5e's "general issues" for me are as follows (and dont get me wrong, I've been playing 5e a bit, it's quite fun) -

1. Stealth is borked, especially passive perception. There's no good reason to take the random out of the game imo, and you end up with stealth ninja PCs/same guy spots everything/auto trap detection/fail, etc. Have a session zero about your 5e game, and be sure to explain how you are going to run stealth. Eg can you hide mid combat, what about when you shoot at someone from cover and miss, are you revealed? Can you move out of cover briefly and remain hidden, etc

2. Whack a mole problem / combo with massive healing. 5e is "too easy" to survive by default, which makes combats more dull. Way too easy with 3 death saves and minor action ranged heal ups. You might want to tweak healing spells, add injuires at zero or double the recommended number of monsters (course that means combat takes longer).

3. Concentration is too harsh for casters. It is both - if you get hit, make save or lose spell AND limit one concetration spell at a time. It should have been one or the other, imo. They tried to even this out balance wise with at-will cantrips, but all this did was make magic feel more mundane (at least to me, pew pew magic, no thanks). This is true of magic overall in 5e - it's high magic, with magic built into nearly all subclasses. Magic everywhere. My eyes! I vastly prefer the magic balance of earlier D&D's potent spells, but no at-wills, and interupted if hit during casting.

4. I think there's a fundamental flaw with having class abilities refresh at different times (ie short rest vs long rest vs exhaustion (weird one off for beserker barb)). You end up with some classes being really strong in dungeons (short resters, assuming your GM allows short rests in dungeons, I often do) and long resters (great at wilderness treks/city adventures where getting a nights sleep is easy - so nova, next day's encounter, nova, and so on, but no chance of a long rest in a dungeon, so disdvantaged there compared to short resters). I would have preferred a unified 5 min short rest mechanic that all classes use, but requiring some kind of check to make it a bit unpredictable/not guaranteed (to encourage resource management instead of spam).

Ayways that's what I've noticed, hope it helps.

Quote from: estar;963783Actually "buff" spells in OD&D stick around for tens of minutes or hours. For example

Hold Portal: 20 minutes to 2 hours.
Protection from Evil: 1 hour
Charm Person: Until dispelled
Sleep: until awakened
Detect Invisible: 1 hour
Levitate: 1 hour + 10 minuter per level of caster
Wizard Lock: Indefinite
Detect Evil: operates like a spidey sense versus sentient or magical danger within 60 feet radius: 20 minutes
ESP: Detect sentient being within 60 feet radius blocked by 2' of stone: 2 hours
Continual Light: Until dispelled
Fly: 10 minutes per level of caster starting at 50 minutes at 5th level
Hold Person: 1 hour + 10 minutes per level of caster

and so forth and so on. In later editions durations started to be cut which made memorizing utility spells pretty much a sucker's bet.

Damn few of those are "buffs", though, and my AD&D book gives much shorter durations (eg, the "buff" spell Sleep is 5 r/level, the "buff" spell of Hold Person is 4r + 1r/l). Protection from Evil is a buff, but it's 2r/l in my AD&D PHB.

I was thinking more like Bless (6 rounds), hold portal (1r/level), or haste (3r, + 1 r/level). I guess you could compare the Armor of 2nd Edition (good until you take 10ish points of damage) to the Armor of 5e (8 hours). Or 2nd editions Wizard Eye (1 r/l) to 5e's Wizard Eye (don't have my book handy, but it's *much* longer).

When you get to 3e, you have a whole family of attribute enhancing spells lasting hours on end. I admit Concentration is a brutal cap...but it's one of the very, very, few spellcasters have. Too bad it's a cap where they could actually make other party members look relevant.

Quote from: jhkim;963813I would note that this is not true of board games and card games. The most popular board games played include titles like Scrabble (1938), Monopoly (1903), Clue (1949), and Sorry! (1934), along with even older games like chess (~600). Card games are dominated by poker, gin, and similar. There are a few popular new games like Apples to Apples (1999), but those are the exception rather than the rule. There is still a market for new board games and new card games because of hard-core and/or hobbyist players, but there is a sustaining popular market for old games as well.

RPGs don't depend on advancing technology in the way that computer games do, but they are also a new genre created just in the 1970s. Right now it is hard to picture a generation of gamers all playing a single edition of D&D from decades earlier. However, it may be that things will stabilize, and established play may become possible.

Fair point...but then, hardly anyone wants to play chess by pre-Renaissance rules. Mearls has been pretty explicit about wanting to stabilize the D&D rule set. 5e isn't perfect, but IMO it's the most resilient rule set they've produced since Mentzer.

I will say 5e is my favorite edition. Really. It's my #1. For one thing, I have no desire to go back to the original Vancian system. Yeah, I get the theory and strategy behind it. It's just that I think it's boring and sucks. I also have played some classic editions recently, and combat that goes *whiff* *whiff* *whiff* *whiff* *whiff* *whiff* *whiff* *whiff* DEAD isn't fun. Not a fan. On top of that, AD&D is a hot mess (1e and 2e both), though the books are super fun to read, I've never played 0e (so it can't possibly be my favorite), I think 3.x is improved upon in every imaginable way by 5e, and I just got tired of 4e, leaving BECMI as the only non-5e edition I have (a) played and (b) genuinely like. But I like 5e better for a variety of reasons.

As for rough spots, IMO the roughest spot is the social skill system. I didn't realize that Insight was a garbage idea from garbage people of the planet Garbage until I ran Against the Cult of the Reptile Gods in 5e. I realized that if I ran it as a typical WotC adventure with Deception, Persuasion, and Insight checks all over the place, instead of the players figuring out the mystery, they would be rolling to have me tell them that their characters unraveled the mystery. So I just didn't have the players do Roll To Solve Mystery checks. They whined at first, but it ended up being a lot of fun.

It's horrible, and D&D lost something fundamental when 3rd edition introduced Sense Motive.

Quote from: Doom;963818Damn few of those are "buffs", though, and my AD&D book gives much shorter durations (eg, the "buff" spell Sleep is 5 r/level, the "buff" spell of Hold Person is 4r + 1r/l). Protection from Evil is a buff, but it's 2r/l in my AD&D PHB.

I am quoting OD&D because AD&D nerfed many of those spells.

Quote from: Psikerlord;9638175e's "general issues" for me are as follows (and dont get me wrong, I've been playing 5e a bit, it's quite fun) -

1. Stealth is borked, especially passive perception. There's no good reason to take the random out of the game imo, and you end up with stealth ninja PCs/same guy spots everything/auto trap detection/fail, etc. Have a session zero about your 5e game, and be sure to explain how you are going to run stealth. Eg can you hide mid combat, what about when you shoot at someone from cover and miss, are you revealed? Can you move out of cover briefly and remain hidden, etc

I am not seeing the issue with stealth versus passive perception.  Both the stat increase that goes into Dex (for stealth) and Wisdom (for perception) are balanced out versus the skill bonus which is dependent on proficency. So given two characters of equal level it going to be a 50-50 shot of who see who if you are facing stealth guy versus perception guy. There is expertise which doubles the prof bonus.

As for traps clearly they are either DC 10 or 15 to spot with a very rare DC 20. The problem seems to be more in disarming them rather than detecting them.

Quote from: Psikerlord;9638172. Whack a mole problem / combo with massive healing. 5e is "too easy" to survive by default, which makes combats more dull. Way too easy with 3 death saves and minor action ranged heal ups. You might want to tweak healing spells, add injuires at zero or double the recommended number of monsters (course that means combat takes longer).

I refereed 4e and 5e and 5e is far more tame in the healing department. It is easily house ruled. However the default healing is mostly about when you are out of combat. In combat is about as as bad as classic D&D in what options you get.

Quote from: Psikerlord;9638173. Concentration is too harsh for casters. It is both - if you get hit, make save or lose spell AND limit one concetration spell at a time. It should have been one or the other, imo. They tried to even this out balance wise with at-will cantrips, but all this did was make magic feel more mundane (at least to me, pew pew magic, no thanks). This is true of magic overall in 5e - it's high magic, with magic built into nearly all subclasses. Magic everywhere. My eyes! I vastly prefer the magic balance of earlier D&D's potent spells, but no at-wills, and interupted if hit during casting.

Concentration is what keeps 5e from devolving into 3.0's whirling cloud of magical awesomeness that is high level combat.

Quote from: estar;963835I am not seeing the issue with stealth versus passive perception.  Both the stat increase that goes into Dex (for stealth) and Wisdom (for perception) are balanced out versus the skill bonus which is dependent on proficency. So given two characters of equal level it going to be a 50-50 shot of who see who if you are facing stealth guy versus perception guy. There is expertise which doubles the prof bonus.

As for traps clearly they are either DC 10 or 15 to spot with a very rare DC 20. The problem seems to be more in disarming them rather than detecting them.



I refereed 4e and 5e and 5e is far more tame in the healing department. It is easily house ruled. However the default healing is mostly about when you are out of combat. In combat is about as as bad as classic D&D in what options you get.


 Concentration is what keeps 5e from devolving into 3.0's whirling cloud of magical awesomeness that is high level combat.

Problems with PP - same guy finds everything (dull). auto detect or auto fail to detect traps (dull). PCs specialised in stealth will blitz most monsters PP. The only chance the monsters have is to "roll high" on perception, but PP removes that chance by making it auto 10 + mod. This gets broken super quick with expertise.

5e healing is boosted significantly by minor action, ranged heals. In comparison to older D&D healing had an opportunity cost and required positioning - touch only and used a whole action.

All high level D&D is about magical awesomeness, no matter the edition. The best solution imo is not to nerfhammer magic with the concentration double whammy (interruptable and cant stack effects), and then try to balance that out with cantrips - but rather just choose one (interruptible or cant stack), stick to daily spells, and simply end your campaign at about 10th level, before magic go cray cray.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;963635For me:

 - The Half-Elf is overpowered compared to all other Races (Bonus Charisma and versatile bonus Ability scores, bonus skills, and Elven traits). Conversely, some Races like Dragonborn seem a little underwhelming.

Agreed.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;963635- Darkvision is all over the place for non-human races (why would a Wood Elf have it?), but still a Level 2 spell.

Cannot completely agree nor disagree.  I understand why they went this route, but I don't like it.  The amount of types of vision that showed up in 2e (and MAYBE earlier?) was getting out of hand for some people, so they decided to simplify it.  But as I just said, I don't like it.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;963635- I feel the Sorcerer is a bit undefined, and the main advantage in previous editions (spontaneous casting) becoming redundant when all spell casters can do the same now. Meta-magic could have been handled with Feats instead. Ditto Wild Magic.

Agreed, wholeheartedly.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;963635- I feel that the Ranger Beastmaster sub-class was not well done, with the confusion over actions taken and the inability to be able to choose a horse because of size limitations. They could have done more with it.

There's a reason I use the UA Ranger for my home game.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;963635- The Rogue and Fighter ought to have had more sub-class choices in the core, to give them as much variety as the Wizard and Cleric.

This is a bit touchy.  Simply because one could argue the Fighter and their weapon style choices are give them their variety.  As for the Rogue, I honestly don't know, other than the Swashbuckler and Mastermind from the Sword Coast guide book, there's not much else in term of archetypes you can do that's distinctive and well known.

I don't fully endorse either argument, but can see where it comes from.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;963635- Warlocks are cool, but some of their abilities are somewhat controlled by DM fiat to make them potent (it's all very well having a Book of Rituals, for example, but you do need to have your DM let you find some to put them in, etc).

I personally (as I've pointed out above) believe that they are the weakest Arcane based caster.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;963635- The choice for Player's Handbook cover art was poor. Not that the art was not good, but needed a better framed picture to capture the spirit of the game.

Cover art?  Agreed.  Interior art, save anything dealing with Halflings is rather impressive in my opinion.

Thinking on it, I have to honestly ask:  What IS the spirit of the game?  (I want to stress no right nor wrong answer here.)

Quote from: Psikerlord;9638175e's "general issues" for me are as follows (and dont get me wrong, I've been playing 5e a bit, it's quite fun) -

1. Stealth is borked, especially passive perception. There's no good reason to take the random out of the game imo, and you end up with stealth ninja PCs/same guy spots everything/auto trap detection/fail, etc. Have a session zero about your 5e game, and be sure to explain how you are going to run stealth. Eg can you hide mid combat, what about when you shoot at someone from cover and miss, are you revealed? Can you move out of cover briefly and remain hidden, etc

2. Whack a mole problem / combo with massive healing. 5e is "too easy" to survive by default, which makes combats more dull. Way too easy with 3 death saves and minor action ranged heal ups. You might want to tweak healing spells, add injuires at zero or double the recommended number of monsters (course that means combat takes longer).

3. Concentration is too harsh for casters. It is both - if you get hit, make save or lose spell AND limit one concetration spell at a time. It should have been one or the other, imo. They tried to even this out balance wise with at-will cantrips, but all this did was make magic feel more mundane (at least to me, pew pew magic, no thanks). This is true of magic overall in 5e - it's high magic, with magic built into nearly all subclasses. Magic everywhere. My eyes! I vastly prefer the magic balance of earlier D&D's potent spells, but no at-wills, and interupted if hit during casting.

4. I think there's a fundamental flaw with having class abilities refresh at different times (ie short rest vs long rest vs exhaustion (weird one off for beserker barb)). You end up with some classes being really strong in dungeons (short resters, assuming your GM allows short rests in dungeons, I often do) and long resters (great at wilderness treks/city adventures where getting a nights sleep is easy - so nova, next day's encounter, nova, and so on, but no chance of a long rest in a dungeon, so disdvantaged there compared to short resters). I would have preferred a unified 5 min short rest mechanic that all classes use, but requiring some kind of check to make it a bit unpredictable/not guaranteed (to encourage resource management instead of spam).

Ayways that's what I've noticed, hope it helps.

I definitely agree that using MOAR monsters is a good idea, the default encounter building rules make for easy fights (ok if you really are running 6-8 fights/day I guess).
Stealth Concentration & Healing work fine IME. I have monsters hit downed PCs so I never see any "let's fall to 0 before healing" play.
Agree they gave spells to too many classes. Rangers & Paladins should not have been spell-based IMO. 5e Paladins feel like variant Clerics.
Agree about the long rest/short rest problem. I redid the Fighter with this in mind, making it LR based - http://smonscurseofthecrimsonthrone.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/revised-fighter-class.html

Quote from: S'mon;963852I definitely agree that using MOAR monsters is a good idea, the default encounter building rules make for easy fights (ok if you really are running 6-8 fights/day I guess).
Stealth Concentration & Healing work fine IME. I have monsters hit downed PCs so I never see any "let's fall to 0 before healing" play.
Agree they gave spells to too many classes. Rangers & Paladins should not have been spell-based IMO. 5e Paladins feel like variant Clerics.
Agree about the long rest/short rest problem. I redid the Fighter with this in mind, making it LR based - http://smonscurseofthecrimsonthrone.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/revised-fighter-class.html

Yeah I definitely like the 3/LR better than 1/SR, good idea That's how they used to do some magic items from memory, you could use them 2/day or whatever. If really strong power, 1/day or 1/week, if relatively weak 3/day, that kind of thing.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;963847Cannot completely agree nor disagree.  I understand why they went this route, but I don't like it.  The amount of types of vision that showed up in 2e (and MAYBE earlier?) was getting out of hand for some people, so they decided to simplify it.  But as I just said, I don't like it.

I'd prefer a bit more of a descriptive variety. Wood Elves could legitimately have far-vision rather than dark vision, for example. In the case of the Wizard spell, I feel that they could have simply brought Darkvision into a 1st level spell. Or better, just an all encompassing Vision spell that allows the caster to perceive clearly regardless of circumstance.

QuoteThis is a bit touchy.  Simply because one could argue the Fighter and their weapon style choices are give them their variety.  As for the Rogue, I honestly don't know, other than the Swashbuckler and Mastermind from the Sword Coast guide book, there's not much else in term of archetypes you can do that's distinctive and well known.

I felt that the Sword Coast's Swashbuckler and Mastermind were too good to leave out, while I would have rather seen the Fighter being developed with more actual archetypes: Champions, Archers, Cavaliers, Tacticians, etc. In fact, they could have shifted over the Swashbuckler from Rogue to Fighter as a lightly armoured type too. With regard to the Battlemaster, I kinda think they are trying to do too much with the manoeuvres all in one archetype - again to the point it lacks true definition. I would have broken then all up and designed more specific archetypes.  

QuoteI personally (as I've pointed out above) believe that they are the weakest Arcane based caster.

I actually find Warlocks a great concept to play, I just think that they could have put some of the ideas together in a more defined way. For example, have the Book of Rituals add extra rituals at a defined rate based on levelling up. Have the blade add bonuses to damage as the character levels up, or have the familiar gain in HP as the character levels up (or increasingly be able to share HP and other traits with the Warlock, perhaps), etc.

QuoteCover art?  Agreed.  Interior art, save anything dealing with Halflings is rather impressive in my opinion.

Thinking on it, I have to honestly ask:  What IS the spirit of the game?  (I want to stress no right nor wrong answer here.)

Well, having an iconic party of characters in an action situation would capture the spirit of the game, in my view. The focus on the cover is a fire giant or something - would have looked better as a Monster Manual cover.

I'll add to the opinions expressed about the problems with long and short rests, and just how durable and unkillable PCs are. I looked at increasing the short rest / long rest durations, or making them harder to achieve, and the damage it did to selective classes was significant. When I wanted to make a very dangerous dungeon, I had to make an evil aura that prevented getting the benefit of rests without a sanctuary spell to fall back upon. It made sense for the dungeon environ, but I wouldn't be able to simulate it easily in a general campaign. I think if I run D&D5E again I will reduce the overall healing benefits of rests, which might nudge the game to the style I prefer.

I found Attacks of Opportunity a mess, but this has been the case since their implementation.

Quote from: Psikerlord;963844Problems with PP - same guy finds everything (dull). auto detect or auto fail to detect traps (dull).

Not sure what PP stands for. As for auto detecting traps I will say that the if you read the 5e books on passive perception is not an automatic I win. If the party is alert and cautious then yes it happens, traps will be detected. But detection is not the end of the story, you have to disarm them and there the DCs are higher. But PCs are not always alert and cautious it depends on the situation. In my own campaigns this why it hasn't been a problem.

In the OD&D campaigns if the players have the time they will find the traps. I make a hidden roll and only on a natural 1 do they fail to miss the trap in this situation. Of course having the time means spending 10 minutes per room or a short length of corridor. Which rakes up time until the next wandering monster check. They know this so weights that in their calculations as to whether it is worth being cautious or just proceed down the corridor or into the room.

Quote from: Psikerlord;963844PCs specialised in stealth will blitz most monsters PP. The only chance the monsters have is to "roll high" on perception, but PP removes that chance by making it auto 10 + mod. This gets broken super quick with expertise.

The setting in your campaign has existed for hundreds if not thousands of years. You mean to tell me that monsters and NPCs are not aware of people with stealth and take countermeasures?

Over the past thirty fives year there have been numerous times in my campaigns where the PCs had it working. They had the party organized well, the tactics mastered, so forth and so on. The thing is being able to kill everything in the dungeon rarely was the solution for the complications they faced. And often caused it own set of complications. The trick is to think of the setting with a life of it own. That over the long terms its inhabitants are not idiots.

One trick to get rid of this frustration is to start your next campaign with the PCs being in charge of a dungeon. Then send adventuring parties after them with everything stated up just so. See how they deal with it. What solutions they come up with when it their ass that is about to be ganked by a bunch of murder hobos. I did that several in the Majestic Wilderlands the most useful of which was when the PCs played the city guard. The result of that campaign became the standard operating procedure for how the guard worked. Ever since the PCs stopped fucking around with the city guard unless they had a very good reason to do so.

Quote from: Psikerlord;9638445e healing is boosted significantly by minor action, ranged heals. In comparison to older D&D healing had an opportunity cost and required positioning - touch only and used a whole action.

True but hit point pools are larger now, and the chance to hit is flat, so power in 5e is expressed by being able to hit for damage more often. My experience with healing is that it has more flexibility and variety but in terms of being able to heal versus the damage dealt that it works out to be the same as classic D&D.

Anyway you don't have to take my word for it, one of my players kept a detailed account of one of my 5e campaign. You can read it here.

https://gamingballistic.com/category/actual-play/majestic-wilderlands/

One interesting part in regards to rests start here when the party gets trapped in a castle and ignites a rebellion. Went on for multiples sessions and they were hard pressed to find any time for a short rest.


https://gamingballistic.com/2015/03/17/majestic-wilderlands-look-squirre/
https://gamingballistic.com/2015/03/17/reflections-on-majestic-beat-down/
https://gamingballistic.com/2015/03/24/majestic-wilderlands-do-you-hear-people/
https://gamingballistic.com/2015/03/31/majestic-wilderlands/
https://gamingballistic.com/2015/04/14/majestic-wilderlands-were-all-only-down/
https://gamingballistic.com/2015/04/21/majestic-wilderlands-fosco-chubb/

PP = Passive Perception

One thing DMs typically forget is that in darkness, characters with darkness have disadvantage on Perception involving sight, and disadvantage on a passive check is -5. I can't tell you the number of arguments I've gotten into in the giant 5e Facebook group where someone is surprised to learn that darkvision isn't some kind of god stat. Players at my table learn the first time they search a door with disadvantage and get a poison needle to the thumb.

However, I simply don't use PP to find traps. Period. If I wanted you to find the trap without rolling, I wouldn't have put a DC on it.

Quote from: S'mon;963852Agree they gave spells to too many classes. Rangers & Paladins should not have been spell-based IMO. 5e Paladins feel like variant Clerics.
Agree about the long rest/short rest problem. I redid the Fighter with this in mind, making it LR based - http://smonscurseofthecrimsonthrone.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/revised-fighter-class.html

I dropped out of the playtest when it became apparent that they were going to listen to the "survey" and give the Paladin and Ranger spells by default--despite having learned the lesson elsewhere that the survey was good at identifying problems and terrible at finding solutions.  Also, despite the fact that their system would easily have supported those classes without spells, and then let the multiclass rules handle the spells.  And that was before they had even hinted at sub classes or the final multiclass rules.  It's the one thing that made me want to throw the book when 5E came out.  It was right there for the taking.  They even had the eldritch knight subclass to show them the way!

Paladins and Rangers have had spells since at least 1e, though. I suspect taking spells away from the Paladin would have caused as much hue and cry as leaving the half-orc out of the PHB did with 4e. Although making it and the Ranger sub-classes of Fighter would have been interesting.