5e doesn't suck... but it doesn't really stack up well against 3.X

[Lanaya]

And yet, the level 11 fighter doesn't have the ability to kill everything ever in one round.

What's your point? The level 11 fighter can effortlessly defeat foes that would be a threat to lower level PCs, but can't effortlessly defeat a legendary threat. Likewise, the shadowdancer can effortlessly sneak past guards that would have detected lower level PCs, but can't effortlessly sneak past the super powerful guards of Asmodeus's palace.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I can see this being a problem for people that play with multiple GMs in multiple settings. I did this when I was younger and the experience variation was EXTREMELY wide, even with 3.5's "concrete" DC's. I also think this situation of multiple groups is fairly rare these days. I think the average player has a single group he plays with and that's probably it.

So if you have multiple GM's, yes, you may have to learn the style of each one and plan your actions accordingly. Just like any edition of DnD.

Most groups these days probably have just one DM, sure, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem for those groups that do have multiple DMs. In my current group of seven people, I'm the primary DM but two of the other players run one-shots and mini campaigns when I'm not there, when the group want to try out new characters or adventures, or when I want a break from DMing; also, two of the players play in a second group (each has their own different second group, not both in the same second group).

I'm a very player-empowering but by-the-RAW DM who allows pretty much everything as long as the PCs are fine with NPCs using the same rules and tactics, DM #2 is a "the DM is God" DM who makes a lot of houserules and rulings (not usually good ones, frankly; there's a reason he's not the primary DM), and DM #3 is fairly permissive with the characters he likes (divine casters, psionicists, and skillmonkeys) and nitpicky with the ones he doesn't (arcanists and martial types) and allows a smaller set of books per campaign, while as far as I've heard Other Group 1 is run by another mostly-by-RAW DM like me but who has a quite different approach to encounter- and adventure-building and Other Group 2 is run by a "core only, Tolkien races only, Final Destination" DM.

All of this is to say that everyone in my group has to be able to adapt to at least two and sometimes three different DMing styles on a regular basis, and there have been a few instances where the differences in assumptions have come up during the game (not to session-derailing extents, but leading to major changes in plans, miscommunications in combat, and such). Two of the other players and I started on AD&D and have almost always had multiple DMs in a group as was more common back then, and we all switched to 3e shortly after it came out in large part because a standardized ruleset makes hopping between groups and DMs so much easier and the extra work to read up on houserules and learn DM idiosyncrasies is drastically reduced. So those of us who value rules that promote inter-DM consistency have a very good reason to do so.

And yet, the level 11 fighter doesn't have the ability to kill everything ever in one round.

And your point is...?

[mephnick]

So those of us who value rules that promote inter-DM consistency have a very good reason to do so.

They promoted consistency, but I never got it. I'm glad your experience was different.

I still think the fears of the skill system come down to the difference between DM's, like it always has.

If you play with 3 DM's, you should eventually learn that:

DM 1 generally makes things a bit easy to empower the players and get the story going.
DM 2 is obsessed with "realism" so checks are harder.
DM 3 wavers back and forth because he sucks. You play with him cause he's your wife's boss or something.

You still need to learn each DM and make judgement calls on your builds and actions based on their tendencies, just like you always did.

[ProphetSword]

For most of the game, the DM will only ever have to worry about three numbers when it comes to setting DCs: 10 (easy), 15 (moderate), and 20 (hard). Once the party reaches high levels, DC 10 might be phased out since at that point it starts to become trivial for most of the PCs. So instead the DM might use 15 (easy for you), 20 (moderate for you), and 25 (hard for you). I say "for you," because for anyone else in the game world those same DCs would be far more difficult. And if a character has Expertise, those same DCs are much easier.

The same DCs of 10, 15, and 20 remain relevant for a majority of the game, and throughout the game the PCs get incrementally better at them. In 3.5, those DCs become obsolete much sooner, and have to be replaced constantly as the PCs continue to maximize their most important skills. PCs are technically progressing, but it doesn't feel like it because they continually run into arbitrarily higher DCs. In 5e, that doesn't happen.

This is counter to how bounded accuracy works.

Earlier in this thread, people were complaining that they didn't feel empowered enough because they couldn't automatically beat a challenge, and now someone is suggesting raising the DCs. A hard wood door that was a DC 15 to open at level 1 is still a DC 15 to open at level 20. If you have gotten better to the point where you have a +13 to open that door now, then congratulations, you are now better than someone who only has a +3 at level 1. That's the whole reason bounded accuracy exists, so that each additional +1 means a 5% increase to do something.

Continually raising the DC of the challenge not only breaks logic, it keeps the characters from ever making progress.

[Madfellow]

This is counter to how bounded accuracy works.

Earlier in this thread, people were complaining that they didn't feel empowered enough because they couldn't automatically beat a challenge, and now someone is suggesting raising the DCs. A hard wood door that was a DC 15 to open at level 1 is still a DC 15 to open at level 20. If you have gotten better to the point where you have a +13 to open that door now, then congratulations, you are now better than someone who only has a +3 at level 1. That's the whole reason bounded accuracy exists, so that each additional +1 means a 5% increase to do something.

Continually raising the DC of the challenge not only breaks logic, it keeps the characters from ever making progress.

You're misinterpreting what I wrote. When I said, "phase out dc10 and bring in dc25," what I meant was that dc10 challenges, being no longer challenging, would likely be handwaved as, "you can't actually fail at that. You succeed," and the party would start encountering dc25 challenges (a door forged by stone giants, as an example).

The difference between fifth and third is that in fifth, this doesn't happen until level fifteen or so. In the meantime, characters still encounter mundane challenges but get continually better at them. In third, if the dm wants to challenge his pcs he has to do this much sooner and keep doing it as the party progresses. 20s become 25s, 30s, 35s, and so on. You have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.

[Sartharina]

The number of people who enjoy having encounters numerically trivialized is dramatically smaller than the number of people who'd prefer a pit trap to be a semi-viable threat to unsuspecting level 20s as well as level 1s.

[Lanaya]

The number of people who enjoy having encounters numerically trivialized is dramatically smaller than the number of people who'd prefer a pit trap to be a semi-viable threat to unsuspecting level 20s as well as level 1s.

Mind giving us a source on that?

[1337 b4k4]

Mind giving us a source on that?

I can't speak for Sartharina's source, but it's certainly something you could extrapolate from some observation:

1) It's the approach 5e is taking.
2) It's something many successful non-D&D games do (it's rather unusual for games like GURPS or Traveller or Eclipse Phase or CoC to allow you to advance so much over the course of a campaign that you numerically outclass part of the sytem)
3) Even in 3.x, many campaigns saw DCs increasing to match the party (see complaints about number escalation and the number of discussions had over "I want to have my party do X but they're bypassing all the DCs"
4) The common interpretation of 4e's Page 42 was that DCs scaled with player level and it's how many (most?) groups used it.
5) Most people talk about 3.x's sweet spot. Part of that sweet spot is a period wherein DCs are fairly reliably beatable, but still present a challenge.

[Knaight]

There are people who dont bother to learn any of the rules in the first place either. Is lazy Joe half *** the measure of who were are designing for now?

I'd rather this game NOT devolve to the lowest common denominator.

This can be pushed either way easily enough. There's a case to be made that explicitly listing as much as 3.5 did panders to the lower common denominator without even the GMing skill to interpret the difficulty of setting tasks with a descriptive skill, instead needing to consult a table that explicitly lists it. It would be an unfair description, but so is characterizing the people who favor that technique as "lazy Joe half ***".

The idea that having more rules makes a game better and playing a game with more rules is somehow an indicator of intelligence got floated around during the emergence of 4e as well, and it was just as ridiculous there. The case could easily have been made that a rules heavy game is just spoon feeding the GM a bunch of lists on the basis that they aren't creative enough or consistent enough to handle making decisions, and yet that didn't happen - probably because the rules light group generally considers rules heavy games good for other people and not for them, instead of a prop by which to enhance their egos through poorly conceived attacks on the intellect of those who don't share their preferences.

[Sartharina]

There are people who dont bother to learn any of the rules in the first place either. Is lazy Joe half *** the measure of who were are designing for now?

They're designing for people who actually play the game, sitting at a table and keeping the action and flow of the game moving quickly and uninterrupted, with only maps, adventure notes, character sheets, miniatures, dice, snacks, and pencils at the table, with books buried underneath adventure notes, backup character sheets, pizza boxes, etc, and only consulted for character generation and an occassional (once per hour at most) niche rules clarification.

It is NOT built for people who sit around at desks arguing on internet forums with dozens of books open in front of them.

The more intuitive and simple the rules are to use on-the fly without needing consulting, the better it is for the game.

[mephnick]

You act as if grinding the momentum to a halt to find the official DC for wading through rapid water downhill during a hailstorm isn't "playing the game".

Shame on you.

[Sartharina]

You act as if grinding the momentum to a halt to find the official DC for wading through rapid water downhill during a hailstorm isn't "playing the game".

Shame on you.

No, it's not playing the game. At least not playing the game as it's designed or intended to be played. The rules (Noted in the DMG and PHB) state that you are NOT supposed to bring the game to a halt to look up rules mid-session. (Quick references are okay)

[Gnomes2169]

You act as if grinding the momentum to a halt to find the official DC for wading through rapid water downhill during a hailstorm isn't "playing the game".

Shame on you.

This beautiful bit of sarcasm beeds to be sig'd. Can I do that?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The number of people who enjoy having encounters numerically trivialized is dramatically smaller than the number of people who'd prefer a pit trap to be a semi-viable threat to unsuspecting level 20s as well as level 1s.

2) It's something many successful non-D&D games do (it's rather unusual for games like GURPS or Traveller or Eclipse Phase or CoC to allow you to advance so much over the course of a campaign that you numerically outclass part of the sytem)

First off, in most games there are challenges that you just outclass because of the nature of those challenges. For instance, pit traps challenging the equivalent of level 20 characters is...

• ...definitely supposed to happen in CoC, because CoC's power scale goes from "random average dude who knows nothing about the Mythos" to "random average dude who knows just about the Mythos to know that getting involved with it was a terrible and sanity-shattering idea."
• ...only likely to happen at Traveller's tech level 0, as high-lifepath characters in Traveller's other 35 tech levels are highly likely to have some form of transportation making pit traps trivially bypassed.
• ...something that may or may not happen in GURPS, depending entirely on the setting you're in. Low-power/-tech settings might make pit traps challenging for high-point-value characters, but pretty much everything outside of GURPS Horror and GURPS Mysteries gives you something (whether flight spells, jet packs, kung-fu super leaps, or something else) to again trivialize pit traps.
• ...not a thing in Eclipse Phase, as your disembodied swarm of flying ninja nanobots cares nothing for piddly physical obstacles, and any character who falls afoul of a pit trap can just reload from backup to the sounds of the mocking laughter of said ninja swarm.

Whether something is outclassed because you have a +100 vs. DC 80 in your Foo skill or because your starship doesn't care about ground-bound obstacles, there are just some things that go out of challenge scope as you grow in power, just like there are things that start out outside of the challenge scope (dragons, shoggoths, disembodied malevolent AIs) and come into them as you gain power. Those other games don't try to shoehorn pit traps and tiger fights into interstellar exploration campaigns, so why should 5e go out of its way to shoehorn arrow traps and orc fights into high-level campaigns?


Secondly, D&D's rapid and large power scaling is part of what makes it different from those other games. From the beginning it's been a zero-to-hero game where you become superhuman before the midway point of the level range; while everyone says 3e was a huge jump in power from AD&D, 1e still had fighters who were literally titled Superheroes at level 8 and adventures that ended in killing gods at level 14. Even BECMI, supposedly a lower-power game than AD&D, had a rule allowing fighters to attack one 0th-level enemy (i.e. your rank and file conscript soldiers) per fighter level in one round and ended up with characters becoming the titular Immortals with godlike powers.

The idea that a mundane army of orcs, humans, or any other monster whose special powers consist of "can speak" and "has opposable thumbs," or that running into pit traps, deadfalls, and other noncombat stuff a real-world human could deal with, have ever been, or should ever be, a challenge to high-level characters--who regularly travel to alternate dimensions and gained their own armies as an afterthought back in the day--is frankly bizarre to me.

3) Even in 3.x, many campaigns saw DCs increasing to match the party (see complaints about number escalation and the number of discussions had over "I want to have my party do X but they're bypassing all the DCs"

And pretty much all of those discussions were answered with "Your Lord of the Rings ripoff campaign isn't a 15th-level adventure. Your PCs can fly, teleport, sneak past or slay hundreds of uruk-hai, and otherwise trounce those 'challenges', so an adventure about walking everywhere and being scared of a single big spider isn't going to cut it anymore."

At some point, PCs can (for example) know everything knowable by a Knowledge check. That's fine; "let's figure out this plot-related piece of lore" isn't something covered by Knowledge anyway, and if your high-level PCs are on an adventure to discover something known to no one else in the multiverse, the party Knowledge guy being able to identify every monster, spell, and random inscription on the walls along the way is a fitting bit of flavor, not a problem to be solved. The same holds for high movement skills and "let's get to this plot-relevant place" or any other skill: competent PCs being competent is a feature, not a bug.

5) Most people talk about 3.x's sweet spot. Part of that sweet spot is a period wherein DCs are fairly reliably beatable, but still present a challenge.

The "sweet spot" of 3e isn't about a sweet spot between not succeeding on any checks and not failing any checks, it's a sweet spot between noncasters dominating at low levels (roughly 1-5, though the tier 1s are still doing okay in that range) and casters dominating at high levels (roughly 13+, though the tier 5s fall behind around level 8ish); skillmonkey types can already go off the RNG with respect to skills in the sweet spot, but then being good at skills is kind of their thing.

Taking levels 6-13 and stretching them out over 20 or 30 levels is certainly one solution to the issue, but it's the lazy way out and hardly the most satisfying to people who actually like the vulnerability of low levels and the Logistics & Dragons of high levels.

[1337 b4k4]

First off, in most games there are challenges that you just outclass because of the nature of those challenges. For instance, pit traps challenging the equivalent of level 20 characters is...

I was mostly referring to the overall concept that your PCs don't outlevel the world they started in rather then the the pit trap specifically. Sorry for not being clear.

And pretty much all of those discussions were answered with "Your Lord of the Rings ripoff campaign isn't a 15th-level adventure. Your PCs can fly, teleport, sneak past or slay hundreds of uruk-hai, and otherwise trounce those 'challenges', so an adventure about walking everywhere and being scared of a single big spider isn't going to cut it anymore."

That may be how it's answered, but it's still evidence that there are people (and if you judge by how often it comes up, quite a few people) who want that. They want the sort of game with characters with the survivability of higher level D&D characters without the world out leveling that comes with it.

The same holds for high movement skills and "let's get to this plot-relevant place" or any other skill: competent PCs being competent is a feature, not a bug.

Agreed, but competence is not necessarily equal to complete domination. Even Indiana Jones tripped traps, no one (I don't think) would argue he wasn't competent.

I'm not arguing that games (and even D&D in particular) should not allow characters to out level the world if that's what the players want. I was just pointing out that an observation of the TTRPG world could certainly lead one to conclude that there are definitely a lot of people who don't want their players or characters to numerically out level the world around them. And even for people that do, at least a lot of the ones I've talked to aren't satisfied by D&D's approach of simply scaling the numbers higher and higher because it often amounts to playing the same game at level 1 as at level 30, just with stronger doors and bigger pits.

As a personal preference, if WotC were to release newer books with even more levels (as they probably will) I would love to see game play with a completely different feel, not "level 1 with +30 added to every number"

[mephnick]

This beautiful bit of sarcasm beeds to be sig'd. Can I do that?

Sure you can

[Lanaya]

I can't speak for Sartharina's source, but it's certainly something you could extrapolate from some observation

In other words, the closest thing you can get to actual evidence is a few people saying that they're pretty sure that most people like X more than Y, based on random hunches and guesswork. I'm rather unconvinced by this argument. And even if it were true, who cares? Since when has popularity been a direct measurement of quality?

[warty goblin]

And even if it were true, who cares? Since when has popularity been a direct measurement of quality?

When producing something for people to use, it's often considered beneficial if it does in fact do what they want it to.

[Lanaya]

When producing something for people to use, it's often considered beneficial if it does in fact do what they want it to.

Sure, but we've established long ago that some people like bounded accuracy and some people don't. This debate has long since moved into the territory of everyone insisting that their personal favourite edition is objectively better than all the others.

[warty goblin]

Sure, but we've established long ago that some people like bounded accuracy and some people don't. This debate has long since moved into the territory of everyone insisting that their personal favourite edition is objectively better than all the others.

In which case popularity is really the only sensibly objective standard on offer, and the data isn't in yet.

[Gavran]

Sure, but we've established long ago that some people like bounded accuracy and some people don't. This debate has long since moved into the territory of everyone insisting that their personal favourite edition is objectively better than all the others.

To be fair that claim was more or less made in the OP. (Though OP had the grace to use the words "personal fave")

Still, what more do you want for evidence? We could make a poll but it'd hardly be useful statistically.

I think the more important point here is "5E fixes some problems a group of people had with 3E. Some other group of people thinks the way 5E handles those issues are inferior. Both groups are perfectly capable of playing whichever system they prefer and arguing about which group is correct is surely pointless."

And indeed, while popularity is not a measure of quality unpopularity certainly isn't either. Time will tell how successful 5E becomes, and I imagine we can all agree it won't have anything to do with a sudden spike in the popularity of the medium.

[Lanaya]

Still, what more do you want for evidence? We could make a poll but it'd hardly be useful statistically.

Indeed. Gathering any real evidence on the matter would be very difficult, and because we have no accurate way to determine what's more popular nobody should be acting like they know which game mechanic is more popular than the other. It's intellectually dishonest at best.

[McBars]

It's intellectually dishonest at best.

Oh come on. We're not making submissions to the NEJM, we're spitballing on a forum.

[Sartharina]

In other words, the closest thing you can get to actual evidence is a few people saying that they're pretty sure that most people like X more than Y, based on random hunches and guesswork. I'm rather unconvinced by this argument. And even if it were true, who cares? Since when has popularity been a direct measurement of quality?

I'd have to go digging through 5e playtest commentary. But Mike Mearls was talking about the value of having parties not outlevel their challenges.


To return to the pit trap example... I think a net trap might be better to demonstrate that even high-level parties can find themselves relevantly disadvantaged (If momentarily) by low-level threats. As opposed to Math! saying "Now you're immune to this sort of thing"

[Lanaya]

To return to the pit trap example... I think a net trap might be better to demonstrate that even high-level parties can find themselves relevantly disadvantaged (If momentarily) by low-level threats. As opposed to Math! saying "Now you're immune to this sort of thing"

That's not a very good example of high level characters being threatened by a low level trap, considering the people tied up in the net trap are basically ordinary humans with a tad of plot armour and so it makes perfect sense. Try doing the same thing to a minor deity and you'll be rather less successful, and that's what a high level 3.5 character is.

[ProphetSword]

That's not a very good example of high level characters being threatened by a low level trap, considering the people tied up in the net trap are basically ordinary humans with a tad of plot armour and so it makes perfect sense. Try doing the same thing to a minor deity and you'll be rather less successful, and that's what a high level 3.5 character is.

That's part of the problem. Some of us want high level characters to be heroes who can be challenged...not gods who are unstoppable.

[Sartharina]

That's not a very good example of high level characters being threatened by a low level trap, considering the people tied up in the net trap are basically ordinary humans with a tad of plot armour and so it makes perfect sense. Try doing the same thing to a minor deity and you'll be rather less successful, and that's what a high level 3.5 character is.

I'm sorry - at what point in 3.5 do characters get Divine Ranks in the course of leveling up? If they don't, then they should NEVER be classified as 'minor dieties'. High-level characters are people with above-average-but-still-human ability, a lot of plot armor(Hit points), and ability to negate other's plot armor (Increased damage). And cool special abilities that are still human(oid) in scope. Even if it's magic.

[ComaVision]

I'm sorry - at what point in 3.5 do characters get Divine Ranks in the course of leveling up? If they don't, then they should NEVER be classified as 'minor dieties'. High-level characters are people with above-average-but-still-human ability, a lot of plot armor(Hit points), and ability to negate other's plot armor (Increased damage). And cool special abilities that are still human(oid) in scope. Even if it's magic.

So Epic levels are people with above-average-but-still-human ability?




No.

[Sartharina]

So Epic levels are people with above-average-but-still-human ability?

No.

Actually, yes. Even at epic levels, they're still human. See: Any Ray Harryhausen movie, or remake of such.

[1337 b4k4]

So Epic levels are people with above-average-but-still-human ability?




No.

Why not? I mean, short of Hercules, I really can't think of any major fantasy "epics" in which you would classify the hero(es) as "minor-deities". I suppose Gandalf was, but certainly the rest of the fellowship wasn't. Jason and the Argonauts were hardly deities. Odysseus wasn't. Conan isn't. Beowulf? Harry Potter?