The Gaming Den

Posted: **Fri Sep 08, 2017 2:34 am**

Drink more until you think you can play it drunk with no prep. You'd be amazed what sufficient alcohol can convince you is within your reach.

Posted: **Fri Sep 08, 2017 3:46 am**

Koumei wrote:Drink more until you think you can play it drunk with no prep. You'd be amazed what sufficient alcohol can convince you is within your reach.

How big is a five foot step, really?

Posted: **Fri Sep 08, 2017 4:08 am**

It's more of a hop than anything.

Posted: **Fri Sep 08, 2017 12:39 pm**

I actually did run a ~year-long DnD 5e. It was only tolerable because of winging it while pissed - and just using 3.5 rules where they hadn't filled any in.

We found Stealth to be reasonably satisfying...

.

Just in case I wasn't clear enough, fuck 5e. Don't go there. Lie if necessary. Run 3.5 instead, hide it inside the core books like it's a comic at the library. Or 3e. or add 'house rules' that consist of basically the 3.5 SRD. Or, hell, 4e. It's encounter guidelines are better (not good, but better than 5th), it's simpler, and it's exactly as MTP out of combat as 5e.

Posted: **Fri Sep 08, 2017 3:10 pm**

D&D 5E: Just play an older edition, or Hero Quest if that's your thing.

Posted: **Fri Sep 08, 2017 6:03 pm**

So a dude from our group said "maybe we should try 5e, I heard it's pretty good!"

I showed him the entry for the Pit Fiend in the 5e monster book.

He no longer wants to play 5e.

Posted: **Sat Sep 09, 2017 2:01 am**

Yea, I'm not really sure where all the love for 5e comes from. People tend to go on about how simplified it is, but really that's code for "the game is barebones and you can't do anything cool."

Posted: **Sat Sep 09, 2017 2:59 am**

The group I've been playing 5e with lately managed to introduce themselves to the game. They normally play card games, they were in the games shop, and they saw the starter set for 5e so they just got it on a whim and played a campaign and figured it out with using the online character maker and stuff without any guidance from anyone who'd ever played any previous RPG. I didn't join until they'd already played like 3 weekends of it.

That's pretty good when you think about it.

So, 5e is an okay introduction into the hobby, even if people should move on to better TTRPGs once they're down with the basics (funny shaped dice, adding +2, murder, etc)

Posted: **Sun Sep 10, 2017 7:40 pm**

as a fledgling DM i find DnD 5e's complete lack of rules amenable to a style of "i just make shit up". and the people I DM haven't chosen to just break the system by hiring a bunch of lil guys and/or becoming necromancers

the whole "caster supremacy" part of 3.5e kind of bums me out, 5e managed to mitigate it a bit by just flattening the curve down a shitload (i mean, even though casters are still the best). how do i get up to speed on the whole "advantages of 3.5e over 5e" and "homebrewing patches for 3.5e" thing?

Posted: **Sun Sep 10, 2017 8:38 pm**

There's a number of people that really don't like talking or even hearing about the game system being less than perfect. If it produces less than perfect results, but it might plausibly be because the group was playing it wrong, that's not so bad. But having it known that the system is definitely flawed ruins their gaming experience, I guess.

5E makes it easier to insist that any flaw comes from the GM and/or players, by making a lot of rules vague and repeating "The GM can rule anything in any way!" loudly and often. That's a selling point to some people.

You can see Paizo trying this too, with the whole "This isn't a change, it's just a clarification of how the rule should have always been interpreted" thing they do with errata. But having inherited the crunchy rules environment of 3E, they can only do that to a limited extent.

TBH though, while I think 4E is a better system than 5E, I would be more likely to play a 5E game if those were my only choices. If I'm not going to be happy with the system anyway, at least 5E is less work on my part, and it has a few spells with amusing usage potential, albeit with that "GM can shut you down at any time!" clause.

Posted: **Sun Sep 10, 2017 10:21 pm**

5E's success only proves how far you can get by spending your development budget in payola instead of hiring an actual game designer.

The emperor is naked and everyone knows it, but Mearls' payola is somehow making everyone think the naked king looks like a naked Charlize Theron instead of a naked Mike Mearls.

Posted: **Mon Sep 11, 2017 8:08 am**

okay yeah i get that dnd 5e suffers from "let's put the onus on the GM to mind caulk our thin system"

but is there a more detailed explanation somewhere? the thinness of dnd 5e means that i don't really have to learn that much to get a game going; 3.5e has a higher ceiling for sure but it seems like it also has a higher floor

Posted: **Mon Sep 11, 2017 10:43 am**

So between 4e or 5e, which one's bare bones mechanics would be a better launching point for a heartbreaker focused on dungeon crawling?

Posted: **Mon Sep 11, 2017 1:18 pm**

Cervantes wrote:okay yeah i get that dnd 5e suffers from "let's put the onus on the GM to mind caulk our thin system"

but is there a more detailed explanation somewhere? the thinness of dnd 5e means that i don't really have to learn that much to get a game going; 3.5e has a higher ceiling for sure but it seems like it also has a higher floor

That's just kind of it when you get down to it.

"Higher floor higher ceiling" is just kind of the trade off between rules light and rules heavy. Rules light systems are easier to learn, faster to run, and generally more flexible. Rules heavy feels more like an actual, you know, game. Rules light is basically there to provide some kind of framework to more or less free form RP in order to prevent "Well I pull out my infinity plus one sword and instakill all of you" in some fashion.

I feel like 5e wound up in "rules medium" where it's not quite crunchy enough to work without GM patchs, but not light enough to be a breezy easy to pick up system. In a true rules light game it doesn't really matter if the math is good or not so long as the math is there, but obviously DnD's mechanics were meant to be more engaging that this because initially the mechanics were the entire point.

Posted: **Mon Sep 11, 2017 2:41 pm**

OgreBattle wrote:So between 4e or 5e, which one's bare bones mechanics would be a better launching point for a heartbreaker focused on dungeon crawling?

Heroquest. It actually is a barebones dungeon crawler that does what it's supposed to and is fun and easy to play.

D&D has a lot of bloat. There's no reason to include that if it's not part of your end goal.

Posted: **Mon Sep 11, 2017 4:06 pm**

RobbyPants wrote:Heroquest. It actually is a barebones dungeon crawler that does what it's supposed to and is fun and easy to play.

And that's why Heroquest is so great!

Posted: **Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:26 am**

Awesome review, but I was already sold on the concept for the last 22 years!

Posted: **Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:05 am**

Ice9 wrote:There's a number of people that really don't like talking or even hearing about the game system being less than perfect. If it produces less than perfect results, but it might plausibly be because the group was playing it wrong, that's not so bad. But having it known that the system is definitely flawed ruins their gaming experience, I guess.

5E makes it easier to insist that any flaw comes from the GM and/or players, by making a lot of rules vague and repeating "The GM can rule anything in any way!" loudly and often. That's a selling point to some people.

As someone who plays in a 5e game, it is not easy to blame the GM/players for the bad rules. "Expert" characters perform worse than untrained people with the worst possible stat like, 10 or 20% of the time. It's fucking stupid if my 19 Int wizard has to ask the goddamn fighter how a spell works. Knowing spells is literally my entire class and build. Christ. And fuck using social skills, they fail half the time even with the Sorcerer so I'm just going to charm everyone forever.

My main issue with the game is it makes everyone bumblefucks. We're a 5th level adventuring party that you could obviate with like, 10 random dudes armed with bows.

Posted: **Tue Sep 12, 2017 6:50 am**

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:As someone who plays in a 5e game, it is not easy to blame the GM/players for the bad rules. "Expert" characters perform worse than untrained people with the worst possible stat like, 10 or 20% of the time. It's fucking stupid if my 19 Int wizard has to ask the goddamn fighter how a spell works. Knowing spells is literally my entire class and build. Christ. And fuck using social skills, they fail half the time even with the Sorcerer so I'm just going to charm everyone forever.

You would think that, it does seem pretty obviously the fault of the rules there. But according to many 5E fans, the correct thing to do is that the high-skilled character shouldn't even have to roll most of the time, based on some metric that the GM pulls out of their ass creates with the power of "Rulings, not Rules". And since any good GM would obviously do that, any complaints about it are just "white-room theorycrafting".

And if the problem happened in an actual game ... well, that's still just one data point, stop trying to theorycraft from it! And besides, it probably made perfect sense IC and you're just whining about it because you're a munchkin.

Posted: **Tue Sep 12, 2017 12:12 pm**

Ice9 wrote:You would think that, it does seem pretty obviously the fault of the rules there. But according to many 5E fans, the correct thing to do is that the high-skilled character shouldn't even have to roll most of the time, based on some metric that the GM pulls out of their ass creates with the power of "Rulings, not Rules". And since any good GM would obviously do that, any complaints about it are just "white-room theorycrafting".

And if the problem happened in an actual game ... well, that's still just one data point, stop trying to theorycraft from it! And besides, it probably made perfect sense IC and you're just whining about it because you're a munchkin.

How do these dickholes respond when you ask them why they paid money for a book full of rules when the "correct" action is to use rulings?

Posted: **Tue Sep 12, 2017 8:52 pm**

Cervantes wrote: the whole "caster supremacy" part of 3.5e kind of bums me out, 5e managed to mitigate it a bit by just flattening the curve down a shitload (i mean, even though casters are still the best). how do i get up to speed on the whole "advantages of 3.5e over 5e" and "homebrewing patches for 3.5e" thing?

Caster supremacy in 3.5 means exactly the same thing it does in 5e. Players who have a suffiicient amount of system mastery can make spellcasters that make warriors feel small in the pants. Also too, the higher level monsters are well out of reach of all but the most finely tuned warrior builds to do shit about.

But in both systems if you just take a bunch of Wizard levels and learn Fireball and shit, you're not going to outshine a Fighter who selected useful feats.

-Username17

Posted: **Wed Sep 13, 2017 1:40 am**

FrankTrollman wrote: Caster supremacy in 3.5 means exactly the same thing it does in 5e. Players who have a suffiicient amount of system mastery can make spellcasters that make warriors feel small in the pants. Also too, the higher level monsters are well out of reach of all but the most finely tuned warrior builds to do shit about.

Mind elaborating a bit on the warriors? I vaguely remember high level monsters being disappointingly boring sacks of shit that could be owned trivially by a necromancer or a diviner.

Posted: **Wed Sep 13, 2017 2:52 am**

RobbyPants wrote:
Ice9 wrote:You would think that, it does seem pretty obviously the fault of the rules there. But according to many 5E fans, the correct thing to do is that the high-skilled character shouldn't even have to roll most of the time, based on some metric that the GM pulls out of their ass creates with the power of "Rulings, not Rules". And since any good GM would obviously do that, any complaints about it are just "white-room theorycrafting".

And if the problem happened in an actual game ... well, that's still just one data point, stop trying to theorycraft from it! And besides, it probably made perfect sense IC and you're just whining about it because you're a munchkin.
How do these dickholes respond when you ask them why they paid money for a book full of rules when the "correct" action is to use rulings?

They say the rules are fine for the most part but "everyone's table is different" so any problems are clearly table specific and not indicative of a failure of the game as a whole.

Posted: **Wed Sep 13, 2017 3:09 am**

CapnTthePirateG wrote: Mind elaborating a bit on the warriors? I vaguely remember high level monsters being disappointingly boring sacks of shit that could be owned trivially by a necromancer or a diviner.

"Don't melee it stupid," is alive and well. If you don't have very high AC or damage resistance (both is preferable), you will get cut down like a dog wading into melee with high level monsters. They are more accurate and hit harder than you do, and their attacks often get rider effects, while you get: A magic weapon and a magic shield!

Posted: **Wed Sep 13, 2017 5:04 am**

No, no, the game is balanced around no magic items at all! You get like 3 ever! Go you!

The Gaming Den

D&D 5e has failed