Llew ap Hywel
Lord of Misrule
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2017
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So as promised and as a one-time only discussion point. Why I cannot stand D&D*.
*Caveat: I won’t argue with you over your liking it, horses for courses and all that but will be happy to discuss cordially why I don’t J. As I’m writing this in work I may need to clarify my points based on responses. This is just why it isn’t for me any longer. If you have a counterpoint great but if it’s a house rule I’m either doing it or some variant. This is about the baseline.
Background: So I started playing with Mentzers boxed set, skipped 1e (mostly) extensively DM’d 2-3e, skipped 4th and have DM’d a little and played 5e since it came out. Overall I’ve DM’d for a tad over 3 decades. It is without any attempt at arrogance that I can safely say I am the groups favourite DM (despite refusing to do so for the last four(?) years).I have never ran the game in the wargame mode its designed for.
It’s probably easier to list what I don’t like…bear with me
Classes & Levels – Urgh these never feel like an organic improvement of character and the way the game scales using them makes it more and more onerous to build encounters as characters level. Even with cheat sheets and experience creating encounters gets more and more time consuming. The weird appearance of new abilities…equally frustrating, suddenly I can speak every language in the multiverse but was mute before??? And the rigidity of classes is tiresome.
Tied into killing that is the XP system - Yes I can ignore it but the vast majority of XP is expected to be gained from killing stuff. I’ve long ignored this but the games adventure day, encounter ratio and level mechanics are built around this. I think 5e improves on this a bit but I’ve only run a short game
The action economy – Class and racial abilities that operate on six second increments or 1/day…WTF happened with magical evolution. Self-counter: 5e does address this a bit with some abilities based around the rest mechanic. It’s not perfect but maybe by tenth edition. (see adventure comments).
Dungeon Crawls & Combat is god – So much of the game is built around crawling through endless dungeons slaying as much of the alphabet as possible Bugbears, Dryads and Tritons oh my. Good adventures and good DM’s will add to sessions but combat dominates with the amount of time it takes.
Combat – Very repetitive and a boring game of attrition that adds nothing to the drama. I like heroic games but the absolute lack of consequence in combat means even the best group eventually just falls back on hit, miss, blast, save, damage, dead….rest and it never happened.
Skill system - is way to swingy and rarely used for more than flavour in published adventures (see later comments). The one thing I liked in 4e (beyond setting and flavour) was skill challenges. But as a rule skills are underutilised in the published rules and adventures. Rolling doesn’t add much beyond the succeed/fail and doesn’t acknowledge skill level at all.
Magic/Spell system - I was a little unfair in saying there are no combat spells but most are damage based and again what’s with the combat round durations for utility spells? Yes exceptions exist but they are exceptions and whilst ritual magic helps with some can someone tell me why wizards spend years learning to spells? Why am I summoning a mount for an hour? Or an elemental? Great he can follow me around a dungeon but what about using them in a less adventure/combat fashion? And don’t start me on Vancian (but not really) casting. Overall they manage to make magic very unmagical and pointless outside encounters.
Sidebar: Published Adventures – So I never use published adventures as they encourage the worst elements of D&D. Combat, dungeon crawling, poorly written backgrounds and environments, using the alphabet from the monster manual and almost no way to interact with the fanatical bad guys. Now hopefully no one uses them as written (or at all) but these train newbies in the worst form of gaming.
That may be a bit wandering as I’m typing betwixt conference calls…
I do love most of the settings though, they just deserve a decent system.
*Caveat: I won’t argue with you over your liking it, horses for courses and all that but will be happy to discuss cordially why I don’t J. As I’m writing this in work I may need to clarify my points based on responses. This is just why it isn’t for me any longer. If you have a counterpoint great but if it’s a house rule I’m either doing it or some variant. This is about the baseline.
Background: So I started playing with Mentzers boxed set, skipped 1e (mostly) extensively DM’d 2-3e, skipped 4th and have DM’d a little and played 5e since it came out. Overall I’ve DM’d for a tad over 3 decades. It is without any attempt at arrogance that I can safely say I am the groups favourite DM (despite refusing to do so for the last four(?) years).I have never ran the game in the wargame mode its designed for.
It’s probably easier to list what I don’t like…bear with me
Classes & Levels – Urgh these never feel like an organic improvement of character and the way the game scales using them makes it more and more onerous to build encounters as characters level. Even with cheat sheets and experience creating encounters gets more and more time consuming. The weird appearance of new abilities…equally frustrating, suddenly I can speak every language in the multiverse but was mute before??? And the rigidity of classes is tiresome.
Tied into killing that is the XP system - Yes I can ignore it but the vast majority of XP is expected to be gained from killing stuff. I’ve long ignored this but the games adventure day, encounter ratio and level mechanics are built around this. I think 5e improves on this a bit but I’ve only run a short game
The action economy – Class and racial abilities that operate on six second increments or 1/day…WTF happened with magical evolution. Self-counter: 5e does address this a bit with some abilities based around the rest mechanic. It’s not perfect but maybe by tenth edition. (see adventure comments).
Dungeon Crawls & Combat is god – So much of the game is built around crawling through endless dungeons slaying as much of the alphabet as possible Bugbears, Dryads and Tritons oh my. Good adventures and good DM’s will add to sessions but combat dominates with the amount of time it takes.
Combat – Very repetitive and a boring game of attrition that adds nothing to the drama. I like heroic games but the absolute lack of consequence in combat means even the best group eventually just falls back on hit, miss, blast, save, damage, dead….rest and it never happened.
Skill system - is way to swingy and rarely used for more than flavour in published adventures (see later comments). The one thing I liked in 4e (beyond setting and flavour) was skill challenges. But as a rule skills are underutilised in the published rules and adventures. Rolling doesn’t add much beyond the succeed/fail and doesn’t acknowledge skill level at all.
Magic/Spell system - I was a little unfair in saying there are no combat spells but most are damage based and again what’s with the combat round durations for utility spells? Yes exceptions exist but they are exceptions and whilst ritual magic helps with some can someone tell me why wizards spend years learning to spells? Why am I summoning a mount for an hour? Or an elemental? Great he can follow me around a dungeon but what about using them in a less adventure/combat fashion? And don’t start me on Vancian (but not really) casting. Overall they manage to make magic very unmagical and pointless outside encounters.
Sidebar: Published Adventures – So I never use published adventures as they encourage the worst elements of D&D. Combat, dungeon crawling, poorly written backgrounds and environments, using the alphabet from the monster manual and almost no way to interact with the fanatical bad guys. Now hopefully no one uses them as written (or at all) but these train newbies in the worst form of gaming.
That may be a bit wandering as I’m typing betwixt conference calls…
I do love most of the settings though, they just deserve a decent system.