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  1. - Top - End - #91
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    DruidGirl

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    I think humans have a tendency to feel like their enjoyment of something (i.e 3.5e) is invalidated if other people enjoy something else (i.e 5e). It's a toxic and frankly stupid mindset that it is all too rampant among the Internet nowadays. Personally, I love 5e, because I feel it's the easiest to learn and play, and that is an objectively good thing. Because of it, many more people have gotten into the hobby, and there is also a lot more diversity among players. And yet, 3.5e has its charms, though I've never even played it (I mostly know the rules from OOTS ). I just think that people want to believe that their preferred edition of D&D, or whatever, is best, even if that means putting down other people...especially if that means putting down other people.
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  2. - Top - End - #92
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    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by Aergentum View Post
    Sunday evening I went to an opening event for a Tabletop Games Social Club with my girlfriend and an other firend. We had fun chatting with the owner of the club and other people, then we agreed to play a one shot with them.
    It's been ages since I last played a 3.5 game and I didn't remember at all how different it was from the 5th, and the other friend had actually no experience with 3.5. Making the character sheets took too much and the master got upset and asked us if anything was wrong with it.

    DM: "So? Are these sheets ready?"
    AG: "Not yet, 3.5 it's a little different from the 5th and I'm having issues with ability scores and abilities..."
    DM: "Oh, so you're a 5th player..."
    AG: "Yes, is there a problem with it? I'm fine with playing this one shot with the 3.5"
    DM: "Yeah but, you play that ****ty edition, so you're not a good player."
    AG: "We'll see about that..."

    We finished the sheets and started the game. We got our asses roeasted by the DM who claimed it was because we couldn't play properly due to our background as a 5th player.
    I didn't got mad about it, but I felt hurt. I really enjoyed 3.5 in the past, but now I'd rather play with the 5th because I find it easyer to master the games, and as a player I have more fun than I had in the past.

    I really don't get why the hate on the 5th edition. I'm not saying one is better than the other, they are different editions with different focus, but it hutrs to be labeled as an incompetent player just because I play another edition.
    What you experienced there is not actually an edition problem. It's that the DM in question suffers from an unfortunately common medical condition called rectal-cranial inversion. He has his head up his pooper. That kind of personality, it doesn't really matter what the topic is. If you don't agree with them or have a different preference or point of view then they are going to a problem.

    on the edition hate: I personally really dislike 3rd/3.5/pathfinder. I refuse to DM those systems or buy books from those editions. It is highly unlikely I would join a new group running those editions. That said, if one of my friends wanted to run a game in those, then I would absolutely play, and probably still enjoy it (and have in the past). And if I couldn't, then I would excuse myself. I certainly wouldn't try to force my preferences or make the game unpleasant for anyone else because of my preferences.
    Rule 0: What the DM says goes.
    Rule 0.5: What the DM says goes. And if the DM says enough dumb **** the players go too.

  3. - Top - End - #93
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    BarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by prabe View Post
    I suspect that in addition to the ... reluctance to abandon a game one knows well, many of the people who dump on 5E don't see bounded accuracy as a fix (probably because they don't see the disparity in bonuses in 3.Pathfinder as a bug). As someone who's played in a party where the Perception bonuses ranged from +1 to >+30, I am inclined to disagree with that, but YMMV.
    Another thing to keep in mind is that 3e is functionally a pro-player system, and was built that way in response to feedback gathered by WotC. It restricts the DM to being mostly a narrator and rule-Googler, and philosophically suggests the DM has no real power to affect the outcome of the game aside from making individual NPC decisions. Meanwhile 5e is very much a pro-DM system, with many rules and followup tweets and errata encouraging the DM to make sweeping creative decisions that affect the overall system. This is a fairly deep distinction that, I think, gets obscured by complaints about 5e being too simple.

    People who like 3e often do so because it's a game that empowers the player over the DM through system mastery. It's the "peoples D&D" in many respects. 5e comes along and tells us system mastery isn't as important as what the DM wants to have happen. That has to stick in a lot of craws.

  4. - Top - End - #94
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    Planetar

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by EggKookoo View Post
    Another thing to keep in mind is that 3e is functionally a pro-player system, and was built that way in response to feedback gathered by WotC. It restricts the DM to being mostly a narrator and rule-Googler, and philosophically suggests the DM has no real power to affect the outcome of the game aside from making individual NPC decisions. Meanwhile 5e is very much a pro-DM system, with many rules and followup tweets and errata encouraging the DM to make sweeping creative decisions that affect the overall system. This is a fairly deep distinction that, I think, gets obscured by complaints about 5e being too simple.

    People who like 3e often do so because it's a game that empowers the player over the DM through system mastery. It's the "peoples D&D" in many respects. 5e comes along and tells us system mastery isn't as important as what the DM wants to have happen. That has to stick in a lot of craws.
    True. Though 5e was also build in response to feedback by WotC, and tried to tackles the few complains against 3e. (One of them being complexity of character creation at level 1, and the complexity of the game in general.)

    But I feel that the main complain they tried to tackle was "I have toxic peoples on my table, could you make a system that does not push them to be even more toxic?", for example:
    + DM as a NPC-player can often degenerate as an "Adversarial DM". While a story-teller DM is supposed to be on the same side as players.
    + A lot of toxic players tend to ruin the fun once they reach a high enough level of system mastery. By making system mastery irrelevant, you reduce their influence on the table.
    + In 3.X, a new player can end up with a near-unplayable character (or at least very ineffective). And can remain locked in this situation if on top of that, the DM is kind of a jerk and is too rule-abiding to allow the player to change of character (without starting back from zero), or houserule a little. In 5e, making an unplayable character by mistake is near impossible, and the DM is much more encouraged to adapt the rules.

  5. - Top - End - #95
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by EggKookoo View Post
    While this isn't false, really a lot of hate for 5e just comes from it being the new kid. People hated 3e when it came out because it wasn't 2e.
    And becuase a few hundred dollars worth of books are slowly being made redundant? And about all that money invested in those books
    If you came to D&D with 3e, it can feel like what you like about the game is being retroactively invalidated.
    Seems to happen with each major release.
    Quote Originally Posted by ZorroGames View Post
    Yeah, man! I remember when the Greyhawk paperback supplement to the the “Three Booklets” came out and used a D20 system instead of the Chainmail system. Heretics!.
    The alternate combat system was in Men and Magic, pre Greyhawk. Most people found the ACS better though all them funny shaped dice were kinda weird at first.
    Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
    Heck, Rob Kuntz, Ernie Gygax, and Mike Mornard are still alive and present on the internet.
    I didn't meet EGG, I acquired those books second hand.
    is that you really do feel resentful that you and your interests* are no longer considered pertinent, relevant, and primary. When you realize that your not even in advertisers preferred demographics, it genuinely hurts.
    Hmm. I just ignore more ads than I used to. I am aware that the 18-45 demographic is the sweet spot for advertisers, and I was out of that box over a decade ago. AARP loves me, but little of what they offer me besides room rate discouts appeals to me.
    And every generation seems to react in the same way -- trying to make diminutive the likes, accomplishments, or traits of the upcoming generations.
    The folks who grew up during the Depression (my parent's generation) did likewise. It's a thing, I guess. As to your take on 3e and 5e.
    They are both moderate depth, moderate crunch, moderate rigor, and based around a system which itself is a mongrel beast (I say that as a good thing) compared to systems built on some purist notion.
    Well said, Sir William.
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  6. - Top - End - #96
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    BarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    And becuase a few hundred dollars worth of books are slowly being made redundant? And about all that money invested in those books
    Of course, but that's also more predictable. I mean, your 5e investments (such as they may be) are going to eventually be made worthless by 6e. You know that now, not much point getting too mad about it when it happens.

    But if you're a die hard 5e fan and 6e turns out to be a return to a 3e-style systems-mastery-diminished-DM structure and is like an order of magnitude more successful and popular than 5e out of the gate? Break out the pitchforks!

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    Seems to happen with each major release.
    To some degree or another. Second edition didn't invalidate 1e too much. I've said before that by modern standards, 2e is really 1.5e. It's almost the same exact game. There was definitely some resentment from old 1e players toward 2e because it was new and shiny, but that's always going to happen.

    Third edition was a major departure from 2e, and caused quite a bit of resentment. Many players I know simply refused to change, and continue to play 2e to this day (although at least one solid 2e fan I know IRL has admitted to liking 5e).

    3.5 did the book-invalidation thing without changing the rules or philosophy behind them much. That definitely caused some pitchfork-sharpening (enough for Paizo to take advantage of it), but mainly because 3.5 came out so soon after 3.0. The outrage would have been less if 3.5 came out just three years later.

    I don't know who the market for 4e was. Was it disgruntled 3e players? Leftover 1e players? World of Warcraft players? I have trouble imagining it wooed too many older edition players away from their favorite.

    5e upended 3e like 3e upended 2e. I think part of the pain isn't just that 5e changed things, but that it changed things back. It made 3e feel like less of a significant step toward some utopian D&D perfection and more like a misstep.

  7. - Top - End - #97
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Sorry, this is ridiculous.

    Did that DM truly think players of 5ed were less capable than 3.5ed players? The cluesness is astounding.

    I was introduced to 3.5 right when it shifted from 3.0 to 3.5 (in fact, I own the 3 core rulebooks of 3.0 to this day).
    There's absolutely nothing more challenging in 3.5. There is something more confusing about it, though. But the typical 3.5 campaign isn't more challenging than the 5.0 one. In fact, it probably is less challenging, since 3.5 is so abusable, you can be a wizard who scry and die the final boss, a cleric who stocks up with persistent uber buffs and a druid who casts spells while shapeshifts into a broken dinosaur. The lack of so many broken options in 5.0 forces the players to actually devise a clever strategy instead of relying on crazy combos to obliterate stuff that has more CR than you have HP.

    On the hate on 5ed, never saw it. I do see some people who likes 3.5 more, and it's natural. 3.5, broken as it is, still is more lively somehow, with it's thousands of feats, spells and prestige classes. You can lose yourself into dozens of splatbooks just to make that unique, uber powerful character you have in mind. But even those 3.5 lovers recognize that 5.0 is quite an elegant system.
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  8. - Top - End - #98
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by EggKookoo View Post
    your 5e investments (such as they may be) are going to eventually be made worthless by 6e.
    Heh, I still have my AD&D 1e books, I can run that whenever I want to. :)
    Break out the pitchforks!
    *Chuckle* I'll vote with my dollars.
    Second edition didn't invalidate 1e too much. I've said before that by modern standards, 2e is really 1.5e. It's almost the same exact game.
    Yes, with a lot of stuff cleaned up and some good ideas folded in from 15 years of Dragon Magazine, etc ...
    Third edition was a major departure from 2e, and caused quite a bit of resentment. Many players I know simply refused to change, and continue to play 2e to this day (although at least one solid 2e fan I know IRL has admitted to liking 5e).
    I bought some 3e and 3.5e stuff so I could play with my brother and my nephew. The 3 core books were not all that big of a bit to my hobby budget.
    5e upended 3e like 3e upended 2e.
    I've not seen it that way, but that's an interesting perspective. I think that Pathfinder versus 4e is what drove the decision to 5e, but I may be wrong about that.
    It made 3e feel like less of a significant step toward some utopian D&D perfection and more like a misstep.
    Which is too bad since 3.x did some nice cleaning up and reorganizing of things across the board, structurally.
    I just ran out of time and hobby money/interest to get invested in it. A lot of people had a lot of fun with that edition.
    Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Works
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    Gosh, 2D8HP, you are so very correct!
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  9. - Top - End - #99
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    BarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    I've not seen it that way, but that's an interesting perspective. I think that Pathfinder versus 4e is what drove the decision to 5e, but I may be wrong about that.
    I don't disagree in principle, but I'm not sure 4e had enough impact to drive anyone anywhere.

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    Which is too bad since 3.x did some nice cleaning up and reorganizing of things across the board, structurally.
    Oh, totally agree! There's a lot to admire in 3e. I just think they went too far with some concepts, like building NPCs as PCs with creature levels and whatnot. And the runaway bonuses. It made DMing a pain, especially at higher levels. Again, DMing is hard at high levels for any edition, but 3e is in a class by itself.

    I did read not long after it was released that Fifth Edition was the "best version of Third Edition yet!"

  10. - Top - End - #100
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Funny thing is, from an outside perspective, 3.x and 5e share far more than they don't.

    As for "system mastery" in the context of 3.x ... to me that always came across as an excuse for the trap options, convoluted builds, needing to plot out your entire character progression before putting anything on the character sheet just to come vaguely close to your concept a year or more into the campaign, counter-intuitive and contradictory rules, etc.
    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2019-10-09 at 01:26 PM.
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  11. - Top - End - #101
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by Drache64 View Post
    Never had that problem, but even so, a DM who says no to official classes published by WoTC is an extreme no DM. Probably not a table I'd sit at anyways.
    I'd have to disagree with that. Most of the 5e published content is "balanced" compared to some of the material in officially published splat books (or even core books) for the earlier editions. There were options in earlier editions that would totally dominate other choices. It is a perfectly reasonable choice for a DM to say No to official content on the basis that it wasn't balanced or didn't fit with the lore of their game world.

    5e on the other hand hasn't officially published anything that is so much better than everything else. "Tier" lists for 5e are possible but pretty much every character built can contribute whereas tier lists in earlier versions could define which classes were clearly better than others and at what levels.

    In games where official content varies widely in balance and quantity because they want to sell splat books ... the DM is perfectly justified leaving some of that content out of their game worlds.

  12. - Top - End - #102

    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    IMO, the core issue with 3.x and its "barrier to entry" rests on Monte Cook's belief in System Mastery as a virtue (and as an old AD&D player, I see where he is coming from on that). The unfortunate existence of "trap options." (I won't discuss balance, but that is related) almost requires system mastery, or so it seems.
    Monte Cook's position on trap options is entirely reasonable IMO, although lots of people missed his point. Quoting from Monte Cook's essay (emphasis mine):

    Quote Originally Posted by https://web.archive.org/web/20080221174425/http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mc_los_142
    Magic also has a concept of "Timmy cards." These are cards that look cool, but aren't actually that great in the game. The purpose of such cards is to reward people for really mastering the game, and making players feel smart when they've figured out that one card is better than the other. While D&D doesn't exactly do that, it is true that certain game choices are deliberately better than others.

    Toughness, for example, has its uses, but in most cases it's not the best choice of feat. If you can use martial weapons, a longsword is better than many other one-handed weapons. And so on -- there are many other, far more intricate examples. (Arguably, this kind of thing has always existed in D&D. Mostly, we just made sure that we didn't design it away -- we wanted to reward mastery of the game.)

    There's a third concept that we took from Magic-style rules design, though. Only with six years of hindsight do I call the concept "Ivory Tower Game Design." (Perhaps a bit of misnomer, but it's got a ring to it.) This is the approach we took in 3rd Edition: basically just laying out the rules without a lot of advice or help. This strategy relates tangentially to the second point above. The idea here is that the game just gives the rules, and players figure out the ins and outs for themselves -- players are rewarded for achieving mastery of the rules and making good choices rather than poor ones.

    Perhaps as is obvious from the name I've coined for this rules writing style, I no longer think this is entirely a good idea. I was just reading a passage from a recent book, and I found it rather obtuse. But it wasn't the writer's fault. He was just following the lead the core books offered him. Nevertheless, the whole thing would have been much better if the writer had just broken through the barrier this kind of design sets up between designer and player and just told the reader what the heck he was talking about.

    To continue to use the simplistic example above, the Toughness feat could have been written to make it clear that it was for 1st-level elf wizards (where it is likely to give them a 100 percent increase in hit points). It's also handy when you know you're playing a one-shot session with 1st-level characters, like at a convention (you sure don't want to take item creation feats in such an instance, for example).

    Ivory Tower Game Design requires a two-step process on the part of the reader. You read the rule, and then you think about how it fits in with the rest of the game. There's a moment of understanding, and then a moment of comprehension. That's not a terrible thing, but neither is just providing the reader with both steps, at least some of the time.
    Translation: "I wish we had given more player guidance about when to use what."

    Notice that 5E still has trap options, i.e. highly-situational options like Weapon Master, and is still written from the Ivory Tower perspective. You've got a table of weapons in the PHB, and some of them like the greatsword (2d6) are just straight-up better than others (maul for 1d10), and the reader is still expected to just figure out the relationship between them as opposed to the PHB saying, "A greatsword is more expensive than a maul but the upgrade is worthwhile if you can afford it!"

    In fact, the whole reason Internet "guides" for spells and class features exist is to fill the gap for people who want to consume this kind of editorializing but don't get it from the actual game books. Monte Cook's point was that maybe the game books should have at least some editorializing, and IMO he's probably correct.
    Last edited by MaxWilson; 2019-10-09 at 01:56 PM.

  13. - Top - End - #103
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by stoutstien View Post
    To counter this point 3.X has a lot of bad/trap options available. A player has to almost reverse-engineer their entire character plan from top to bottom to make sure they don't make a poor choice somewhere along the line and lock themselves into a useless character where it's a challenge to make a bad character in 5e.
    I play and run both games and I'd say I see way more variety of builds in 5e than 3.x.
    Using your devotion Paladin example: in 5e you can have two players with the same subclass have entirely different characters with little to no thought where in 3.x, excluding free casting crusader cheese, there are few ways to built paladin's that aren't going to completely fall off at one point or another.

    you just can't have the number of options that ended up occurring in the system and have a balanced game. It doesn't matter if you have 10,000 options if only 12 of them are good.
    If you're only looking at relative power levels, sure. That said... many players like that idea of system mastery. Are you going to tell them they're having fun wrong because it's what they like?

    It may not be what you're into, but that's why I worded it that way. 5e has options like that, but they're incredibly limited compared to the mind boggling breadth available in 3.x and it turns players who like that system mastery off.

    Not for you? Great. Keep playing 5e.
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    To the OP, the DM in question was being rude. They are completely welcome to their opinion on any version of any game but denigrating someone else based on their preferences isn't appropriate.

    I've played everything from AD&D 1e to 5e, I didn't play Chainmail but a friend did have the original D&D box set. Anyway, each version of D&D has had its strengths and weaknesses. Like a lot of folks I didn't care that much for 4e. I didn't like the lack of differentiation in class mechanics, everything felt the same to me no matter which class I was playing but I only have experience with low level play in 4e.

    1e was fun but "balance" was in the imagination. Save or suck spells. Level caps for non-humans. Multi-classing vs dual classing. The wizard was unbelievably bad for the first few levels while fighters were great. At high levels, one spell could change an encounter.

    2e was a clean up and additional content on 1e

    3e was a re-write which tried to streamline some of the mechanics and make it a bit easier to understand while 3->3.5->PF layered rules/classes/feats/extended splat books into what became a mechanically very heavy system. Characters could specialize in some skills or abilities to the point where they seemed almost unstoppable. Prestige classes, ultra high level advancement, epic levels and epic playstyles. Power gamer and min/max paradise in some ways but for the rest there were opportunities to create characters that could just not compete with the "optimal" choices.

    4e tried to go in the completely opposite direction with balance across classes and levels being a goal and mechanics that I honestly think were intended to make mapping it to a video game very straight forward. Some folks loved it, others didn't like it because it felt completely different from the previous versions of D&D with the exception of the "lore" or "fluff".

    5e is a compromise. Better balance and character power scaling reigned in. Re-introduce the mechanical flavor and differences between classes that were the hallmark of 1e-3e. Overall, I think it was successful at this goal and I think this is reflected in the increased popularity. The game is a lot more accessible without concepts like Thac0 and without hundreds of feats/classes/races that leave gaps for optimization (even 5e has a few of these optimization issues but nothing like 3.5).

    Some people love mechanics so 5e lets them down and they don't like it. Others have fond memories of games in specific versions and they are most comfortable with the mechanics so 5e feels foreign. There are lots of reasons but preference of game version is not a good basis for deciding player skill :).

    I've played all the versions to some extent or another, and personally, I like 5e the best of the D&D systems so far, it seems to hit a sweet spot for me in terms of role play and mechanics. (I've also played Traveller, GURPS, Shadowrun, Rolemaster (now that one is detailed :) .. if I remember correctly, it was a while ago), MERPS and others to varying degrees ... each has their strengths and weaknesses but I started with D&D and usually come back to it :) ).
    Last edited by Keravath; 2019-10-09 at 01:45 PM.

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    Griffon

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    Monte Cook's position on trap options is entirely reasonable IMO, although lots of people missed his point. Quoting from Monte Cook's essay:



    Notice that 5E still has trap options, i.e. highly-situational options like Weapon Master, and is still written from the Ivory Tower perspective. You've got a table of weapons in the PHB, and some of them like the greatsword (2d6) are just straight-up better than others (maul for 1d10), and the reader is still expected to just figure out the relationship between them as opposed to the PHB saying, "A greatsword is more expensive than a maul but the upgrade is worthwhile if you can afford it!"

    In fact, the whole reason Internet "guides" for spells and class features exist is to fill the gap for people who want to consume this kind of editorializing but don't get it from the actual game books. Monte Cook's point was that maybe the game books should have at least some editorializing, and IMO he's probably correct.
    Nitpick: a maul does 2d6 damage.

    More in general, imo: rewarding system mastery: fine. Trap options: not fine. Ivory Tower perspective is a helluva lot less in 5e, there are much fewer trap options, and the game is designed that even picking a bad feat doesn't cripple a character. The only classes that can really cripple a build are classes like Sorcerer and Warlock, who are depending on a few choices in spells / invocations / metamagic. Mess up those, and you can be a lot less useful. A sidebar 'new player be careful with this class' wouldn't have hurt. But besides this (casters with limited spell selection), you can't really mess up a character, unless you pick up a bbn with 8 str and 7 con. But at this point, somebody probably is playing a game that's too difficult anyway.

  16. - Top - End - #106

    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by Waazraath View Post
    Nitpick: a maul does 2d6 damage.
    Heh. You're right, I should have checked the table. I think I'm probably thinking of the greatclub.

    More in general, imo: rewarding system mastery: fine. Trap options: not fine. Ivory Tower perspective is a ----- lot less in 5e, there are much fewer trap options, and the game is designed that even picking a bad feat doesn't cripple a character. The only classes that can really cripple a build are classes like Sorcerer and Warlock, who are depending on a few choices in spells / invocations / metamagic. Mess up those, and you can be a lot less useful. A sidebar 'new player be careful with this class' wouldn't have hurt. But besides this (casters with limited spell selection), you can't really mess up a character, unless you pick up a bbn with 8 str and 7 con. But at this point, somebody probably is playing a game that's too difficult anyway.
    Ivory Tower perspective is ubiquitous in 5E. It's always just, "Here's a rule/option/spell," never "Here's a rule/option/spell and some editorializing on when to use it." (Edit to add: and I think that's okay actually. I'm not as anti-Ivory Tower as Monte Cook is, especially since (A)D&D has been Ivory Tower since the very beginning. My point is simply that Monte Cook's point was not that trap options are good, it was that they maybe should be communicated more clearly.)

    Maybe you mean "Ivory Tower is not as harmful in 5E as in 3E," and for all I know you're right (I never played 3E except for IWD2 and ToEE CRPGs), but it's certainly prevalent, and 5E does have a ton of trap options. The main reason this doesn't cause serious harm in 5E is that the game is calibrated to be almost impossible to fail, even if you do take all of the trap options instead of powerful options, but that doesn't mean that large power gaps don't exist: a well-built PC party can take on at least 2x to 3x as many monsters per adventuring day as a poorly-built one, even if both are played intelligently.
    Last edited by MaxWilson; 2019-10-09 at 02:05 PM.

  17. - Top - End - #107
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by GreyBlack View Post
    If you're only looking at relative power levels, sure. That said... many players like that idea of system mastery. Are you going to tell them they're having fun wrong because it's what they like?

    It may not be what you're into, but that's why I worded it that way. 5e has options like that, but they're incredibly limited compared to the mind boggling breadth available in 3.x and it turns players who like that system mastery off.

    Not for you? Great. Keep playing 5e.
    Like I said I play both. I was just pointing out when you take in all the factors the number of real options dwindle if you want to have the whole table on the same relative power level.

    I would like to see a mix of the two in the future.
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    Heh. You're right, I should have checked the table. I think I'm probably thinking of the greatclub.

    ...

    Maybe you mean "Ivory Tower is not as harmful in 5E as in 3E," and for all I know you're right (I never played 3E except for IWD2 and ToEE CRPGs), but it's certainly prevalent, and 5E does have a ton of trap options. The main reason this doesn't cause serious harm in 5E is that the game is calibrated to be almost impossible to fail, even if you do take all of the trap options instead of powerful options, but that doesn't mean that large power gaps don't exist: a well-built PC party can take on at least 2x to 3x as many monsters per adventuring day as a poorly-built one, even if both are played intelligently.
    Yeah, that's indeed what I meant. In 3.x, picking bad options would cripple a build into unplayability really easy. In 5e, bad choices aren't that bad in effect (which is why I wouldn't use the word 'trap' their too easily, but that's semantics - I think we agree on the contents).

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Trap options are an implicit consequence of allowing system mastery to have a significant impact - in order for some things to be good, other things have to be bad. A bigger issue was that the trap options were core archetypes. There was a high probability that if you had "fighter" written anywhere on your character sheet you had failed character creation.

    Trap options are also a risk greater character options (not a necessary consequence, but balance becomes too complex very quickly). 5e handles this by giving fewer options to players and making it much harder to cross the streams (feats and multiclassing are optional rules, if ones everyone plays with, and prestige classes are replaced with class-specific subclasses that are locked in at lvl 1-3). The tradeoff is that you don't get people rolling up to the table with some absurd combination that snaps the game's power expectations in half.

  20. - Top - End - #110

    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by Waazraath View Post
    Yeah, that's indeed what I meant. In 3.x, picking bad options would cripple a build into unplayability really easy. In 5e, bad choices aren't that bad in effect (which is why I wouldn't use the word 'trap' their too easily, but that's semantics - I think we agree on the contents).
    I agree that "trap" isn't a great word, and I wouldn't use it at all normally outside the context of this thread where someone else said "trap" first--I'd say "highly situational." Monte Cook's example was the Toughness feat, useful in a specific handful of situations, which isn't quite the same thing as a trap that deliberately and maliciously harms you.

    I think we're basically on the same page, except for me not knowing much about 3E except that they ditched most of AD&D's restrictions on spellcasters and spellcasting, gave clerics a bunch of extra attacks, and made crafting magic items extremely easy.

    In 5E, strong build choices are overkill really unless you or your DM has cranked the difficulty way up. That doesn't mean huge power gaps don't exist, it just means there's no practical difference between successfully completing a WotC adventure, and successfully soloing a WotC adventure without using up more than 20% of your spell slots or losing more than 30% of your HP. Do we agree on that?

  21. - Top - End - #111
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    "Trap options" is deceptive, too. If you take it to mean, "There must be feats that are worse than others," then no, you're wrong. Yes, that does constitute a shallow level of system mastery for people to be able to recognize that not all feats are created equal, and to avoid those which are just bad. Or which are only good on very specific builds.

    But you can have system mastery be rewarded without having such blatantly schmuck-bait trap options. Taking Power Attack and Great Cleave on your archer or your wizard is probably a bad idea, and would be a "Trap Option" in that it's valid to take. System mastery tells you it's a bad idea.

    In addition, however, system mastery can be rewarded by having seemingly weaker options which shine when combined cleverly with certain other options. They're made less "oh you're so clever" if they are also gated behind those options, but that can still be good to prevent traps. That said, synnergy can be across multiple combinations, so gating won't always be appropriate.

    But a well-designed system doesn't need trap options of the shallow, schmuck-baity sort to reward system mastery. 3.PF has plenty of perfectly good options, and even some great high-optimization choices, which take system mastery to figure out; the trap options that are just never taken are just never taken for a reason, and don't really reward system mastery.

  22. - Top - End - #112

    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by Warwick View Post
    Trap options are also a risk greater character options (not a necessary consequence, but balance becomes too complex very quickly). 5e handles this by giving fewer options to players and making it much harder to cross the streams (feats and multiclassing are optional rules, if ones everyone plays with, and prestige classes are replaced with class-specific subclasses that are locked in at lvl 1-3). The tradeoff is that you don't get people rolling up to the table with some absurd combination that snaps the game's power expectations in half.
    5E has plenty of these. Healing 2000+ HP per long rest by 10th level snaps the game's power assumptions in half. So does Planar Binding a dozen Air and Earth Elementals. To a lesser extent, so does Shepherd Druid Conjure Animals V + Bear Totem, or a squishy wizard Magic Jarring into a werebear's body for weapon immunity + extra HP. Do you want to play a Champion sword-and-shield Fighter in a game where the werebear-wearing wizard is tanking better than you are thanks to his weapon immunity?

    If you want to tell me that 3E has even more gamebreaking combinations, I'll believe you, but don't try to tell me that 5E doesn't have them too. It's still a WotC game.

  23. - Top - End - #113
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    First off, that GM was a d*ck, nothing to do with the game edition.

    Personally I haven't seen/met anyone who HATES 5E. Conversely I haven't met any who LOVE it either. At least once the shiny glow of "It's not 4E part 2" was over. It seems to fall safely into the realm of "It's okay." One of my wife's friend was deeply in love with it when we got it at GenCon. Raved about it the entire 8 hour drive back home, comparing it flatteringly to 'Mathfinder" and 4E. His love affair lasted about 4 sessions. (Sadly, as it was one of the few chance for me to play rather than run). Several other gamers from IRL fell along the wayside in similar fashion.

    I get liking 3.5 more than 5 (though I understand less liking 3.5 more than Pathfinder). Enjoying the character building mini-game is a real thing and one that seems pretty lacking in 5E. Combat seems dumbed down. Concentration too limiting. Some simplifications don't seem like enhancements (like removing low light vision). But hating it? Hate seems like a stretch when they are still pretty close. But I suppose there are people out there who can hate things pretty easily.

    For the record, I liked 4E (And got a large group of haters to end up liking it as well). If it weren't for the fact it loses so much when a battlemap is being used, I'd probably be switching back. (Overly simplified of course, plenty of other reasons).

  24. - Top - End - #114
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    I really like it. I would put it in the same ballpark of quality as 3.5/PF, though I will acknowledge that there is more material and options in the latter. They're different enough that I would use them for different things, despite both being recognizably "D&D." In some sense, I'd actually give 5e the "more D&D-like" award between the two, but not so much that I would call it detracting from 3e's claim to being D&D. 5e just did a really good job of deliberately recapturing some of the older-school flavor while keeping a lot of the good (not all, but a lot) from 3e.

    It also was bold in introducing new, cool toys, which is refreshing.

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bigmouth View Post
    Personally I haven't seen/met anyone who HATES 5E. Conversely I haven't met any who LOVE it either. At least once the shiny glow of "It's not 4E part 2" was over. It seems to fall safely into the realm of "It's okay."
    *Raises hand*
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kane0 View Post
    *Raises hand*
    Me too. It's certainly my favorite edition, and by a large margin (I liked a lot about 2e, too). But then, these days I'm all DMing and no playing, and 5e is a DM's dream.

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kane0 View Post
    *Raises hand*
    As a lover or a hater?

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    When you say you “love” or “hate” 5e does it matter if it is AL or Homebrew?

    I prefer 5e over any version after OD&D with the original AD&D (before ‘2nd edition’) a clear third choice. Just reading 3.x or 4 in the PHB tomes totally made me retch then sell the books at a loss. If I want a “complicated” game I will pull out some 1970s ancients rules - there some doozies there... including one by Gygax.

    Play what you enjoy and let others do the same.

    BTW, your DM, OP, was a classic jerk of the first water. “ Wow, all he could say was wow,” to quote a children’s book from my youngest two kids’ days of bed time stories.

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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bigmouth View Post
    First off, that GM was a d*ck, nothing to do with the game edition.

    Personally I haven't seen/met anyone who HATES 5E. Conversely I haven't met any who LOVE it either. At least once the shiny glow of "It's not 4E part 2" was over. It seems to fall safely into the realm of "It's okay." One of my wife's friend was deeply in love with it when we got it at GenCon. Raved about it the entire 8 hour drive back home, comparing it flatteringly to 'Mathfinder" and 4E. His love affair lasted about 4 sessions. (Sadly, as it was one of the few chance for me to play rather than run). Several other gamers from IRL fell along the wayside in similar fashion.

    I get liking 3.5 more than 5 (though I understand less liking 3.5 more than Pathfinder). Enjoying the character building mini-game is a real thing and one that seems pretty lacking in 5E. Combat seems dumbed down. Concentration too limiting. Some simplifications don't seem like enhancements (like removing low light vision). But hating it? Hate seems like a stretch when they are still pretty close. But I suppose there are people out there who can hate things pretty easily.

    For the record, I liked 4E (And got a large group of haters to end up liking it as well). If it weren't for the fact it loses so much when a battlemap is being used, I'd probably be switching back. (Overly simplified of course, plenty of other reasons).
    I'd say it's probably my favorite edition overall. I like things about all the versions of D&D I've played, but 5e hits the sweetspot for me. Other systems I've had experience with don't usually grab me in the same way D&D does, even if they're mechanically solid. I suspect a good setting with a system tied into it would give 5e a run for its money, but I'll admit my experience there is pretty limited. So I'd say I love 5e as much as I can love a system of game rules with some loose setting expectations.
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    Default Re: Why the hate on 5e?

    I'd count myself as another one who loves 5E. I'll admit I'm not doing AL or even published adventures, but it's wonderfully straightforward for what I'm doing and it rarely behaves in ways I don't anticipate.

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