5E Reviews

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Die Hard Game Fan: Tabletop Review: Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition Player’s Handbook (D&D 5e/D&D Next)

GameBoard Geek: Launch your imagination into a new edition - the excellent 5E PHB

[Unbeliever]

Thanks for the links.  This jumped out at me:

The most common modifier is from a proficiency, which provides a level-dependent bonus to the roll. You can have proficiency in lots of things – skills, weapons, tools, etc. The proficiency bonus starts at +2 and increases to +6 by 17th level. This is a very important feature of the system: characters improve as they level up, but at a much slower pace than 3E/4E. WotC refers to this as a “bounded accuracy” system, and it makes the math much more robust than those editions. On the other hand, the big range of the d20 coupled to relatively small bonuses means there’s a lot of luck on those die rolls, even for high level characters. In combat situations, there are a lot of rolls and things tend to even out; outside of combat, though, expect a lot of randomness.

How true is this assessment?  It seems like a turnoff to me.  One of the things I adore about d20 is its benchmarks system.  You want to make someone who can track like Aragorn?  Well, these are the numbers you need to be able to hit reliably.  Your character is an agile ninja who can run across a tightrope?  Here's the check you need to make reliably, build accordingly. 

I'd worry that a very "swingy" system, and I know d20s are inherently a bit swingy, would lead to absurd results.  You have master thieves who can't pickpocket a random merchant or make it through an ordinary door, drow ninjas that can't leap across chasms, and so on.

[Raineh Daze]

I think--and I might be wrong--that a few abilities are static (e.g., with a run-up you will always achieve a jump of X feet, and it's athletics to try and make an extra-long jump) whereas they were previously rolled.

As for the thief thing: on a few skills, rogues get double their proficiency bonus. So your master thief should end up with +17 at level 20--not completely off the RNG but as close to it as the system can get.

[Beltendu]

And there's also the advantage/disadvantage mechanism.  That could potentially make a big difference if you can swing advantage on a roll.  That'll depend heavily on its availability, though.  I haven't finished paging through the PHB yet, and of course we don't have the DMG either, so that could be very much up in the air.

[linklord231]

Beyond just Advantage/Disadvantage, the changes to the DC system would play a large part in this.  They did away with static DCs for specific tasks, and adopted a more general "Easy/Medium/Hard" scale that applies to everything.  For example, in 3.5 it's a DC 15 Tumble check to move at half speed without provoking AoOs.  In 5e, the DM might decide that it's an Easy Dexterity check for Player A's Elf Monk to tumble past a monster, but a Hard Dexterity check for Player B's Dwarf Fighter. 

[VennDygrem]

Besides that, one of the pieces of advice they give to DMs in 5e (at least, as of the playtest) is to allow certain characters with a high enough ability score the capability to auto-succeed, for the sake of moving things along and not running into the situation where the master acrobat can't balance on a simple ledge, or the party Bard gives an elaborate, rousing speech but rolls poorly and fails his Persuasion check. Generally speaking, a fighter with 16 strength should be able to lift the heavy portcullis and keep it up long enough for the party to slip underneath, while if the rogue tries to do so you're going to have to hope they get lucky.

[Unbeliever]

Beyond just Advantage/Disadvantage, the changes to the DC system would play a large part in this.  They did away with static DCs for specific tasks, and adopted a more general "Easy/Medium/Hard" scale that applies to everything.  For example, in 3.5 it's a DC 15 Tumble check to move at half speed without provoking AoOs.  In 5e, the DM might decide that it's an Easy Dexterity check for Player A's Elf Monk to tumble past a monster, but a Hard Dexterity check for Player B's Dwarf Fighter.

The bolded portion is, in a word, a terrible system (in case it's not clear, that's not LinkLord's fault, he/she is just explaining the system).  The idea of an RPG, one with fairly well-defined rules at least, is for the rules to allow the player (or DM or monster designer, etc.) how the character works. 

If I'm making Artemis Entreri and want him to be agile, I don't just write "agile" somewhere arbitrarily on the character sheet.  I need to deploy character resources (stats, feats, skills, equipment) to embody that idea, and hopefully get the game system to capture it.  So, the Elf Monk should have an easier time tumbling b/c of a higher Dexterity score, skill training, etc. while the Dwarf Fighter has lower Dexterity, armor penalties, etc.  Otherwise, you end up with weird, unpleasant consequences.  For instance, any duelist-style Fighter would automatically have a harder time flitting around the battlefield than a Monk.  Not to mention the fact that it makes things pretty arbitrary.

Hmmm, this is actually the first real bad thing I've heard about 5E (besides a few odd decisions, like Dragonborn being a core race or not knowing what to do with Gnomes ever).  Although VennDygrem may hint at a nice solution, which is to import a solid take 10 system throughout (which functionally has a lot in common with Advantage, since in these cases it would really just protect you against bad luck).  That might work fine for my group if we eventually make the move to 5E, but that's also a group that's benefited from a pile of d20's other games.  They'd really have been better off with more thoughtful rules on this point.

[Raineh Daze]

Honestly, I think it's a good thing, because it removes the 'you have no chance of ever succeeding at half the things you might need to do (sneak, spot, jump a gap, follow someone, work out what the hell is trying to heat you)' thing that crippled fighters and similar. Yeah, if you're looking for the book to tell you what to do and exactly what the numbers are for things, it's no good, but at least this doesn't have WotC shooting themselves in the foot with alternately trivial and impossible DC's.

It shuts down, for instance, diplomancy insanity.

And it also means not writing 'a certain tone/playstyle only works at level X-Y' in the rules everywhere.

[linklord231]

Unbeliever, that was my initial reaction too.  But I think a lot of the objections to that style can be mitigated by good Player-DM communication.  You have to explain your concept very clearly and make sure your DM is on board. 

The idea of an RPG, one with fairly well-defined rules at least, is for the rules to allow the player (or DM or monster designer, etc.) how the character works. 

The issue is that 5e made a deliberate choice to not be as well-defined in a lot of places as we're used to from a 3.5 or even 4e perspective, especially when it comes to skill and ability checks.  The advantage of this is that it makes the system a lot more flexible - you don't have to look up rules for everything as it comes up, and then remember to track all the little modifiers you get for having so-and-so feat and this-or-that item.  The DM just makes a judgment call on how difficult the task should be for your character in these circumstances, and you roll.  It speeds up play tremendously.  But the tradeoff is that it could potentially cause a lot of arguments if the player's vision of his/her character is different from the DM's vision. 

[bhu]

That's a massive problem though.  Things became narrowly defined in 3e/4e for a damn good reason: the vision you have of your PC and the vision your DM has is ALWAYS different.  Vagueness and arbitrary decisions were minimized/removed to avoid the massive DM abuse from earlier editions.  They may be making it more flexible, but they're openly inviting a return to the "us vs him" mentality players and DM's used to have.  Several local DM's who have retired are interested n 5e for just that reason: they openly admit they only run games for their own amusement, and their form of amusement is just relentlessly fucking with their players at every given opportunity.  One is notable for his decision making process.  Whenever theres a rules question his decision is "whichever direction makes it most likely your character will die.  If there's no option for player death, then whatever screws him over the worst."  And the reason guys like this get gamers is because they're the only ones willing to run.  It's why I do Pbp now.  It's the only option I have for playing with people who aren't total dicks.  I like 3.5 because it was well defined and there were less arguments, instead of the players arguing about vagueness while the DM sets by saying "I'm sorry I was jacking off my ego, I couldn't hear what you were saying.  It's nice you came to a consensus, but we're gonna do this instead, until this comes up again in which case I will make another arbitrary decision, ensuring the players squabble amongst each other as they know the rules do not apply to them all equally."

[Unbeliever]

But the tradeoff is that it could potentially cause a lot of arguments if the player's vision of his/her character is different from the DM's vision.

It also puts a lot of pressure on your class choice and what that supposedly entails.  I suspect you end up saying something like "but I'm a Ranger!" pretty frequently, and so on.

This may simply be a taste thing, but I am from the "classes are abstract and do not (necessarily) embody your character concept" school of things.  I'm less concerned about DM fuckery than Bhu is -- I believe I have more positive experiences than his -- but I do greatly prefer a system that empowers the player to try and realize the character he or she has in mind rather than beseeching their DM to make it happen.

[Raineh Daze]

That's a massive problem though.  Things became narrowly defined in 3e/4e for a damn good reason: the vision you have of your PC and the vision your DM has is ALWAYS different.  Vagueness and arbitrary decisions were minimized/removed to avoid the massive DM abuse from earlier editions.  They may be making it more flexible, but they're openly inviting a return to the "us vs him" mentality players and DM's used to have.  Several local DM's who have retired are interested n 5e for just that reason: they openly admit they only run games for their own amusement, and their form of amusement is just relentlessly fucking with their players at every given opportunity.  One is notable for his decision making process.  Whenever theres a rules question his decision is "whichever direction makes it most likely your character will die.  If there's no option for player death, then whatever screws him over the worst."  And the reason guys like this get gamers is because they're the only ones willing to run.  It's why I do Pbp now.  It's the only option I have for playing with people who aren't total dicks.  I like 3.5 because it was well defined and there were less arguments, instead of the players arguing about vagueness while the DM sets by saying "I'm sorry I was jacking off my ego, I couldn't hear what you were saying.  It's nice you came to a consensus, but we're gonna do this instead, until this comes up again in which case I will make another arbitrary decision, ensuring the players squabble amongst each other as they know the rules do not apply to them all equally."

So basically a choice between Player vs DM, or rules-lawyering and having to suffer through WotC's sometimes horrific DC-setting.
Though saying a system is bad because you can have bad DM's is a questionable association. You can also have the opposite.

But the tradeoff is that it could potentially cause a lot of arguments if the player's vision of his/her character is different from the DM's vision.

It also puts a lot of pressure on your class choice and what that supposedly entails.  I suspect you end up saying something like "but I'm a Ranger!" pretty frequently, and so on.

This may simply be a taste thing, but I am from the "classes are abstract and do not (necessarily) embody your character concept" school of things.  I'm less concerned about DM fuckery than Bhu is -- I believe I have more positive experiences than his -- but I do greatly prefer a system that empowers the player to try and realize the character he or she has in mind rather than beseeching their DM to make it happen.

Well, class features are intact--Rangers still have tracking and pathfinding boosts, for instance. Just because you can't run off the deep end of the skill system (hello, mile-long jumps) and get quantifiable results from that, doesn't mean you can't build to a goal.

[bhu]

So basically a choice between Player vs DM, or rules-lawyering and having to suffer through WotC's sometimes horrific DC-setting.
Though saying a system is bad because you can have bad DM's is a questionable association. You can also have the opposite.

You can, but there's absolutely no motivation for the DM to do so.  With the exception of online games I haven't once met a DM who wasn't a petty tyrant if the game system being played was even slightly ambiguous.  Most of them went out of their way to find ways to fuck with their players.  When I said 'retired' it wasn't exactly their choice.  People stopped playing.  No one came back till 3.5 years later, and they had to find new DM's, who basically had the same faults: "Yeah I know the rules say this, but that fucks up my storyline, so here's how it's gonna go..." Things were better at first, but when the rules weren't ambiguous they just chose to ignore them.  No opponents were statted out they were DM fiat NPC's, and they died when the DM felt you had 'earned it enough'.  So everyone quit again, and 4e found no audience at all.   

I can say without reservation or dishonesty that there is not a single DM i have met outside the internet except one whose death would probably not make someone's world a better place.

[Raineh Daze]

So basically a choice between Player vs DM, or rules-lawyering and having to suffer through WotC's sometimes horrific DC-setting.
Though saying a system is bad because you can have bad DM's is a questionable association. You can also have the opposite.

You can, but there's absolutely no motivation for the DM to do so.  With the exception of online games I haven't once met a DM who wasn't a petty tyrant if the game system being played was even slightly ambiguous.  Most of them went out of their way to find ways to fuck with their players.  When I said 'retired' it wasn't exactly their choice.  People stopped playing.  No one came back till 3.5 years later, and they had to find new DM's, who basically had the same faults: "Yeah I know the rules say this, but that fucks up my storyline, so here's how it's gonna go..." Things were better at first, but when the rules weren't ambiguous they just chose to ignore them.  No opponents were statted out they were DM fiat NPC's, and they died when the DM felt you had 'earned it enough'.  So everyone quit again, and 4e found no audience at all.   

I can say without reservation or dishonesty that there is not a single DM i have met outside the internet except one whose death would probably not make someone's world a better place.

Bhu, this is because you have apparently accidentally landed in a special hell that demonstrates the very worst of everything, DMing included.

[SolEiji]

We need to send a rescue team to recover Bhu from hell.  I need 4-6 heroes of various backgrounds and talents.

*Whips open his DM screen* Let's do this!

[bhu]

Bhu, this is because you have apparently accidentally landed in a special hell that demonstrates the very worst of everything, DMing included.

Untrue, we have some damn fine restaurants.  It's just the people.Well, the people and their massive predilection for self-medication of an illegal nature.

[Kajhera]

Bhu, this is because you have apparently accidentally landed in a special hell that demonstrates the very worst of everything, DMing included.

Untrue, we have some damn fine restaurants.  It's just the people.Well, the people and their massive predilection for self-medication of an illegal nature.

Have you tried the bad restaurants?

[bhu]

No, because having been in the restaurant bidness I know who to avoid locally....

or at least i used to.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Y'know a bunch of Fast Food joints are gonna have big strikes tomorrow. 
 
I wonder how many will take the opportunity to play some 5e ?

[Unbeliever]

...

But the tradeoff is that it could potentially cause a lot of arguments if the player's vision of his/her character is different from the DM's vision.

It also puts a lot of pressure on your class choice and what that supposedly entails.  I suspect you end up saying something like "but I'm a Ranger!" pretty frequently, and so on.

This may simply be a taste thing, but I am from the "classes are abstract and do not (necessarily) embody your character concept" school of things.  I'm less concerned about DM fuckery than Bhu is -- I believe I have more positive experiences than his -- but I do greatly prefer a system that empowers the player to try and realize the character he or she has in mind rather than beseeching their DM to make it happen.

Well, class features are intact--Rangers still have tracking and pathfinding boosts, for instance. Just because you can't run off the deep end of the skill system (hello, mile-long jumps) and get quantifiable results from that, doesn't mean you can't build to a goal.

Don't straw man me, here.  You're taking things out of context by responding to a response to a response.

The system, as explained to me, has bonuses that are quite small compared to the d20 roll itself.  So, you end up with something very swingy.  So, you end up with a situation where not infrequently Gimli rolls well and spots the tracks while Aragorn doesn't.  Which doesn't make sense from a gameplay or storytelling perspective.  If this was a very low probability event (e.g., Gimli rolls a 20 while Aragorn rolls a 1), then nobody should care.  But, if Aragorn's supreme tracking ability is cashed out as a net +4 bonus over Gimli, then there's something odd going on.  Barring some mechanic like taking 10 or Advantage to rescue it. 

Although it's still odd to think of, e.g., Aragorn being only 20% better at tracking than Gimli.  So, a generalized concern about modest bonuses relative to the RNG, barring some other set of mechanics that haven't been brought to my attention. 

The proposal I was actually responding to was the one mentioned Linklord's that DCs would be calibrated essentially to character class.  I thought this was a bad idea since it essentially embeds in each class hidden class features (e.g., "good at ranging," "agile") that, if anything, should be made explicit.  There's Bhu's consideration -- namely that this is breeding unnecessary player/DM conflict.  And, I was arguing that it hamstrings players to make the character that they actually want to make by virtue of those class features being hidden.

That being said, Raineh's comments are a bit orthogonal to my concern.  I presume that there's a guideline for what's an Easy, Hard, etc. check.  So, there are something of set DCs (this lock is super hard, this one is a rusty cheap piece of junk).  The thing I was concerned about is the RNG swamping anything on your character sheet.