What does Veeky Forums thinks of D&D 5e?

It is meh, it aggressively tries to be as inoffensive as possible. A little too much 3e in it for my taste.

a good starting point if you're interested in TTRPGs, but then you should move to more complex games

can you recommend some games?

what i dont like are character backgrounds, and i dont know if i was playing in an incorrect way but it was so hard to even challange my players without having hours long fights

if i do i'll get overrun but a mob of angry fa/tg/uys

oh whatever

D&D 3.5

While it's nowhere near as bad as the triggered anons are convinced it is, I really think that while 3.5 isn't bad, 5e is just the next step in the evolution. There's actually a lot of depth to 5e, and if you really need more, that's when I think it's time to start porting in material from older editions like 2e, 3e, and even 4e.

5e really could be the "everyone" system, if everyone brought their own ideas to it.

true, i prefer 3.5 almost only because it's fuckhuge and you can do whatever you want, give 5e a few years and it will be even better

It's alright. I miss some stuff from other editions but it will get its own variety in time.

It's pretty good.

Care to explain. Ive read about it and it doesnt seem all that bad.

>bounded accuracy
>meaningless CR
>20 level cap
No, it really won't.

it's like a summon spell, mention D&D and you get the angry fa/tg/uys

also
>implying that you will ever go above lvl 20

5e sacrificed the minutiae of individual bonuses to rolls in favor of faster play and easier balance. This trigger's some people's autism where they think every aspect they think of should be taken into account by at least a +1 somewhere.

Oh, look.

I guess I can understand that. If you wanted a lighter game you'd play something else.

You got a triple double, so fine.

The thing about bounded accuracy is that everyone is supposed to stay within a certain range of to hits and AC, in order to keep monsters threatening and to prevent the excesses of 3 and 4e bonus stacking. It's supposed to give everyone a puncher's chance, basically.

The problem is the designers do not keep to the mathematical rigor this kind of system entails (monster to hits are still all over the fucking map). An emergent bug of the system working as intended means that if you get enough "low level" guys around, they're potentially going to throw down more inputs than the game can handle, trivializing encounters.

This is why Animate Objects is the best single target blast spell in the game: ten shuriken swinging at once for 1d4+4 with top-end AC and +8 to hit is going to tear through a lot of things. This is also why a bunch of Necromancer Wizard skellys with longbows can also murder the fuck out of anything in the game not flat immune to non-magical weapons, given favorable conditions.

Finally, that idea being given to skills as well means there's potentially nothing a noble high level hero can do with skills that a 1st level peasant couldn't, unless there's a Rogue invalidating the DC system with Expertise and junk.

So, basically, your gripe is about the importance of action economy more than bounded accuracy, and your personal opinion is that you dislike the idea that numbers can overpower individually stronger but less numerous opponents.

That's hardly a major issue.

>if you get enough "low level" guys around, they're potentially going to throw down more inputs than the game can handle, trivializing encounters.

But this is completely realistic.

5e isn't your 3e/4e power fantasy where you become immune to weaker dudes just because you leveled up.

Name me a single fantasy novel series where that shit happens.

Thats something that DnD has never done very well though, for lack of a way to define degrees of success or failure.

I actually appreciate a lot of what they did with 5e for being so non-gamey and asymmetrical, but at the end of the day there's no real reason to play it.

Id say its not a major issue for you, but as somebody who runs games with 5-6 people it matters a lot to me.

Hector of the Illiad cut through many lessor men, and was only slain by a literal demigod.

A Demigod who was only killed by direct divine intervention.

isn't mythology filled with a bunch of dudes who are essentially untouchable by mortal men?

>non-gamey and asymmetrical

How are these related?

Fighting Games, the video game genre, are both gamey as fuck, and asymmetrical.

Related to what? Each other? Its just two things. Totally unrelated by anything other than both being present in 5e.

Ice cream is cold and sweet, and the two traits are nonrelated.

Sorry if I somehow implied that those two things were related.

That was mostly when he was part of a larger army, and the only time he realllllly started to cut through people was when he was blessed by a god to be the greatest of heroes for that day.

A better example would have been Samson, who killed an army with just the jawbone of an ass.

Even so, we're still talking about rareties.

You also have Conan as a hyper compent normal guy.

Batman, Bruce Lee's character in Enter the Dragon, and so on.

Are you arguing against mooks existing as a trope?

Not really. Even gods would be and could be wounded, with Ares, the Goddamn God of War, being famous for always running from a fight after receiving even just a single wound and crying like a bitch before sulking by himself somewhere.

Things like the Achille's heel business actually came from later poets than Homer, and an important scene of the Illiad has Aphrodite fleeing from battle after being wounded.

What you're talking about is heroes.

Whether DnD characters are heroes or not is a matter of personal taste.

>You also have Conan as a hyper compent normal guy.

Who's was well known for being able to fight against any number of opponents... as long as he had a wall to his back to prevent too many from engaging him at a time.

>Batman, Bruce Lee's character in Enter the Dragon, and so on.

In 5e, high level characters still can handle lots of low level characters, they just can't do so with immunity and indefinitely. Even Batman can't just fight thirty people all at once, he needs to use tactics and maneuver himself so that he never is engaged with more than a handful at a time.

Until you have that caster breaking the game by invalidating all other characters, which is why 5e was made in the first place, to avoid that particular problem.

But that's his gripe - mine is that the plain silliness of arbitrarily saying to players "you can go no further, you have to stop here."

I ran a 15 year long game at one point, and it went from level 1 to level 31. 4e wasn't even a glimmer in your brother's eye. Can I run that now? Not in 4e or 5e. Hard capped, nothing more, unless I homebrew even more than I have to to make it work on 3.PF.

I'm not interested in beer and skittles gaming, I want to run campaigns.

Those examples were not just heroes, but exceptional heroes from mythology, equivalent to 20th level characters and higher. Hell, it's from them that we get the word "epic" from, after all.

D&D is mostly modeled after heroes like Elric, Conan, F+GM, Aragorn, and so on, the heroes of fantasy, not mythology. And, these heroes did not just wade solo into battle against countless foes, but needed armies and friends, tactics and strategies, and in some cases soul-stealing artifacts.

Without the beard! It's him! Holy hahaha

I think the problem is that the scale is skewed too far downward. Id say a hypercompetent, legendary fighter should be able to take on 15 guys but in 5e the numbers are a bit shaky.

The problem is that then you're asking for a game to work in an environment that hardly anyone takes it to. Thats like saying you want to be able to retrofit minivans to pull barges. Its theoretically possible but there's no way the designer should have to account for it.

I mostly agree, but like I said, just how heroic heros should be in DnD is a matter of personal taste, and its a bit of a shame that 5e seems to make that decision for you.

1 to 31 over 15 years is an exceptional feat, not a commonplace scenario. The longest campaigns I've ever run where only 10 or so levels long, and those lasted for several years.

But really, if you're playing a game for 10 years and you hit the 20 wall, I think you've probably have enough experience with the system to homebrew a little to push it up to 30 and beyond. Still, I'm betting if you started now from level 1, by the time you hit level 20 there would be a book or online expansion for characters beyond that level.

> just how heroic heros should be in DnD is a matter of personal taste, and its a bit of a shame that 5e seems to make that decision for you.
I completely disagree. That's exactly the kind of a decision a game should make for you

There are rules for high level advancement in the DMG. Instead of levels after a large amount of experience you just basically gain an ability score advance or pick from a list similar to the feat one. Also ability scores can go up to 30 at that point

Then I suppose it should be more clear about it. I havnt really gone though 5e with a fine toothed comb but I dont get the kind of strong power-level related authorial stamp I get from something like Exalted or Barbs of Lemuria.

Im curious as to why you think that though.

If you really want to, just a few small boosts easily make a character more "epic". Even just something like a few points to their AC make them considerably less killable, and bringing back the old Damage Reduction rules is the easiest way to re-establish the old "you must be at least this level to kill this enemy" standards.

That's the funny thing about making someone effectively invincible. It's almost less a matter of combat mechanics, and more a matter of setting and story. For example, take Achilles, and give him the old DR30/+3. That basically makes anyone who doesn't have a +3 sword out of the fight, and is little different from saying "Achilles is never going to die against peons regardless of how many he fights because that's not what I like."

The wonderful thing about D&D is that there's no such thing as a hard rule, and a few quick changes are all it takes to make the world suit you better.

Just give every character DR10/+1 for every 5 levels they have or something.

No, you don't quite get it: there are people who want a DENSER game than 5e. See, fall back to 3e, where you could potentially argue a +1 to anything if you were willing to dig through a billion splats (My boots have super-thick soles, granting me a fire resistance of 1, so I should be able to walk through the mundane hot coals while taking slightly reduced damage).

And in such a system, abuses were numerous and flagrant. There are entire character optimisation boards dedicated to sussing out new bonus types to stack into existing mechanics, and finding ways to maximise said bonuses. For example, To-hit is, classically, your Base Attack Bonus plus your Strength Ability Modifier. Plus Feat Bonuses. Plus Magic Weapons. Plus Alchemical bonus. Plus Circumstance modifier. Plus Luck Modifier. Plus Insight modifier. Plus Morale modifier. Plus Profane modifier. Plus Sacred Modifier. Plus Size bonus. Plus- You get the idea right?

And meanwhile, in 4e, Getting a +2 to-hit over any other class was potentially game breaking, even if it required your entire team to do it (for a vintage example: "Cascade of Blades" a ranger daily, used to be an uncapped number of attacks, with a slowly growing penalty to-hit, and the attacks stopped when the ranger whiffed. With the right party 100% buffing the ranger, as soon as they learned this attack, they could one-shot Orcus.)

Also: the scaling mechanics of 4e resulted in things like "+37 to-hit" and "No, a 29 isn't good enough to hit the goblin."

Conversely, 5e foregoes all of that for flat numbers and a simple Advantage / disadvantage system, which is just "roll two dice, take the better / worse result." This means it's not crunchy enough for the optimisers, while still being too crunchy for the rules-lite crowd. Who does it make happy? Well, everyone who just wants to kill monsters and take their stuff, really.

>With the right party 100% buffing the ranger, as soon as they learned this attack, they could one-shot Orcus.

Pretty sure the original build did it solo?

>This means it's not crunchy enough for the optimisers,
It's actually can still get quite crunchy, and it's a bit of a every point matters kind of deal, so even a little goes a long way. There's plenty of people who still enjoy discussing the merits of each class and what's the best options for each.

>too crunchy for the rules-lite crowd.
Which is weird, because it's generally considered a fantastic first game for new groups precisely because it's relatively rules lite as far as the basics go, but gets deeper depending on how much you want to go with it.

If I wanted to play an exalted character, I'd play exalted. I think the limitations created by things like the ability score cap or bounded accuracy help secure a specific tone by making it clear just how strong players are supposed to be. Trying to balance Aragorn with Hercules is just going to cause problems. Being basically immune to volleys of arrows or common soldiers doesn't really do any service to a lot of fiction, while it's perfectly fine for some so it's better to pick one

I can kind of sympathize since 3.5 and 4e were kind of more superhero-y than not, but I think lower power suites people crashing dungeons and taking long as hikes through the woods to kill orcs better

Also it's unrelated to that point, but it also at least feels like to a degree it future proofs the game from supplemental bullshit overpowering everything

My issues with 5e, after GMing it for a while:

>Can be difficult to balance encounters. Half of my random mook encounters wind up severely taxing the party, then boss fights get ended in ten seconds because the wizard crits a spell
>Alignment system is still broken. Part of this is the fault of my players, but having my party's monk suddenly remember "Oh, I'm lawful neutral" and turning into an asshole for ten minutes.
>Death rules are a bit weird. It feels a bit too easy to stabilize somebody. A DC 10 medicine check is not hard to make.
>Rogue feels a bit weird. Expertise puts you so far ahead of everybody else that it's pretty much pointless to have anybody else ever make any kind of social checks
>Monster manual needs more mid-level monsters
>No splatbooks! 4e had way too many, but I'd at least like some supplemental material—especially material to take classes beyond level 20

Yep, this is correct, I found the original exploit explained on the GitP forums:

>The exploit in its fullest original form had 3 parts and relied on a dodgy rule interpretation:
>--Elven Accuracy, reroll a missed attack
>--Blade Cascade (Ranger 15), attack until you miss
>--Divine Miracle (Demigod 30), when you use your last encounter power you regain one of your choice

>So you set it up by blowing all your encounter powers, then Blade Cascade. If you hit you make a new attack, if you miss you pop Elven Accuracy, and Divine Miracle "immediately" (no mention of "at end of current action", so like most exploits of this type it's taken as a given that it works in the most advantageous way) gives it back. Then you can keep using Accuracy to compensate for misses.

>This hinges on being able to get EA back in the middle of an attack, and use it multiple times during the attack. It's a free action, of which you get as many as you want but the DM can limit the number (PHB page 267). So using this power in this way can only be done if the DM lets you get away with it. No need for fiat, it's straight in the rulebook for him to smack it down.

>Whether DnD characters are heroes or not is a matter of personal taste.

at least in 5e the DMG makes it clear they are heroes from level 1, the game is very much rooted in heroic fantasy where the protagonists are special. just how special is another question.

Addendum: If a player's ability is broken At level 30, it's not really so much of a problem.

>Can be difficult to balance encounters. Half of my random mook encounters wind up severely taxing the party, then boss fights get ended in ten seconds because the wizard crits a spell
This sounds like low levels. They're always pretty swingy
>Alignment system is still broken. Part of this is the fault of my players, but having my party's monk suddenly remember "Oh, I'm lawful neutral" and turning into an asshole for ten minutes.
This is entirely your players
>Death rules are a bit weird. It feels a bit too easy to stabilize somebody. A DC 10 medicine check is not hard to make.
I kind of agree, but keep in mind while you're stabilizing that's one monster that isn't getting attacked, and it's pretty easy to finish off people that go down. If it was much more difficult there wouldn't be a lot of cases where it would ever really be worth it if you aren't a wis boosting class (which largely have healing magic anyway)
>Rogue feels a bit weird. Expertise puts you so far ahead of everybody else that it's pretty much pointless to have anybody else ever make any kind of social checks
This feels like complaining that the necromancer is the best at raising undead. Even still it's like a 10% bonus at low levels, then a 30% when comparing it to another trained person
>>Monster manual needs more mid-level monsters
We need more monsters in general really. There's a book coming out soon, but I'm kind of worried it's mostly fluff
>No splatbooks! 4e had way too many, but I'd at least like some supplemental material—especially material to take classes beyond level 20
Well there's , but it sort of just feels like something to get by with for now. I've never played an epic level game and probably wont try to any time soon myself, so I don't really mind, but I wouldn't count on anything coming out soon. They mostly seem focused on FR and adventure books, but I don't think that's so bad in terms of keeping things accessible

4e was by far the most balanced edition. Its crunch was perfect, its fluff was garbage. It really lost that "gritty" feel. Part of D&D is its supposed unfairness, I think when you take that away it loses something.

3.5 was a vast improvement over second edition, but again, it lost some of its flavor. It became less dark, less brooding, more colorful and less grim.

The trend with the fluff is basically going to continue, I think, with each new edition getting more and more facile and silly. The crunch, however, hit a wall.

Since you really can't make it any simpler than 4e, the 5th edition just basically made the game MORE complex and unwieldy. The rules are a mess now.

On paper it seems nice but after playing it feels... kinda boring I guess?
I don't feel like there is proper character progression. I know that I am wrong but I suppose D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder have raised me poorly since I want to see numbers go way up.

AD&D was good. 2nd was okay. 3-4-5 destroyed it.

2nd ed had things like level caps for demi-humans and dual classing and multiclassing.

That is literally one sentence of the bible, not a story. Samson was also empowered by God to do everything he did.

You don't get to brag that level 1 to 31 is "real" roleplaying when it is guaranteed to be hackneyed and has minimal sensible worldbuilding.

I like it much more than Pathfinder

It's a good starting system for new players who want to start playing DnD and PnP RPGs in general.

I feel like D&D is like Dark Souls when people meme about its difficulty.

For one thing, 15 years to get 30 levels means a level every 6 months, which is friggin' slow.

A level should take like 4 sessions at most to get, on average.

SPECIAL

It's the best D&D made in the last twenty years that's not 4e.

so gurps?

Not really, the tabletop version of SPECIAL is simplified.

Very few games can cover a wide range of power levels and make them all fun for everybody. There's a reason epic-6 is a thing for 3.5,because a lot of people feel that the game gets broken over that level. Meanwhile, there's people that can't stand low level play. Trying to cover everything from house cats to literal gods rarely works out good, and never pleases everybody. So it's typically better for a designer to come up with a certain, limited range he wants the game to be at and keep it there, leaving him free to focus harder on that and make it better.

i tried it twice, both premades (tiamat and princes of the apocolips) i couldn't finish the second one and i only enjoyed the first cause i was the boom chucking sorcerer (and high as a fucking kite both times.) its Way to simplistic for my tastes, clearly geared towards new tabletopers rather than vets. i cut my teeth on 3.5 before moving on to oWoD and shadowrun in my later years.
it comes across as dnd lite and is very accessible to new players. so if 3.pf has to many numbers and options for you then it'll do just fine. personally it feels like cheep light beer, fun when your older friend buys you a case but once you can shop for yourself you wonder why you ever drank such swill.

that said shadowrun is my fave precisely Because of it's crunchy hyper lethal combat, making every fight feel like it matters and ruthlessly punishing stupidity and poor tactical choices. there are literally thousands of character options that are more than just windowdressing. but enough about that.

now i play tabletops as an escape and power fatisy so naturally a more complex system with greater heights of ability are going to appeal to me. if you like things a little tamer, more down to earth without 10 quadrillion spells, weapons, ability's and other minutia to memorize then 5th will do just fine as a frame through which to experience the story you or your DM tells. just dont stay stuck there, get comfortable and explore other systems, D20 or otherwise.

It's shit and I only play it because it's what all of my friends play.

Agree. 1-40 took us 10 years.
But I get his point - 3.X to epic is awesome with the right mindset.
BTW, after 25 martials cannot be irrelevant because monsters have so many immunities that the best thing is generally buff martials to heaven and battlefield control.

5e is not a bad game. It's not perfect either. I love it and I can point out so many flaws with it, including:
1. Players are difficult to kill, especially because the Encounter Formula breaks down past level 5. The exception to this is the Disintegration spell.
2. Carry capacity/lift weight is unrealistic. As written the 'average' npc can benchpress 300 lbs.
3. Moon Druids. Full casters with d8 hit dice, some of the best spells in the game, and can Tank better than a Barbarian can. Min-maxing in 5e is everyone playing Moon Druid.
4. Player Crafting is completely underpowered. It's really a pile of shit. This is mostly to keep Magic Items under DM Control, but it seriously fucks with settings like Eberron.
5. Rangers suck. A lot. The game is Combat/Social oriented, and the Ranger Class is simply too focused on Survival to be of much use.
6. We're not sure how to feel about flying. It's either really good because of it being accessible only temporarily through spells, or permanently at 14th level, or it's no big deal because a Race gets a ridiculously high flight speed.
7. Monks make the worst Grapplers.

Despite all of this, I still think it's great. Most of this can be hand-waved or house-ruled, various fixes for most issues have been homebrewed online already, and on top of it all, it's probably the best edition in terms of Roleplay. Sure, Virt will complain that it's SJW because it explicitly states you can defy Gender Norms, Sexuality, etc. But really that's part of the 5e philosophy of Character Creation: when it comes to defining who your character is, there's absolutely no Limits regarding mechanics. Play a Chaotic Neutral Paladin, or a Chaotic Evil Druid, or a Druid who likes to forge metal. 5e lets you do that, and any other Character concept you may have, pending DM approval.

.... I can't hate you for your comments.

... I'm just enough of a person who roleplays for the boardgame moments that I can't handle how badly the game does encounter scaling, and doesn't help the DM.

Yep. Which is why I use this: enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?367697-Encounter-difficulty-how-to-fix-it

Like I said, most fixes have been homebrewed already.

>enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?367697-Encounter-difficulty-how-to-fix-it

That doesn't really make a statement about what party levels/roles monsters are appropriate for.