problem with the mob rules" the solution to most of the world's monsters.

Even high-level 2e characters had importance to them because stronger monsters could only be hit by powerful magic weapons.

I mean you're right but this is about 5e in particular. D&D also has some cooler settings that aren't Forgotten Realms at least.

>Even high-level 2e characters had importance to them because stronger monsters could only be hit by powerful magic weapons.
That makes no sense desu, like, "must be this high to hit" never applied to weapons, and Ravenloft did everything it could to move away from this shit.

You're still a hero, just not a superhero.

A really almost no one played above name level in 2E; one of the annoyances of 3.4 was the implication the game would shove you through all 20 levels when everyone knows balance went to shit past level 10-12.

>A really almost no one played above name level in 2E; one of the annoyances of 3.4 was the implication the game would shove you through all 20 levels when everyone knows balance went to shit past level 10-12.

Maybe they should have tried to make those levels work then, rather than going 'Yeah, those levels suck and we'll just accept it'

>never applied to weapons
I mean never applied to character level, just to weapon enchantment.

It's been a couple of years since I last touched D&D (3.5), and had to touch the mess that was AC, but can't that be solved by giving big imposing monsters DR? Is that still a thing? Is that considered messing up Bounded Accuracy?

And magic weapons are rare in 2e.

Want to hit that nalfeshnee? You'll need a +4 weapon.

No hope in sending dozens of longbowmen against it.

There's actually resistance and immunity, not DR. Some creatures are wholly immune to mundane weapon damage.

A lot of the complaining I'm seeing is related to the fact that the playtest red dragon was young adult, and even in 1E a YA Red Dragon could have been slaughtered by an army of normal archers.

And the thing is in AD&D, outside of a few of those, most monsters could be dispatched by enough short bow armed militia.

>"zero to hero" feel
>3.X

Primo meemo my friend

Even under the shitlordiest of classes like the monk or a fighter, a high-level monk or fighter is several orders of magnitude more competent than a level 1 monk or fighter.

That was entirely based on DM generosity, not on your character level.

And a Nalfeshnee can and will tear through a troop of mundane archers.

It is a competent game that brings nothing new to the table without being unplayably bad. Which means there is literally no other valid argument to make against it but some fa/tg/uys need to complain about something because they hate popularity.

So what you're saying is that it's a more believable world since common dragons can't cut a path through entire kingdoms by being literally invincible to anything short of a demi-god.

>And a Nalfeshnee can and will tear through a troop of mundane archers.

In 5e? It won't. It'll get pincushioned by the CR 1/2 scouts.

This is still the case; you have feats, archetypes, items, higher proficiency.

It has a ridiculous armor class and teleports at 120 feet on a full action, a distance only longbows can hit without disadvantage.

Also CR isn't calculated like in 3.5, the baseline NPC scout in the MM is a level 5 Ranger or Rogue.

The scouts in the MM have double attacks and high accuracy and more range than the nalfeshnee can ever muster.

The mob rules tilt thing totally in the scouts' favor.

>the baseline NPC scout in the MM is a level 5 Ranger or Rogue.
Nah man, it's way weaker than a level 5 ranger or rogue.

It's the equivalent of a level 2 ranger at best.

It's literally a 5HD humanoid with Extra Attack; all it lacks is the special class features of Ranger 5.

>5 HD
3 HD.

Way less features than a level 3 ranger too. That's why it's level 2 at best.

This is just through the paradigm of combat, because first, D&D is strongly combat focused in the zeitgeist, and second, combat is very dependent on system/edition, while non-combat is largely dependent on DM and role-playing

Older editions were exciting because they were so brutal, and excitement could be drawn from your character's survival never being assured.

3e's combat was exciting for the same reason it's fun to prove that a new top-tier MTG deck concept works, just with character building instead of deck building. Also, at top-tier combat, instant-death and instant-fight-ending-moves were the "meta" so much of the excitement of older editions was still there as well.

4e combat was fun because it was a well thought out, wholly balanced, intricate tactical wargame that's deeper than Warmhordes, yet faster (though still slower than other editions of D&D.) Similarly, while the immediate deadliness was lost, it was replaced with slowly diminishing protagonist plot-shield in the form of healing surges.

5e is deadlier than 4e, but not deadly enough for the excitement of older editions or even 3e, but deadly enough to remove the feeling of plot-shield that could make a game feel like an action movie.

5e is more balanced than 3e, but that balance doesn't go along with strong gameist tactical depth that makes the combat itself feel like a game.

5e is less balanced than 4e, but without the OTT gap between optimization and lack of optimization that made it so satisfying to prove the performance of a character-build.

It avoids all the flaws of previous editions' combat, but also avoids all of the gems that made them fun.

5e combat has one advantage: it's over with quickly. If you ever found yourself saying "man, I wish combat would just get over with so we can get back to playing the game" then 5e might actually suit you.... however if you're that type of player, you probably already have a less combat-focused system that's already your favorite.

Your DM is probably just not playing 5e enemies in combat smart enough. With our DM it's always:

>The goblins use disengage as free action, run right pass your front link and shank that fag in the back with the holy symbol

>The enemy wizard pokes his head around the corner, fires off a magic missile at your tank, dodges your readied action arrow because you're firing at disadvantage pass enemy and get back behind cover

I had to go tunnel fighter / polearm mastery / sentinel just to get some control of combat.

Lots of /tg sing the praises of Savage Worlds, but the three games I've played in were pure, griding boredom no matter what I tired to break the game out of it;s funk. Too may munchkins.

The current 5e game I play in has had some of the best off-the-cuff roleplaying, hilarious laughs, awesome story telling and overall great experiences I've had in years. Some of my most fondly remembered TTRPG sessions come from RIFTS.

Any Tabletop RPG, regardless of of rules or system, is only as bland s the DM and players make it. Think something is bland? Add some spice! Falvor doesn't have to be backed by modifiers and bonuses!

>/tg

It's Veeky Forums, god damn it.

1: I am the DM

2: I gave 5e a two month fair shake, one month as DM, and one month as player, and it was dull as a player, and too hard to balance as a DM. Haven't played it in over a year.

Would much rather play/run a specialized game or edition for the exact kind of game I want to run rather than the "tries to do everything and does none of them exceptionally" edition. Maybe if I needed to find a group, I'd play or run 5e, because I hear it's good for finding a group, since it's hard to love, but even harder to hate, but I already have a group.

>ny Tabletop RPG, regardless of of rules or system, is only as bland s the DM and players make it.
But system still matters, and can make it easier/harder. 5e is a safe choice, that's easy to make "good enough" but really hnard to make "great." TLDR, it's great for newbies (well... newbie PC's, but not newbie DM's, it's really hard on DM's)

As a new DM, I'm all ears to what I could add for some flavor, suggestions?

How is it like an MMO?

The same reason people call food bland.
It lacks a distinct flavour.
It has none of the setting support pre-WotC D&D enjoyed.
It lacks a clear and climbable ivory tower to power, and naked caster supremacy from 3finder.
And all the "MMO" bits (more like Final Fantasy Tactics if it is vidya) and tactical options and class "balance" of 4e.

It has nothing that makes it distinct. The system is marginally supported and never more than tepidly daring in anything it does. Nothing really new. Nor is there sufficient Nostalgia appeal to make that lack of bold anything forgivable.
Then there's the rocket tag of low levels, where the only right way to play is as a gang of honorless thugs, fleeing from anything resembling a fair fight, only attacking from surprise and ignoring any opportunity for Heroics. Which is sorta boring for a fantasy adventure game.

Same way 3.5 was Diablo 2

>5e hard on DMs
I would say it actively hates DMs who care about game craft.
The DMG is overwhelmingly loot tables, and has barely any under the hood for encounter building or story pacing. It vigorously encourages DM fiat at every turn to mask a lack of any coherent design structure for a frame work.

So like the 2e DMG

>AD&D had the Diablo splat
>3.X gets called a Diablo clone
>3.X has a WoW splat
>4e gets called a WoW clone

It's like poetry, each stanza sort of rhymes with the last.

Pretty much, but with even less on rewards tailored to character goals (XP by class) and how to for settings other than Grey Realms.

Which was written in 1989, when shit like pic-related literally qualified as "modern game design." What's 5e's excuse?

I've run a year-long campaign, levels 1-8, and at the end we just turned away from it. It IS bland. Out-of-combat is nonexistent and combat is an endless repetition of the same two tricks (unless you are caster, then you have abit more variety). There is nothing in the game that other games or editions can't do better.
I have a list of more specific criticism but honestly the 5e IDF has already popped up here saying that all criticism is invalid. So keep your game I guess, I'm already enjoying something else.

>It's a player problem
No. Just no. Players operate within the boundaries of a system. There is only so much you can do to add flavour to your actions when all you are actually doing is "d20 to hit" all day erryday. And the resources on the GM side are just pathetic.

Get your players to play Battlemaster fighters and paladins.

>Any Tabletop RPG, regardless of of rules or system, is only as bland s the DM and players make it. Think something is bland? Add some spice! Falvor doesn't have to be backed by modifiers and bonuses!

GM guide is just a list of the most basic shit every retard could piece together on its own ("villages have houses!").
CR system is busted and most creatures in the MM are just sacks of hitpoints with maybe a spell or two and very little to differentiate them mechanically one another.
I've been GMing for almost 20 years now and I can tell you that there is almost nothing in 5e worth the effort.

So what you are telling me is that in order to make the game work I have to disregard player's preferences for a certain narrative and make them choose the few options that do something, instead of playing a game that actually encourages and rewards them?
Not exactly a strong case there.

I think you intended to reply to

.. crap, I responded to the wrong one too, damn, must be a curse, I mean you meant to reply to

It's your players' fault if they want to play boring builds.

It was designed to recapture the 3.5 audience, while appeasing the 4e crowd and simultaneously evoking nostalgia from the pre-3e people.
As with all products that try to appeal to multiple wildly incompatible audiences at once, it was designed for the lowest common denominator. It does absolutely nothing for fear of offending anyone at all. And it shows in the system.
Any interesting concepts that popped up during the playtest were cut out post-haste and either tossed in the trash or replaced with something blander.

It's a similar problem to the one the AAA gaming industry has. Everyone keeps throwing extraneous, unrelated stuff into their games for the sole purpose of mass market appeal and the resulting product is complete and utter shite.

>So what you are telling me is that in order to make the game work I have to disregard player's preferences for a certain narrative and make them choose the few options that do something, instead of playing a game that actually encourages and rewards them?
You are literally describing what people liked about 3e, bemused the loss of when 4e came out, and (successfully) demanded the return of when they were developing 5e.

Champion fighter is specifically a build designed for people who don't want to do paperwork and prefer "I hit it with my sword" instead.

So if you make a champion then complain that the class doesn't have much variety in combat you don't have much ground to stand on.

>no more obtuse as fuck skills,
Well, that's something it's lacking from 2e right there,

AD&D had the Diablo 1 splat (The Awakening is Diablo 1 as an AD&D adventure). 3.X had Diablerie and To Hell and Back.

The problem with the Champion is a different one.
It's sold as less flexible than the Battemaster but more efficient at what it does. Mathematical fact is, the Battlemaster is more flexible and far more efficient at being a Champion than a Champion is.

I had a barbarian, a ranger and a rogue in the party.
So their choices were pretty much "attack, rage or frenzy", "attack or hide" and "shoot my fucking bow".
And don't get me started with the warlock.

I thought mathematically Champion still does the highest average damage per round

Battlemaster only overtakes if it lands trip attack on the first shot then follows it up with that advantage combo rape train.

What I'm getting out of this discussion right now is that called shots ought to be a part of everyone's games desu.

It's definitely the best version of d20 so far, but in that respect it kind of reveals the issue with d20.

AD&D was a system designed for a very specific purpose: fantasy adventure roleplaying. It's a system that works quite poorly when applied to other purposes, but for that purpose it's very good, if sometimes counter-intuitive in its presentation.

3E came out the same year as WOTC's Star Wars RPG, and both used d20. The system was not designed with a particular identity in mind, and it kind of shows. It could have been aimed in a particular direction, but it just wasn't focused, instead trying to be SORT OF generic (so it could be further recycled for d20 Modern), but not really.

The other big problem is that WOTC seems to hate releasing campaign setting material. Even if TSR's overly-ambitious setting release schedule was poor business sense, it kept the game alive and well-supported, and gave us some of the best, most inventive content we've ever seen for D&D. After Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Dragonlance gave us an exhaustive glut of medieval fantasy settings, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Planescape provided excellent applications of those same mechanics to brand new high fantasy settings like nobody'd ever seen before.

Meanwhile, WOTC only ever brought over Forgotten Realms to 3E, then introduced Eberron. To be fair, Eberron is awesome, but it's only one setting. 4E gave us Points of Light, which was just a remix of everything that came before, and then ported over FR, Eberron, and Dark Sun in a mere two sourcebooks each. 5E has given us the Sword Coast guide -- a book devoted to a small part of the Forgotten Realms setting -- and has nothing else on the horizon in terms of setting support, and really not much on the horizon at all except for more adventure modules.

Despite being the best WOTC edition, WOTC's unwilling to commit much to it in terms of resources. They just don't seem to care now that it's already out the door.

Tell your players to be more creative.

Our barbarian crack us all up just by setting up ridiculous triggers for when he rage. We have a death monk in our party and average encounter start with him doing things like

"I ready an action to get angry when the death monk does his big scary voice".

That's not how rage works in 5e.

>WOTC only ever brought over Forgotten Realms to 3E
They did Greyhawk as well, and made Ghostwalk (which got nil support, but still)

They only KINDA did Greyhawk. They never did a Greyhawk book or anything, they just kind of lightly seeded Greyhawk stuff into the core rulebooks.

It's very half-hearted.

Feinting Attack and Riposte work wonders.

>4E gave us Points of Light, which was just a remix of everything that came before, and then ported over FR, Eberron, and Dark Sun in a mere two sourcebooks each

Mind you, it did very well with all those books.

More than that.

I'd say the 'half-hearted' descriptor applies better to Ravenloft, which got a port of I6 and then farmed out to White Wolf.

Because, for better and worse, it has been streamlined where you generally have no absolutely insane builds where you can crawl up people's asses and explode them from within while making the crowd cheer for you. But that doesn't make it bad is it generally balances things out better....except for bards, the goddamn skillmonkeys that they are.

Or - OR - I play another game that doesn't force us to disregard the rules and make up shit because the base game lacks substance. "Just be more creative" means nothing when there is nothing in the game that actually supports that creativity.
You freeformers are the cancer that killed D&D.

>the best WOTC edition
triple kek

5e is a cup. It seems empty, but it's that emptiness that gives it value. It gives you all the tools you actually need to be creative. Simply because the game doesn't tell you *how* to be creative does not mean it "lacks substance".

At this point you must be trolling, because nobody could be actually this stupid.

Funny thing is, the cup itself has no flavour.
Thus, the game is bland.

I like 5e mechanically but all of the Adventure Paths (aka bloated modules) have been as boring as they could possibly be. Your options are to fight generic cultists in the Forgettable Realms which is literally the world's most bland fantasy setting, or play a tired re-tread of Castle Gothic-stereotypes. Plus I hate the MTG-esque artwork and the kid-friendly Hasbro influence that the whole thing reeks of.

Well, 4e combat was fun. Whether or not it was like an MMO, I don't really care. I always thought of it more as like FFT, which is a fun game.

5e combat went with theater of the mind, which is nice and all, but then forgot to add any interesting props for the actors. Bascially, all the classes are boring, and combat tends to devolve into DPR races, unless the DM puts in significantly more work than he would have to do in any other system.

>5e combat went with theater of the mind
What, you don't use map/grid/token/miniatures in your group? Well that's fucked.

Tfw I'm the only one who likes D&D in my town in poor ass eastern europe so i have no one to play with except my one friend. The rest are in warhammer fantasy circlejerk that hates other systems.

5e doesn't make any outright assumptions about whether you're running with or without a grid, but given that absolutely everything is measured in increments of 5 feet, it still definitely supports using maps and minis.

I will say that I agree with those who argue that WotC seems to be avoiding any kind of risks and playing it safe with everything they've released for 5e so far.

You can totally use 5e with a grid. But it also has less support for it than 4e did, which required grid work.

Making the grid optional for all abilities in 5e meant they had to tone down abilities that would use grids and positioning in clever and creative ways.

The best part was the writers having to obviously avoid mentioning anything Dragonlance related in the two domains it tied to because Hickman and Weis threw a fit about Soth being a darklord when it originally came out.

Part of me wishes they'd just gone with it and made the Knight of the Black Thorn darklord with a vague shadow silhouette of Soth for portrait just to get back at them.

That's neat and all, but the grid not being optional is something a lot of people hated about 3rd and 4th editions.

Combat is terribly over simplified, weapons are all the same, interesting options/combos barely exist. Casters have an "auto-attack" for some fucking reason.

Game is basically babbys first on every level. Moreso than D&D usually tends to be.

It's just more D&D, which isn't enough for a game to be worth playing. 4e was flawed, but also innovative and exciting and could have taken the hobby in a cool new direction, and then they rolled back every single good idea from it. That's bland.

Are you implying that's not the case with 5e?

Because you'd be very, very wrong.

In 5e, it's more like "several times," not "several orders of magnitude."

bump

Because it could have been what 4E was originally going to be.

Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic and the Incarnum book were all basically test runs for 4E.

Something happened (IIRC, Mike Mearls had a Great Idea) and they completely scrapped it.

But the thing is, that was a great start - ToB wasn't quite right, but it hit the right balance of power - at a high level you were an army-slaying badass, without that being a problem.

Add in some noncombat things for the martial characters - an easy excuse to go retro-ish and reintroduce the lordship/stronghold features, which would also really help separate the levels of play thematically - and you've got a solid basis for martials.

Then just rein in the very well known problems with do-everything casters - which they already started with things like the Beguiler or Warmage, but couldn't really finish with the spell list as-is. Binders and Totemists were interesting and flavourful, without really outstripping ToB classes.

5e will never have anything nearly as interesting as the 3.5 binder - which was only broken if you went Anima Mage (because Wizards are broken), or really, really, pushed Zceryll as hard as you could.

It will never have the Cephalopocalypse.

It's sure is a good thing we don't play 5e.

People say that because you have abilities with various uptimes, a "tank, dps, wizard, healer" paradigm, and cool and unique abilities for enemies.

Problem is, most of the people making these statements fail to realize that modern MMOs that compare 4e to cribbed this shit from earlier editions of D&D in the first place.

So if "4e is like MMO" is the claim, and "MMO is like D&D" is true, then the complaint can be simplified down to "4e is like D&D", and when you consider 4e IS a D&D, it can be further simplified as "D&D is like D&D." Which is a ridiculous complaint, so they just meme.

>Because it could have been what 4E was originally going to be.
>Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic and the Incarnum book

Maybe, just maybe. Someday wotc could finally make a D&D that is a clean up of the previous edition instead of a brand new game each time.

5e seems to have turned out fairly well overall, barring the lack of content and perhaps flaws in the design that we haven't yet discovered, so hopefully by the time they need to refresh again 6e will be a refinement of 5e in the same way that 2e was a refinement of 1e.

>2e
>skills
NWP, fool.

Dude... nothing published by Palladium has ever qualified as modern game design. All their products are the latest colorful clown suit for KS's homeruled version of AD&D 1e.

>4e
>zero to hero

Level 1 pcs in 4e are already super heroes.

>and "MMO is like D&D" is true,
No.

An MMO is like 4e and 4e is like an MMO. It stops there. Don't run off with no fuckin twisted logic here.

Who told you that DnD outside of 4e is like an mmo and on what basis was the claim made?

There are a disturbingly high number of people whose first exposure to fantasy games was WoW. I'd bet that claim was made by one of those freakish mutants.

It's less fun than 4e OR 3.5, has less content than both, goes out of its way to include the least interesting parts of both prior editions in the least interesting ways (see Lair Actions and Hit Dice, or the return to 3.X style spellcasting, but worse), and frankly there's nothing exciting about it.

I didn't -hate- playing it (well I did, but it was my fault for trying to play a martial), but I didn't enjoy it, either.

Or you could complain that it brings nothing new to the table so there's no reason to play it over more specialized systems.

MMO took cues from D&D, ie early editions.

If 4e is being blasted for copying MMOs, and MMOs were inspired by D&D, then the complaint is basically about 4e being too similar to D&D.