D&D General 5.5 and making the game easier for players and harder for DMs
- Thread starter DarkCrisis
- Start date
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Probably a bad idea to assume your customers will always be your customers.
UngeheuerLich
Legend
Yeah. Except for collectors what many DMs are. And that still leaves what @Chaosmancer said.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
That's a fair point, but it's hard to identify what will make your customers stop being your customers. You can do all the market research in the world and still end up with a New Coke situation, lol.
Could they have designed these things while advocating for & considering the GM along the way?... Sure... except zero of the nine UAs demonstrated such a thing & the last decade hasn't exactly been a glowing endorsement of the idea that "what about the GM" was a significant design concern.
No we know that problematic PC abilities can not be solved with monster design. The last decade has nicely demonstrated that particular fact. The GM has been free to solve problems like AREB yoyo healing & so on with endless force immune helmed horrors & antimagic spewing beholders, but they can't without killing their campaign because adversarial monster design used to shut down players leads to an adversarial game if used for more than the rare noteworthy encounter. Likewise regular waves of quicklings moving 100ft making 3 attacks with +8 to hit plus evasion & more per round on each could solve a lot of other problems instantly... freeing up time spent preparing to gm for the next session while looking for a new group of players being one of the obvious results. That's not even something new with 5e.
The GM is 100% impacted by the rules present in the PHB for players and the PC options available alongside those rules. Pretending they can be severed and handled in different books written with exclusive focus crashes into that impact. There is the very significant problem related to the fact that the DMG/MM should not be used as an errata dump for fixing the PHB via some kind of day zero DLC available months later just because the PHB was too much "could we" & not enough "should we".
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SteveC
Doing the best imitation of myself
I have to admit this thread is starting to make my head spin. It looks like we have a bunch of people DMing a game that they are just not having fun with. As someone who has discussed how I'm not always happy with 5E, I think the moment it crosses from "well that's annoying but I had a great time" to "this was terrible," it's time to move to another system.
For me, that's my attitude with 3.5. The last time I ran it, I said "never again". And I played it at the same levels where I dropped it and vowed never to play it again. In this case, our DM moved the game to 5E and everyone is having a great time. Yes, there are all of the issues we have with 5E, but we leave the session wanting to come back next week.
Maybe it's the fact that I occasionally play PF2 in person so I see the GM dealing with everything, or maybe it's all our games being VTT in 5E, but I simply cannot see what's going on. But that's me, and not any of the other posters, and so I think ... why not move to another game? Maybe it's just that my 5E experience is recently mixed in with Daggerheart and Feng Shui 2, but I think, to sort of quote The Dark Tower, "There are other games than this."
I guess my assumption is that D&D is a game that people love and they don't want it to change to something they don't like as much. As someone who loved 4E, I can sympathize with that. So am I missing something? I suspect that a lot of it is that there are some folks I have on mute discussing things and it's making the discussion less clear. If that's the reason, feel free to say, "just eat your soup, gramps," and move on.
For me, that's my attitude with 3.5. The last time I ran it, I said "never again". And I played it at the same levels where I dropped it and vowed never to play it again. In this case, our DM moved the game to 5E and everyone is having a great time. Yes, there are all of the issues we have with 5E, but we leave the session wanting to come back next week.
Maybe it's the fact that I occasionally play PF2 in person so I see the GM dealing with everything, or maybe it's all our games being VTT in 5E, but I simply cannot see what's going on. But that's me, and not any of the other posters, and so I think ... why not move to another game? Maybe it's just that my 5E experience is recently mixed in with Daggerheart and Feng Shui 2, but I think, to sort of quote The Dark Tower, "There are other games than this."
I guess my assumption is that D&D is a game that people love and they don't want it to change to something they don't like as much. As someone who loved 4E, I can sympathize with that. So am I missing something? I suspect that a lot of it is that there are some folks I have on mute discussing things and it's making the discussion less clear. If that's the reason, feel free to say, "just eat your soup, gramps," and move on.
Chaosmancer
Legend
Honestly? In my experience it seems to be people who hate 5e, who stopped playing 5e, who have found games they like more than 5e... who keep coming to these threads to complain about how bad 5e is. The second most common group of people are those that hate 5e, who wish they could stop playing 5e, but everyone they play with likes 5e, so they feel forced to keep playing.
And I guess I have a little sympathy for those in the second situation, it must suck to feel forced to play something you don't like because that's what everyone else likes, but it is hard to tug those situations out of the mire and see them as anything other than a rare if unfortunate circumstance.
deadman1204
Explorer
Naw, theres been countless suggestions that all get ignored. Its not that hard, but the "dm solve anything that is a problem" is a lazy tactic for not testing the game and having clear and useful mechanics.
Making the game easier to run means the game devs have to do more work to make the game better - which also means after 6th level where everything falls apart. Why do things fall apart after 6th level? Because wotc has never taken the time to balance and design the game to work well after that point. Just have the dm fix anything wrong and ship it!
Scott Christian
Hero
I think we have a fundamental disagreement. They were concerned about the DM when making 2014. In fact, they were so concerned, they streamlined all the rules. They made it easier for DMs. No more insane stacking of bonuses. No more remembering rules upon rules, and then dozens of exceptions. Nope, straight and simple (for a game like D&D). That is taking the DM into consideration. In fact, it is putting them at the forefront.
The other thing people often miss is the constant reiteration throughout the books to consult your DM. How the DM is the arbitrator. How they are the final decision maker. How they create and tailor the rules for their tables. I don't think this is a full-proof argument, because many tables design and play via osmosis. But this argument still holds some validity.
Again, those books aren't doing errata. They present alternatives to playstyles by introducing optional rules and monster abilities. I appreciate your concern and thoughtfulness, but I feel you perception and my perception are too far apart to actually come to an understanding.
Oofta
Legend
I don't have a lot of sympathy for the first group because far too often it becomes borderline trolling. Everybody has a right to complain, but if you aren't looking for constructive advice or giving constructive criticism, when it's just a constant drumbeat of negativity I just don't see the point. There will always be things to complain about, and that's fine. Want to have a discussion about how to implement concepts from [insert game or edition X], fine. I may not agree, but at least it's a contribution. But constantly repeating that 5E is terrible, broke and [insert game or edition X] does it so much better when it cannot be applied at all to 5E gets old.
I don't care if you like sauerkraut on your brat, but please stop telling me that my grilled chicken is terrible and that a brat with sauerkraut is just fantastic.
