Quote from: Rhedyn;1108908I disagree, the system actually works out very well.

 
    You may be right--I just got the impression, from reading, observing the online community and limited play opportunities, that the mix was never quite fine-tuned, presented or understood well enough to gel into the 'balance resting between pushing onward' approach they were shooting for.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1108936You may be right--I just got the impression, from reading, observing the online community and limited play opportunities, that the mix was never quite fine-tuned, presented or understood well enough to gel into the 'balance resting between pushing onward' approach they were shooting for.

That's the trick with 4e, either is a valid option because the DM can design encounters for both. 5e requires are pretty fixed pace in reference to amount of mechanical resting. 3e also handled variable pacing, but it was so easy to bork a 15 minute work day that high levels tended to boil down to one encounter/buff duration per long rest.

4e healing surges are actually a fairly good mechanic to add HP management back to an encounter based adventure. They are a strategic resource and a tactical one since a lot of classes can trigger a mid-combat surge. My fighter pretty routinely spends 2-4 surges in a combat, so he can lose his max HP a couple of times each fight which actually allows him to defend his allies. Unlike in both 5e and 3e where the fighter is likely down in two rounds from a serious threat. In 5e he just keeps getting popped back up each round like a wack-mole-with healing word. In 4e that behavior consumed healing surges which run out eventually.

Level one 4e characters actually have a total HP pool equal to level 10+ OSR characters. I kind of see 4e as a game built around the idea of high level OSR characters still traveling around like normal adventurers. Most OSR games end at those levels, while 4e starts off with players as big damn heroes made of mythic flesh. In comparison to OSR games at level 10, 4e handles that level of fantasy a lot better. Though DMs seem to fall into the trap of longer and longer combats because the system supports it so well.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1108936You may be right--I just got the impression, from reading, observing the online community and limited play opportunities, that the mix was never quite fine-tuned, presented or understood well enough to gel into the 'balance resting between pushing onward' approach they were shooting for.

Compared to the 5E design, 4E is more finely tuned but also more brittle and narrow because of that.  Or in another words:

- The core flaw with 4E is that if you don't want to do what it is doing, it's mechanics don't leave you many levers for change.
- The core flaw with 5E is that it is expressly designed as a compromise edition that should be changed to suit, which means that its defaults are frequently unsuitable for a good game.

If you don't care what kind of game you play, you just want to play some game, any game, out of the box as is, then 4E is the "better" design.

Whereas the presentation flaws with both are also different:

- The presentation flaw of 4E is that is bi-polar, in that half the advice pushes towards a game that is not suited to 4E at all, while the rest of it glories in what 4E is, but gives you no help in adapting it.
- The presentation flaw of 5E is that it hides important pieces of information in blandly expressed mush.  So people with short attention spans don't pay attention to it, and people with better attention spans spend as little time with it as humanly possible, get the important bits, and then never look at it again.

The edge that 5E has over 4E is primarily that it's virtues are more sellable to a wider swath of people and its flaws easier to manage if even one person in each group understands it.  Well, that and while the 5E testing definitely missed things, it was better tested and less rushed.  Plus, the nature of their relative pros and cons are such that for the average person, a 5E game will start so/so but improve over time, while a 4E game will start hot but steadily decline.

Y'know, I haven't tried "Dead at 0 HP" in 5e yet. I wonder what that may solve?

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1108952Compared to the 5E design, 4E is more finely tuned but also more brittle and narrow because of that.  Or in another words:

- The core flaw with 4E is that if you don't want to do what it is doing, it's mechanics don't leave you many levers for change.
- The core flaw with 5E is that it is expressly designed as a compromise edition that should be changed to suit, which means that its defaults are frequently unsuitable for a good game.

If you don't care what kind of game you play, you just want to play some game, any game, out of the box as is, then 4E is the "better" design.

Whereas the presentation flaws with both are also different:

- The presentation flaw of 4E is that is bi-polar, in that half the advice pushes towards a game that is not suited to 4E at all, while the rest of it glories in what 4E is, but gives you no help in adapting it.
- The presentation flaw of 5E is that it hides important pieces of information in blandly expressed mush.  So people with short attention spans don't pay attention to it, and people with better attention spans spend as little time with it as humanly possible, get the important bits, and then never look at it again.

The edge that 5E has over 4E is primarily that it's virtues are more sellable to a wider swath of people and its flaws easier to manage if even one person in each group understands it.  Well, that and while the 5E testing definitely missed things, it was better tested and less rushed.  Plus, the nature of their relative pros and cons are such that for the average person, a 5E game will start so/so but improve over time, while a 4E game will start hot but steadily decline.

That's a very astute comparison. I've run both systems a lot; I'd say you were pretty much dead on.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1108978Y'know, I haven't tried "Dead at 0 HP" in 5e yet. I wonder what that may solve?

I've been doing it in a Diablo-based 5e game, with a revival mechanic.

You die at 0 hit points, but you come back with corruption, which is like losing humanity in Dark Souls. It's worked well so far to model the way characters become distorted over time in Diablo and makes people very scared of combat. But I also overhauled healing, magic items, class features, etc., to make it a "run and gun" style action game like Diablo.

Speaking of dead at 0 hit points. I don't go that far, but I have turned death saves into a single roll resolution based on the % chance of success or failure over the course of death saves. This has the double benefit of not having to remember to get players to make death saves every turn, and it also creates a little more suspense because the other players don't know the result. On roll20, I make players roll it secretly to the gm, so the other players can't meta-game how long they have.

When a creature's hit points are zero or less, they must immediately roll 1d20.

1: Unconscious and will die in 2 rounds
2-3: Unconscious and will die in 3 rounds
4-5: Unconscious and will die in 4 rounds
6-8: Unconscious and will die in 5 rounds
9-12: Unconscious and will wake in 2 hours.
13-16: Unconscious and will wake in 1 hour.
17-19: Unconscious and will wake after combat finishes.
20: Fight on! Gain 1 hit point.

I also impose disadvantage on the roll if the blow was a critical hit. Advantage on the roll if the blow was nonlethal (there should always be a chance for accidental deaths)

You can always make a roll of a 1 instant death and shuffle the number of rounds until death along.

So without treatment, a nonlethal blow actually is lethal 16% of the time?

Quote from: Bren;1109071So without treatment, a nonlethal blow actually is lethal 16% of the time?

In real life, there is no such thing as a non-lethal blow

Quote from: S'mon;1107172But they cast fewer spells because they have to memorise specific spells in specific slots, whereas a 5e caster burns slots to cast the desired spell. So in practice the OD&D caster casts fewer spells.

In practice, 5e paladins use a lot of spell slots to smite; rangers cast hunter's mark a lot, though, so maybe. In OD&D, even 3rd level mages cast a lot of spells in advance of an expedition (get everyone invisible), relearning the spell as needed, or magic mouth to ward off thieves. At higher levels, OD&D mages would carry a few must-have-in-limited-situations spells, but generally they had and used spells they could use (and unlike rangers and paladins, there wasn't much else the magic-user could do).

Quote from: Doom;1107330The skill system is pretty weak...you could look at this as a feature.

Yes on both points.

Quote2) Big time. These monsters come from 2E-land, and have no idea of the kinds of abilities PCs have. Essentially no monster can deal with the Rogue's free disengage ability, for example, and that's not exactly a high level ability. Bottom line, these monsters were decent when "I attack" was basically all most characters could do, but are woefully underpowered against PCs of 5e, and this becomes very noticeable at mid-levels and up.

Most monsters can deal with the rogue's disengage by ... running after them? At least a few are fast enough, and mostly outnumbering the characters makes them more effective. Legendary saves and actions, and lair actions, manage to make the very toughest monsters still challenging. I am annoyed that particularly strong PC abilities are not granted to any NPCs, and the standard spell list for most NPC casters seem intentionally chosen badly.

Quote from: Haffrung;1107437The sacred cow of STR INT WIS DEX CON CHA is the root of a lot of the problems with skills. Have a Perception attribute would clean a lot of things up.

That would be Wisdom; it just happens to also be used incidentally for clerics. The most clownishly foolish puppy you ever met still has more Wisdom than a commoner.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1107536Alright let's optimize properly. Your 1st level spell is shield and your second level spell is Misty Step. You now have +5 AC and teleport at will.

At high level you usually have to save the reaction for Counterspell; every 4th tier adventure I've experienced came down to which side brought more Counterspell casters.

Quote from: S'mon;1107858I think the awkward slow bit roughly equivalent to buying equipment in old school is choosing skills & background, especially the nasty recursive loop of choosing class skills then finding they are in your preferred background and having to re-choose.

I'd like backgrounds better if they didn't carry specifics for the skill system; that is, if they were more a generic potential benefit in relevant situations. Since you can customize a background, you can just choose the additional skills, tools or languages you want.

Quote from: TJS;1107999Aside from the skill system as mentioned (although it's not as much of a problem once you realise that 5E doesn't really have as much a skill system as it does a 'proficiency getting system'), the biggest problem I've seen discussed is the failure of saving throws to scale at high levels.

I can't swear to it myself.  I understand the maths argument but I've not played at high enough level to see if player abilities mitigate this issue as others have claimed.

Always bring the high level paladin. Conceal a gnome or halfling paladin in your backpack if necessary. Bless and bardic inspiration can help a bit with saving throws. I have seen the problem at higher levels with the character who can't escape from the save each round to end the spell effect because of a low save bonus. Somebody needs to cast dispel magic if that character is that important.

Quote from: Chris24601;1108076The main math problem is that save DCs are almost always based off the best ability score a PC or critter has and are always proficient (if they weren't they wouldn't be casting spells at all) so it keeps getting harder and harder to resist while only one common and one rare save ever improves for the PCs.

Honestly, if I didn't know they were doing their own thing, I'd swear WotC had the guys who wrote the Arcanis RPG doing their math (I think I've mentioned them before; they're the ones who thought 2d10 would produce the same results as 1d20 while keeping their DCs based on a linear distribution. 5e succeeds in SPITE of its math, not because of it.

Generally, effects that call for a save are expected to be missed often but still mostly survivable. Back when, high level casters used damage spells a lot because everything saved too well to get nothing for their effort, even though the effect might kill the target. It's not much consolation to the 5e player whose character is stuck in "unable to act, impossible save to end effect", though.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1108333I've had 4 paladins out of over 20 characters. That ratio might be why I haven't seen a problem.  There is definitely a "run and hide next to the paladin when the nasty effects start coming out" thing.  Well, except for fireballs and the like, which make such tactics kind of a bad idea.  Then it's scatter and pick up the pieces of the poor character that bravely draws the fire.  Ooh boy did a rogue and barbarian get the short end of that stick last weekend.  First time I've seen a 9th level barbarian lose 2/3 of his hit points in one blast.

I ran a 3rd tier adventure with a very large number of Yuan-ti with suggestion and so forth. The players had a high level paladin who negated charm and fear within their aura (and of course significantly better saving throws for everyone); I did get the two characters who left the group (the flying wizard with suggestion and a rogue circling around with fear).

Quote from: S'mon;1108481Maybe it's just my game, but I find that front line fighters who dump STR for DEX are really regretting it when they're rolling -1 on Athletics checks vs being grappled, shoved, knocked prone et al.

You can defend against grappling with Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics). They can't use grappling effectively without strength, though. Mostly I see the high DEX fighters who take archery style and use bows. AC is pretty close to even; studded leather with +5 from DEX versus plate armor, with decent stealth, +5 initiative and DEX saving throws compensating.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1108842The problem with hitting them with Exhaustion is that (and I've used this before) it encourages the 15 minute adventuring day.

Went down once? Time to camp!

Part of what worked against short adventuring days back when was the prospect that the party would miss out on treasure; clear out all the lead up guards and then somebody else (other players, if the DM had multiple groups, or NPC adventurers) takes the big treasure. I think I would almost like an explicit rule to that effect: early treasures are reduced and later treasure are increased by some percentage. Almost.

I don't like the camp anywhere (especially easy with Leomund's Tiny Hut) to recover everything and, worst of all, level up in the middle of the dungeon. Totally unrealistic! Every time I've slept outside or in an airport/train station/bus terminal waiting for my connection, I've recovered absolutely no hit points and no spells! None!

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1108952- The core flaw with 4E is that if you don't want to do what it is doing, it's mechanics don't leave you many levers for change.
- The core flaw with 5E is that it is expressly designed as a compromise edition that should be changed to suit, which means that its defaults are frequently unsuitable for a good game.

Quote- The presentation flaw of 5E is that it hides important pieces of information in blandly expressed mush.  So people with short attention spans don't pay attention to it, and people with better attention spans spend as little time with it as humanly possible, get the important bits, and then never look at it again.

The edge that 5E has over 4E is primarily that it's virtues are more sellable to a wider swath of people and its flaws easier to manage if even one person in each group understands it.  Well, that and while the 5E testing definitely missed things, it was better tested and less rushed.  Plus, the nature of their relative pros and cons are such that for the average person, a 5E game will start so/so but improve over time, while a 4E game will start hot but steadily decline.

The default 5e is very strongly presented, and the ways to change it are more obscure. But they would probably have lost more by being like a toolkit where you have to choose all the options to play at all. At least the modifications exist, even if they didn't get to actual modular design.

Quote from: Aglondir;1106950I've bene playing 5E off and on for a few years, mostly in one shot games or short campaigns, and never past 3rd level. By now, I imagine the problems (if any) of the game are well-known. What are the main issues?

BIG problems, I'm not sure. I kinda like 5e. Here are my personal peeves:

- Bounded accuracy goes too far, IMO. A 20th level character has a few obvious fales (a fighter with athletics proficiency with have a +1 bonus... potentially beatable by a 1st level wizard). OTOH, players are flying and becoming invisible at, what, level 5? So there is this strange tension between "epic" and "realistic"
- Too many spells and spellcasters; choosing spells often takes a while.
- Too many options at first level, IMO.
- Lacks good morale and reaction rules.
- The whole "Inflatable Punching Bag" thing, meaning, 0 HP is nothing serious - if you have someone nearby to heal 1 hp you can act again without missing a beat.
- I'm sure that's just me, but I really like (non-magical) weapons, and 5e is poor at this when compared to, say, 3.x, 4e or PF 1 or 2 - even AD&D (ok, AD&D might be TOO complex...). I'm writing a few booklets and blog posts addressing this issue.

In short, the whole "ordinary combat x magic" bother me a bit. 50 weapons, a dozen fighting styles... But 500 spells, more than a dozen spell-casting subclasses, and so on.

But, again, these are not HUGE flaws... 5e is decent enough for me.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1108842The problem with hitting them with Exhaustion is that (and I've used this before) it encourages the 15 minute adventuring day.

Went down once? Time to camp!

There is that - but at least in this case it makes a kind of sense.  You want to camp because you've got a seriously injured person.  Narratively it feels like a fitting time to retreat.

(The exhaustion rules actually work much better for modelling injury then they do for modelling exhaustion - they're too harsh for actaul exhaustion.)

Hopefully what it will lead to is people trying to get healing in before someone gets to 0 (because it's actually more efficient to wait until then).

But I made some notes for an alternate version of modelling exhaustion here.

Quote from: Bren;1109071So without treatment, a nonlethal blow actually is lethal 16% of the time?

When the last 5 attacks was the fighter stabbing them to death, the paladin smiting them, or the wizard frying them with a lightning bolt, sure. I think 16% is fair.

Is this accurate?

Quote from: MythcreatesThere are six saves, but only three of them matter. Anyone who invests in Strength, Intelligence, or Charisma saves will be sorely disappointed.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;1109120But, again, these are not HUGE flaws... 5e is decent enough for me.

Your skill proficiency system (on your blog) is a nice piece of work. Next time I run B/X I'm going to try it.

Quote from: Eric DiazPrimary skill bonuses are equal to character level, while secondary skills are equal to 2/3 of character level and secondary skills 1/3 of character level.