Why didn't we switch to 4e/5e?

[Kurald Galain]

As someone who mostly plays stat and skill based games, D&D in general tends to produce skill systems that look hilariously bad to my eyes. I find 5e least annoying in that regard, but it's still in point-and-laugh territory.

Oh yes, WOTC pointedly learned nothing in this regard from decades of RPG design.

Highlights include that no character normally learns new skills as they advance (in 4E/5E, at least); pretending that getting +1 on 1d20 is a Really Big Deal (all three systems, really); resolving complex tasks with a single yes-or-no check; a hilariously bad implementation of "fail forward" (i.e. failure does exactly the same as success but you get a minor penalty in the next battle); and the idea that even the most ludicrous action works 5% of the time (which isn't quite what the rules say, but it's a common interpretation).

I mean, White Wolf's skill system isn't great either but it's hands down better than all of these.

[Knaight]

Oh yes, WOTC pointedly learned nothing in this regard from decades of RPG design.

Not learning from decades of design in the rest of the industry is WotC's specialty, after all. Finding mechanics twenty years after everyone else and hailing them as revolutionary is a close second. Advantage and Disadvantage are a great example here - they're roll and keep systems, and primitive roll and keep systems at that. L5R came out in 1995, and that's just the oldest one I can remember off the top of my head.

I have a simple rule about revolutionary RPG mechanics - if a new game comes out with what they claim is a revolutionary mechanic, and said mechanic is older than I am, it's not revolutionary. This might scrape by on that metric, but I doubt it.

I mean, White Wolf's skill system isn't great either but it's hands down better than all of these.

Pretty much, and when there's negative comparisons being made to the mess that is WoD you know something's gone wrong somewhere.

[Pex]

The idea that all DCs scale with your level comes from 4E, not 3E. Indeed, there are numerous common tasks in 3E that have a fixed DC (not a scaling one) that you can easily do with a low or no modifier, by e.g. taking 10 or grabbing a MW item or having somebody do aid another on you.

Oh yeah, another thing I didn't like about 4E. The difficulty of a task cared about your level. If you wanted to swing on a chandelier somehow that chandelier knew you were level 15 instead of 2 so had a higher DC.

[martixy]

Because it doesn't support the game I wish to play. High-power heroics and high-LA monstrous races.

The others already brought up all relevant points like the limited advancement, the asymmetry between monsters and players and simply the lack of material, all of which directly affect the ability to create such a game.

9. 5e is REALLY FUN. and I ownly own a free pdf monster manual and I use the wiki! it aint hard to find info with a bit of internet sleuthing, if you want to enjoy 5e, you gotta have a good world builder DM, and have a really bonkers character concept, those are fun, like my PURE FIRE Phoenix Sorcerer, he only has fire/acid spells, or how about my enchanter wizard, using glyphs he can put charges of spells in weapons! This game is great and I encourage you to try out some wierd concept.

Your bonkers character concepts seem bland and uninspired to me. I want to play such things as a tsochar trallherd, a mimic monk, an illithid bard, a body-hopping telepath, or even a regular literal dragon.

[Celestia]

From what I can tell, it's all based on one poor business decision. No one had any problems switching from 1st to 2nd or from 2nd to 3rd. We just took their word that it was better and worth it, and we switched no matter how much the rules were changed. But then, when they were coming out with 4th, they advertised it too hard. Not only was it an improvement over the previous editions, but the others sucked. They went too far and insulted the previous editions, thereby insulting those who played such games, i.e. the very audience they were trying to reach. They trampled over our good will and fractured our loyalty.

That's the biggest reason we were so hesitant to change, and those who did check it out were in the mindset to pick apart every flaw. 1st through 3rd were flawed, too. In fact, 3rd was so flawed that they had to release an update to fix things. However, we liked those editions despite their problems because we were able to look past them. We gave no such law at to 4th, and thus, it sunk. It was no more flawed than any other edition, but now people were looking to hate it. I'm sure if WotC hadn't gone too far in the marketing, we would have gladly "upgraded" just like with every previous edition.

The fact that there was no OGL also didn't help ingratiate themselves to a fan base who thought they had been betrayed.


Incidentally, this is also the explanation behind Pathfinder and the frosty reception of 5th. When 4th failed out of the gate, people were looking to stay with 3rd but still wanted fresh material. Pathfinder happened to come along and be in the right place at the right time to snatch up that dangling market share by being "basically 3rd but with new content," exactly what everyone wanted.

5th failed to reclaim the gold partly due to the success of Pathfinder playing to nostalgia and hogging the 3rd fans and mostly because they refused to acknowledge their mistake with 4th. They tried to go backsies and say that 5th was an appeal to the old players, but they still put the new mechanics in, as well. They tried to have their cake and eat it, too. It didn't work, though, because they failed to mend the rift of broken loyalty with those who felt betrayed by 4th.

[Florian]

Oh yeah, another thing I didn't like about 4E. The difficulty of a task cared about your level. If you wanted to swing on a chandelier somehow that chandelier knew you were level 15 instead of 2 so had a higher DC.

That critique is funny, as are the ones about minions and monsters using different rules than characters. That edition dropped any pretense of simulation, which is stupid in D&D anyways.

[Kurald Galain]

like my PURE FIRE Phoenix Sorcerer, he only has fire/acid spells, or how about my enchanter wizard, using glyphs he can put charges of spells in weapons! This game is great and I encourage you to try out some wierd concept.

Since when is a PURE FIRE sorcerer a weird concept?

I mean yeah, they're great, I've played a fire-based caster in 2E and 3E and 4E. So clearly the concept of a fire caster is unique and innovative to 5E.

[Ratter]

So totemist would be a variant of which class?
And crusader?
And truenamer?
And binder?
And psion?
Each of those class is in 3.5 because it uses a different system.

Totemist would be a wizard varient, with the whole ¨Taking on some animal attributes,¨ being enhance abilities, or a druid variant with some of the wizard spells

I dont have the 3.5 books so I dont know crusader rules, but from what I read in the GitP guide for it is you should take warmaster fighter and hexblade

there is a psionic unearthed arcana

[BWR]

Many of the spells necessary for Tippyverse shenanigans have much higher and impossible to overcome costs in AD&D, or in fact don't exist at all.

The base of the Tippyverse, as stated by Tippy on several occasions, is at will large scale teleportation. Teleportation Circle in 3.5, but can be achieved by other means. In 2e the cost would be one point of Constitution, which, if you are evil, you don't have to pay yourself. That isn't even messing with the rules the way the other high op stuff is.
As I said, the very/infinitely large numbers stuff is harder/impossible to pull off.

[Florian]

The base of the Tippyverse, as stated by Tippy on several occasions, is at will large scale teleportation. Teleportation Circle in 3.5, but can be achieved by other means. In 2e the cost would be one point of Constitution, which, if you are evil, you don't have to pay yourself. That isn't even messing with the rules the way the other high op stuff is.
As I said, the very/infinitely large numbers stuff is harder/impossible to pull off.

The base of the "Tippyverse" is treating the "crunch" as more important than the "fluff". If an established setting tells you that "Teleportation Circle" is not a thing, but the mechanics tell you otherwise, we get into a decision point on what trump what.

[noob]

Totemist would be a wizard varient, with the whole ¨Taking on some animal attributes,¨ being enhance abilities, or a druid variant with some of the wizard spells

I dont have the 3.5 books so I dont know crusader rules, but from what I read in the GitP guide for it is you should take warmaster fighter and hexblade

there is a psionic unearthed arcana

Except you would have none of the mechanical variety that way: a totemist is not equivalent to casting spells: you get to use weird powers all day and change the meldshape every day while you can not do that with a low level caster(you need a level 18 wizard(no other caster can do that) for being able to spam abilities all day) and you have nothing equivalent to level 9 spells.

Crusader is nothing similar in any way to a warmaster fighter(you get tons of stances and maneuvers to use with each of them having a mechanical effect and you do not chose which ones you get) he is not similar to an hexblade either: the crusader do not use up his spells: he use maneuvers and immediately gets other maneuvers from the fact of using them and the maneuvers are usually not similar to spells as they are ex and have different effects.(such as making a melee attack that ignore hardness with a weapon (it corresponds to no spell))

Psionic classes are not alternatives of non psionic base classes: there is even psionic base classes in 5e(such as the mystic)

[Cosi]

Crusader is basically a paladin/cleric/knight/holy champion. Again, you can easily just reflavor the concept and use a core mechanic to achieve the same result.

I don't think that captures the resource management of the Crusader. Its WoF deal is fairly unique within the game, and I don't think you can discard that and call the class the same. Overall your post seems to be missing a big part of what noob was talking about:

Each of those class is in 3.5 because it uses a different system.

He's not just asking about mimicking the flavor, he also cares about the resource management, which your replacements don't seem to capture.

My point is that there is no need to use a different set of rules for each class concept (especially concepts that are simply synonymous for core class concepts).

I don't think that's true at all. Distinct resource management systems make classes interesting, and the 3e splats that introduced classes with new resource management systems were very popular. People like Tome of Battle, Magic of Incarnum, and the Expanded Psionics Handbook. Yes, there are reasons for that beyond the new resource management systems the classes in those books have, but I don't think you can claim those systems are irrelevant.

IMO, every class should have its own resource management mechanic, preferably one that compliments the class's flavor. Barbarians should get stronger as they take and deal damage. Scouts should be rewarded for moving around. Warlocks should damage their own bodies by channeling powers beyond any mortal. Artificers should prepare new contraptions every day. Because that's cool.

One thing that always amuses me here is that a "moderate" task is DC 15, meaning that untrained people fail these tasks 70% of the time.

(where two players both trying to make an X-expert at a given level can easily end up with a difference in 40 points in X without even invoking particularly heavy optimization).

I won't dismiss this out of hand, but I don't think you can really say that 40-point swings are possible without invoking optimization I would consider heavy (or assuming near-zero optimization on the part of the other party). I suppose it also depends on level.

As someone who mostly plays stat and skill based games, D&D in general tends to produce skill systems that look hilariously bad to my eyes. I find 5e least annoying in that regard, but it's still in point-and-laugh territory.

If I may, how would you want to improve D&D's skill system, if you were in charge?

resolving complex tasks with a single yes-or-no check

Skill Challenges tried to fix this. They were really bad, but there was an effort (there was also a thing in 3e's Unearthed Arcana). If you change them slightly (time limits instead of failure counts, gradations of success), you get something that is pretty good. Particularly if you write some abilities for people that change how skill challenges work (e.g. "you get a +5 bonus for your first roll on a new skill" or "you can skip N rounds for X auto-hits" or whatever).

the idea that even the most ludicrous action works 5% of the time (which isn't quite what the rules say, but it's a common interpretation).

I agree that this is bad, but is it really fair to blame the game for it? You admit that it isn't a part of the rules.

Advantage and Disadvantage are a great example here - they're roll and keep systems, and primitive roll and keep systems at that. L5R came out in 1995, and that's just the oldest one I can remember off the top of my head.

In fairness, I think "roll many, keep one" would be generally identified as rerolls rather than roll and keep. IIRC roll and keep has a step where you aggregate your kept dice, which seems fairly central to the concept.

From what I can tell, it's all based on one poor business decision. No one had any problems switching from 1st to 2nd or from 2nd to 3rd.

Several poor business decisions, really. As you mention, badmouthing old versions was stupid, as was killing the OGL. But so was dumping a huge chunk of content from the core game (gnomes, Bards, Sorcerers, and more). Of course, the game was also bad, which doesn't help.

[Ratter]

Because it doesn't support the game I wish to play. High-power heroics and high-LA monstrous races.

The others already brought up all relevant points like the limited advancement, the asymmetry between monsters and players and simply the lack of material, all of which directly affect the ability to create such a game.



Your bonkers character concepts seem bland and uninspired to me. I want to play such things as a tsochar trallherd, a mimic monk, an illithid bard, a body-hopping telepath, or even a regular literal dragon.

I dont know what you mean by a mimic monk, unless you mean to say you are a mimic, in which case you totally can by going 3 sorcerer, enough of any caster to get polymorph, and then eventually polymorphing yourself into a mimimic and using extended metamagic to keep you that way for longer than a long rest, effectively making you a mimic forever, same shtick with a dragon, or, if you dont want even an hour where you arent a dragon/mimic, then invest in warding glyphs that polymorph you once every hour, turnong you into a were human, and, with a dm varient of dominate person, become a body hopper, although the mimic and telepath one is kinda iffy upon if your dm likes you

[Celestia]

Several poor business decisions, really. As you mention, badmouthing old versions was stupid, as was killing the OGL. But so was dumping a huge chunk of content from the core game (gnomes, Bards, Sorcerers, and more). Of course, the game was also bad, which doesn't help.

Considering just how many source books 3rd had, it was expected for them to continue that trend. I'm sure if 4th hadn't generated such ill will right off the bat, people would have been patient enough to wait for that stuff to come out later. As for the mechanics, again, if people were willing to accept it, they could have voiced constructive criticism rather than hateful bile. That could have caused them to release an update like with 3rd, and those issues could have been fixed with a 4.5 version. It was the attitude and negative response generated by the perceived betrayal that caused all minor, fixable foibles with the edition to blossom into huge, unmanageable problems.

[Ratter]

Since when is a PURE FIRE sorcerer a weird concept?

I mean yeah, they're great, I've played a fire-based caster in 2E and 3E and 4E. So clearly the concept of a fire caster is unique and innovative to 5E.

Nah, its just people saying that everyone feels the same in 5e, so I was trying to give an example of pure fire (ie, almost pure damage) and an enchanter (ie almost no damage)

[Kurald Galain]

That could have caused them to release an update like with 3rd, and those issues could have been fixed with a 4.5 version.

They did. It... didn't work out too well.

Nah, its just people saying that everyone feels the same in 5e, so I was trying to give an example of pure fire (ie, almost pure damage) and an enchanter (ie almost no damage)

Vos said, emphasis mine, "I hate 4e and 5e's attempt to make all levels of play the same. I don't mind having danger at all levels, but high-level play is supposed to feel different than low-level play." His comment was not about (lack of) class diversity, but about lack of character progression as you level up.

[Celestia]

They did. It... didn't work out too well.

Huh. I have not heard of that. I guess it really must have been bad to be so obscure. Or maybe I just live under a rock.

[Grod_The_Giant]

One thing that always amuses me here is that a "moderate" task is DC 15, meaning that untrained people fail these tasks 70% of the time.

I did a bunch of math once on 5e numbers, and I'm convinced that there were at least two different people working on them who got their wires seriously crossed. If you have Expertise and a good ability modifier, the DCs work out alright: you have about a 65% success rate on moderate tasks at level 1 that scales pretty smoothly up to a 65% shot at a very hard check at 20th-- paralleling attack rolls pretty well, which also give you about a 65% chance of hitting an equal-level foe pretty much across the board. I dunno if DCs were picked with the expectation of Expertise, or Expertise was thrown in as a patch after the fact, but either way, it's not great.

(In my home games, I offer "double Proficiency to skills" across the board, and replace the Bard/Rogue features with "Advantage, and use Proficiency in place of an ability modifier if you want.")

Skill Challenges tried to fix this. They were really bad, but there was an effort (there was also a thing in 3e's Unearthed Arcana). If you change them slightly (time limits instead of failure counts, gradations of success), you get something that is pretty good. Particularly if you write some abilities for people that change how skill challenges work (e.g. "you get a +5 bonus for your first roll on a new skill" or "you can skip N rounds for X auto-hits" or whatever).

5e could really use a "Tome of Skills" or something. The newest book had some good stuff for Tools, but it would be really awesome to get a chapter that goes through Ability-by-Ability with example DCs, special things you can do with skills, expanded rules for things like crafting and social combat, that sort of thing. Maybe general Skill Challenge rules (though it's not easy writing good ones; believe me when I say I've tried) and skill tricks. I started brainstorming something like that at one point...

I dont know what you mean by a mimic monk, unless you mean to say you are a mimic, in which case you totally can by going 3 sorcerer, enough of any caster to get polymorph, and then eventually polymorphing yourself into a mimimic and using extended metamagic to keep you that way for longer than a long rest, effectively making you a mimic forever, same shtick with a dragon, or, if you dont want even an hour where you arent a dragon/mimic, then invest in warding glyphs that polymorph you once every hour, turnong you into a were human, and, with a dm varient of dominate person, become a body hopper, although the mimic and telepath one is kinda iffy upon if your dm likes you

"I'm a human who can eventually cast a spell that gives me the stats of a dragon, and like a dozen other spells" is very different than "I'm a dragon." Not that 3.5 is particularly good at letting you play a dragon either, given how LA/RHD work, but it's at least theoretically an option.

[noob]

Incarnum is interesting because it might just be one of the few splatbooks that actually made something halfway new-ish. That one might need some actual translation into 5e.

Truenamer, Binder, Psion are all just casters and you could play a standard caster with specific spell lists to get the same basic effect.

Truenamer: you are a wizard with limited spell selection, but you only need verbal components ever.

Psion: you are a sorcerer and at the exclusion of nonpsionic schools, you can use psionic magic at will.

Binder: you are a warlock that sacrifices the benefits of having a single patron for the versatility of swapping between vestiges.

Crusader is basically a paladin/cleric/knight/holy champion. Again, you can easily just reflavor the concept and use a core mechanic to achieve the same result.

My point is that there is no need to use a different set of rules for each class concept (especially concepts that are simply synonymous for core class concepts).

Well the truenamer first is a partial caster who did not just get a limited spell selection:he does not use the same pools for all his spells.
It would more be a wizard that capped at level 6 spells and who instead of using spell slots could use each of his known spell a limited number of times per day but could use each of his spell in two ways.
Also there is a whole lot of truenamer spells which are not unbalancing but which got no equivalent in the wizard spell list(read: nearly 80% of them)
Then there was the limit of having only one occurrence of a spell active at a given time and of having most of his spell single target until he got the power of making his spells work on multiple targets if they have a common point.
Look it is very different than a wizard: if you made that sub class it would be so long to describe it would be nearly as long as creating a new base class.
And that is if you decide to make it not skill based(which honestly is mandatory if you want to play with bounded accuracy: a skill based system will not work with bounded accuracy).
None of this is similar to vancian spellcasting.
It is not similar to sorcerer spellcasting since you do not have slots which can be used for any spell you know of a given level.
It is not similar to warlock either(it is not having a bunch of spell slots all of the same level for casting spells you know)

The binder is not a warlock in any way: he does not gets spells and instead have a bunch of abilities per vestige most of them being immunities, passives and resistances and maybe one or two active abilities per vestige.
If you wanted to keep the same game play for binder then you would nearly need to rewrite 100% of the binder class into the description of the alternate warlock(since most of the text of the binder is a description of how to bind vestiges and a list of the vestiges).

Crusader is not based on perishable resources: it keeps going on if you refill it with hp just like a fighter unlike most of the classes to which you compared it.(the only exception for it is his smites and it is a very secondary thing)
and it is not similar to a fighter because even the archetype that gets maneuvers did not get nearly as much variety(and it does not gets stances)

If you did put side to side a regular crusader and a paladin deformed into looking like a crusader and then make them fight stuff for three hours you will see the difference as the regular crusader can endlessly fight while the mutated paladin will quickly run out of spells

[Velaryon]

When 4e was announced, I was reluctant to switch for several reasons that had nothing to do with the system itself:
1. I spent a lot of money on 3.X rulebooks, and had no desire to start buying a new system all over again. Plus I was unemployed at the time so couldn't justify the expense.
2. I spent a lot of time learning 3.X, and wasn't motivated to learn a new system since I really don't like reading rulebooks.
3. I was pretty happy with 3.X and didn't feel the need for a new system. I felt then (and still do) that there is a whole lot that can be done in this system that I haven't explored yet.
4. WotC did a really poor job of marketing the new edition, and the insults directed at people who liked the older editions were completely uncalled for.

Then I actually got a look at the 4th edition books when a friend of mine bought them, and was unimpressed. My top gripes at the time:
1. Previously core options like the gnome and half-orc not being included (apparently they came out in later books, but I had already decided not to play 4e by then).
2. Homogenization of gameplay mechanics and resource management from different classes makes them all feel too similar for my liking.
3. The general look of the books was unappealing to me. The art was less interesting and the overall aesthetics reminded me more of school textbooks than RPG supplements.
4. Rather than an evolution of previous editions, it struck me as a completely new game system that resembled the D&D I knew in name only.

I've never particularly embraced Pathfinder, but I've been in 3.P games where some material was brought in, and it seems much more like what I wanted. I've made a little bit of use of Pathfinder, but I tend to treat it more as 3rd party content for 3.5 than as its own system.

When 5th edition was announced, I was skeptical for several reasons. At this point I recognized the flaws of 3.5 better than I previously had, but I felt plenty capable of working around them, so I still didn't feel like I needed a new system. However, from what I saw it at least looked like WotC had started taking notice of why they lost half their market to Paizo, and were taking steps to at least make the new edition more recognizably D&D than 4e.

Some friends whose opinions I trust got in on the 5e playtesting and reported that they enjoyed it. Then awhile later, I had an opportunity to run the 5e starter set as a paid presenter at a library program, so I learned enough of it to play for an hour or two and get paid. The person who offered me that option soon also invited me to play a 5e campaign with him, so I decided to give it a try.

Now I play a mix of 3.5 and 5th. I still prefer 3.5 because even though it has significant flaws, I'm familiar with the system and I enjoy its extreme flexibility. I like working with the fiddly bits of character design and combing through tons of options to make a character unlike any I've played or seen before. I do get frustrated that certain options are not viable, at least not without significant amounts of optimization, but overall 3.5 is like an old pair of shoes that I've broken in and can comfortably walk a few miles in, even if they aren't pretty.

The game play of 5e bothers me sometimes because I feel a bit restricted, though this has eased a little bit as more material has come out (still not as much as I'd like though). There's a lot less there to interest me in terms of crunch, and I rarely get that feeling of excitement that I get from 3.5 when I hit a certain level and get a new class ability, feat, or prestige class that I've been waiting on. It pretty much only happens when I get to open up whatever subclass I pick for my character, and no longer feel like Generic Wizard/Rogue/whatever #3,693,280. Leveling up in 5e often feels anticlimactic to me, since there are rarely choices to be made or new options that radically change how my character plays. Admittedly this was a problem sometimes in 3.5 with dead levels, but I rarely encountered those.

Given the choice I always pick 3.5 over 5th, but I will usually play what the group wants to play at that time. I still don't feel very comfortable DMing 5th, but that probably has less to do with the system itself and more with my not wanting to take the time to master the system to the degree necessary for me to feel comfortable in charge.

[Pleh]

You're getting too hung up on details.

If you insist on making 5e classes match 3e mechanics and management, why are you playing 5e?

If you're moving a class from 3.5 to 5e, the mechanics are not the goal of the translation. Just the character concept, most of which weren't that unique.

[Luccan]

3.5 was what my group was playing when 4e came out. One of us bought the PHB and while it looked cool, none of us were willing to move our games over to 4e (we were also playing d20 modern games at the time, it made sense to stick with systems that mostly matched). After that group fell apart I didn't play for awhile, then 5e came out, but I didn't have the books or anything. Next time I played was with a 3.5 group.

I like what little I've played of 5e, but I think it lacks the breadth of options 3.5 has. To its benefit, perhaps, but there are things you flat out can't do in 5e that you can do in 3.X. The systems have different strengths, so I'll probably never fully switch over, so long as I can at least find 3.5 games online.

[Psyren]

Huh. I have not heard of that. I guess it really must have been bad to be so obscure. Or maybe I just live under a rock.

Essentials was... uh...

Hey look everyone, 5th edition!

[Morcleon]

You're getting too hung up on details.

If you insist on making 5e classes match 3e mechanics and management, why are you playing 5e?

If you're moving a class from 3.5 to 5e, the mechanics are not the goal of the translation. Just the character concept, most of which weren't that unique.

5e not matching 3e mechanics is one of the big reasons why I didn't switch over.

And if I wanted to move a character concept over, I'd want the mechanics to still support the fluff, which gets a lot harder in 5e.

[Scots Dragon]

Essentials was... uh...

Hey look everyone, 5th edition!

Seeing some of the discussion of Essentials and the reasoning behind it in the online Dragon Magazine issues was utterly hilarious and sad.

From Dragon #389.

As we moved forward with 4th edition, it became increasingly clear that we could produce classes with different rates of class feature and power acquisition without harming the game. The psionics power source in Player’s Handbook 3 pointed the way. In that book, we introduced a system by which psionic characters had access to at-will powers that they could boost using a pool of power points. By spending power points, an attack could deal more damage or gain an additional effect. After each short rest, a psionic character regains power points.

When the first psionic classes hit the pages of Dragon magazine, we were happy with the positive reaction to the system. Players liked that psionics felt different and offered a new type of character to play. Once we saw the reaction, it was clear that players liked having classes that were new, different, and interesting.

[Ratter]

Vos said, emphasis mine, "I hate 4e and 5e's attempt to make all levels of play the same. I don't mind having danger at all levels, but high-level play is supposed to feel different than low-level play." His comment was not about (lack of) class diversity, but about lack of character progression as you level up.

Oh, I misunderstood, sorry

[Seerow]

You're getting too hung up on details.

If you insist on making 5e classes match 3e mechanics and management, why are you playing 5e?

If you're moving a class from 3.5 to 5e, the mechanics are not the goal of the translation. Just the character concept, most of which weren't that unique.

This would be acceptable if the mechanics were at least their own interesting variant. Most 5e mechanics are dumbed down to the point of not even really being mechanics. Any player who wants to play something mechanically distinct from another player in a similar role is going to have a hard time making it work.

[CharonsHelper]

Seeing some of the discussion of Essentials and the reasoning behind it in the online Dragon Magazine issues was utterly hilarious and sad.

From Dragon #389.

So basically people were happy to finally have some significant asymmetry?

[johnbragg]

There should be more to character growth than dealing enough combat damage to defeat an encounter six levels lower. The 5E forum is just now having a twelve-page discussion on how many monsters are just a "bag of HP"; defeating a bigger bag of HP is not really impressive.

WAnted to point out that most of the posters are taking the "No they're not" side of the argument.

Yes. The issue is not so much that it's difficult for a DM to qualify a task as "easy" or "hard" or whatnot. The issue is that when you do, too often you get ridiculous outcomes like a so-called expert repeatedly failing an easy task, or an untrained nobody randomly succeeding at an olympic-level stunt.

That's not a 5th edition problem. That's a d20 problem. If it's really a problem, you could always go 3d6 instead, and figure out a workaround for crits and crit-range-extenders.

[johnbragg]

Or how a normal person will fail very easy tasks one quarter of the time(I want to climb those stairs (rolls) Oh I can not climb those stairs I guess that is why all the houses in the town have multiple stairs)

I think I can argue the other side here.

Let's say I'm a 1st level character with no ranks in Climb. So those stairs are a DC 5. If they're in my house, I'd say I should have a +2 for familiarity, for a DC 3.

If there's no stakes, then there is no reason to roll. I take 10 and go up or down the stairs like I do several times a day.

But when there are stakes? When I hear my kid say, weakly, "Daddy?" and then the sounds of barfing, I'm going up those stairs at speed. DC 3 means a 15% chance I stumble going up the stairs, have to take an extra step and I don't make it there this "round." That's not so far off, is it?

If I'm staying at your house, where I don't know where the stairs are, maybe a 25% chance of getting there in quickly.