Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1109313Another way to make hitting 0 hp be more lethal is that your death saves don't reset until a long rest. So if you fail a death save, you automatically have 1 failed save with you all day.

I've done exactly that in all my 5E games.  I don't know that it ends up making it more lethal in the long run, but it makes the players a lot more aggressive about trying not to hit zero in the first place.  Which is what I wanted when I put the change in.

When you've got a later fight where one of the main melee characters is encouraged by the rest of the group to hang back and use ranged attacks because, "You've been beat up too much already today," then I can live with it.

Quote from: Omega;1109211It just does not work in a gold starved setting like 5e ...

I just want to tangent on this one little quote - it was highly amusing since I was recently in an argument on TBP where people were claiming that 5E has *too much* gold.

(Their argument seemed to be that gold doesn't mean anything unless you can use it to buy something to make your characters more mechanically powerful, because modern D&D deemphasises all the other uses. Sigh.)

Quote from: Naburimannu;1109853I just want to tangent on this one little quote - it was highly amusing since I was recently in an argument on TBP where people were claiming that 5E has *too much* gold.

(Their argument seemed to be that gold doesn't mean anything unless you can use it to buy something to make your characters more mechanically powerful, because modern D&D deemphasises all the other uses. Sigh.)

Weird as 5e has lots of non adventuring stuff that requires gold, sometimes lots of. But the monsters don't carry gold except for leaders and lairs usually. This actually harkens back to older editions of D&D where wandering monsters for example never had treasure.

The main thing is that gold has meaning when you make it have meaning. If no one is paying for upkeep or food or anything else then of course gold is too plentiful even starved for it as 5e can be. That is not a fault of the system.

Quote from: Omega;1109869That is not a fault of the system.

Man you hear this a lot from anyone defending 5e.

That's one of my beefs with 5e, the culture around it to blame any and all problems on the GM or players.

No, it's the system. The DMG and PH do not give good ways to spend gold and lean heavily on DMs just knowing how to make gold important if they want too, which 5e is made to accommodate those who don't want gold to be important too.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1109882Man you hear this a lot from anyone defending 5e.

That's one of my beefs with 5e, the culture around it to blame any and all problems on the GM or players.

   As the vanguard of the Glorious People's Revolution, 5E cannot fail, it can only be failed ... until 6E launches, at which point WotC will throw 5E under the bus in favor of whatever elements of 1E AD&D they want to hype this time around. (My guess? 5E will be "too homogenized and compromised by the Dominant Culture", so 6E will merge SJW-friendly agendas with the quasi-Satanic 'teen rebel' feeling often attributed to 1E.)

Quote from: Rhedyn;1109882Man you hear this a lot from anyone defending 5e.

Nice cherry picking there. Try again please.

5e is my favorite system and I can say gold is pretty much non-present in the system, outside of the initial items you buy. After that it doesn't really matter.

But, that is by design -- it's easy enough for the DM to add it back in, just like with everything else. I certainly have.

5e is awesome!  Hardly flawless though.  Here are my 5 biggest gripes, and the things I'd change if I were designing it:

1) Certain balance decisions are totally inexplicable.  For example, in a setting wherein you are using small numbers with small bonuses, which features an advantage/disadvantage system, how in the world does Pass Without Trace give a +10 bonus to stealth, rather than just providing advantage?  Numerous examples like that exist.  They come up with a great way to do things consistently, and then seemingly abandon it on a whim for no reason in ways that are blatantly game-breaking and should have been easily identifiable during playtesting.  

2) It's pretty barebones.  Things like, as an example, Naval Combat between vessels are totally unexplored.  Besieging castles, and how those play out, totally unexplored.  Economic systems, political systems, diplomatic systems, you're all on your own for most activities beyond basic combat.  Even within that realm, some really basic stuff like aerial combat during a storm requires heavy prep or modification by the DM to make it remotely viable in actual gameplay.  It works well when running a "standard" adventure and / or using their modules, but as a framework for a freeform sandbox it's really rather bare.

3) It has a level based system, and like most level based systems, it invalidates its own content through HP.  A large amount of content which otherwise would work really well, based on how they have everything else set up, simply does not work well at all with high level characters due to the amount of HP they have to work with.  This is exacerbated by the next problem, but overall, I see no real benefits gained by having HP grow during level gain, and a lot of problems needlessly introduced.

4) There is no fatigue system, and no damage system beyond death.  A large part of the final issue is that combat boils down far too often to "I whittle away at your HP pool, cool, let's keep going until someone dies".  There's very little drama in it because nothing is Actually happening prior to character death.  Called shots to the eyes to blind someone with a handful of mud, an arrow to the leg to cripple someone running away, grabbing the shield from a shield wielder and then bashing them to death with it, a LOT of the events of the most cinematic battles we've seen are simply beyond the scope of the combat system in 5e, or worse are gated off behind specialized and limited use abilities and a byzantine system of checks.  The fact that a strong character can't at will simply grab something an opposing character is holding, and rip it out of their hands with an opposed strength check (advantage if it's strapped in) is a huge failing of the system, and the idea that someone at 15 of 150 HP who has been fighting for 10 minutes straight is exactly as combat ready as they were when they started the battle is crazy.

5) Wizards have all the fun.  As with almost all D&D systems, nearly half the book is devoted to cool things spellcasters can do, carefully and individually spelled out, while martial characters are left with the deeply flawed and shallow system described above.  This means that there is HUGE imbalance of power levels for classes in and out of combat, and while Wizards can explicitly perform miraculous actions at a moment's notice, martial characters rely on DM adjudication to perform even some basic stuff like unhooking a chandelier and letting it fall on the enemies as they ride the rope to an upper level or the rafters, and probably have to perform multiple checks to make it happen.  As such actions rarely have significant impact and definitely slow down the pace of an already sluggish (thanks to HP bloat) system, in practice almost all martial characters I've seen eventually abandon efforts to do such things in favor of simply bashing away relentlessly with their favored weapon of choice and the largest bonuses they can get, while the spellcasters perform one miracle after another.

@Octopodes: I generally agree with your post, but some caveats:

Quote from: Giant Octopodes;11099702) It's pretty barebones.  Things like, as an example, Naval Combat between vessels are totally unexplored.  Besieging castles, and how those play out, totally unexplored.  Economic systems, political systems, diplomatic systems, you're all on your own for most activities beyond basic combat.  Even within that realm, some really basic stuff like aerial combat during a storm requires heavy prep or modification by the DM to make it remotely viable in actual gameplay.  It works well when running a "standard" adventure and / or using their modules, but as a framework for a freeform sandbox it's really rather bare.

At first I didn't like this, but I've grown to like it as my favorite part. When I open thick rulebooks like Pathfinder 1 or 2, I instantly feel all energy leave me. As a DM, it just makes my eyes gloss over. But when I'm making my OWN additions to the rules, it's an act of creative fun, and I've loved doing that with 5e. If I had to guess, they decided to slow roll it to avoid splat bloat, and package each set of rules with an appropriate adventure (ie, Saltmarsh has ship stuff). Still, I don't need that now that I've got my own DMing chops figured out thanks to making it all myself.

Quote4) There is no fatigue system, and no damage system beyond death.  A large part of the final issue is that combat boils down far too often to "I whittle away at your HP pool, cool, let's keep going until someone dies".  There's very little drama in it because nothing is Actually happening prior to character death.  Called shots to the eyes to blind someone with a handful of mud, an arrow to the leg to cripple someone running away, grabbing the shield from a shield wielder and then bashing them to death with it, a LOT of the events of the most cinematic battles we've seen are simply beyond the scope of the combat system in 5e, or worse are gated off behind specialized and limited use abilities and a byzantine system of checks.  The fact that a strong character can't at will simply grab something an opposing character is holding, and rip it out of their hands with an opposed strength check (advantage if it's strapped in) is a huge failing of the system, and the idea that someone at 15 of 150 HP who has been fighting for 10 minutes straight is exactly as combat ready as they were when they started the battle is crazy.

A character actually CAN just disarm someone of something and it IS a strength check. It's an optional rule in the DMG, but it's there for DMs to use. That said I agree a lot of more specific stuff could be fun to do instead of just whittling hit points -- but luckily we can add that in.

Quote5) Wizards have all the fun.  As with almost all D&D systems, nearly half the book is devoted to cool things spellcasters can do, carefully and individually spelled out, while martial characters are left with the deeply flawed and shallow system described above.  This means that there is HUGE imbalance of power levels for classes in and out of combat, and while Wizards can explicitly perform miraculous actions at a moment's notice, martial characters rely on DM adjudication to perform even some basic stuff like unhooking a chandelier and letting it fall on the enemies as they ride the rope to an upper level or the rafters, and probably have to perform multiple checks to make it happen.  As such actions rarely have significant impact and definitely slow down the pace of an already sluggish (thanks to HP bloat) system, in practice almost all martial characters I've seen eventually abandon efforts to do such things in favor of simply bashing away relentlessly with their favored weapon of choice and the largest bonuses they can get, while the spellcasters perform one miracle after another.

If you mean balance wise, martials and mages in 5e are very close. As far as encouraging creativity, I agree. Players will stick to what they know works, and that's what is spelled out. The PHB does make an allowance for "improvised actions" though. I think this is more relative to the DM and how open they are to creative stuff.

5e has alot of warts and some really severe issues. Most of which can be worked out with optional rules, house rules, or just flat out removing some bits that interfere. Or returning one or two rules from the playtests that should not have been removed.

1: Pass without Trace has its limitations. It does not provide cover and its kinda useless in an open or well lit area. But yeah it is an odd one with that +10 after all the advantage/disadvantage use throughout the books. The apparent reason was it is supposed to make the caster or target really really hard to track. YMMV in if this was the way to go.

2: Naval combat gets a Unearthed Arcanna entry I believe. Seems like they plan to add it into some later supplement. But so far have not seen it appear.
Same for castles. But there is actually rules for siege engines and how much damage a section of wall can take in the warfare section.
Economic systems? Why? Believe there is a section on different political systems. About a paragraph each?
er. There is a negotiation/diplomacy section in the DMG.

3: YMMV on HP. I think PCs get a bit too much HP. But the system is oddly balanced to it when running PCs vs NPCs with classes. Against monsters its pretty YMMV. But seems to kinda, maybee balance. Im still dubious on that. But so far theres been a sort of pattern to how many rounds combats last at each level/tier. The system seems to be aiming for about 5 rounds. 10 max and most battles are over unless everyine is really playing defense or using some of the odder defensive tricks.
As for "cinematic combat" ... You want a different RPG for that or a DM that allows various distractions and interference. Just remember. If you can do it. They can too. And several of the things you list can be done with various applications of skills or stat checks. I sure have reminded players these things are possible. We had the groups paladin make a diving leap to shield a downed companion from a killing blow. We had the groups wizard blast some huge icicles with a spell to try and cause them to crash down on a dragon. We had the groups warlock make a called shot to zap an opponents weapon out of her hand. And so on.

5: No. Half the book is devoted to spells various classes can use. But not all of them. That in no way means the game is caster-centric. Though whoooo does it feel that way now and then. And youd need a DMs call on some trick uses of spells too. The real problem is several spells have some really dodgy wording that is rife for abuse. Or are so badly worded they can make certain styles of adventure hard to pull off without alot of tricks to neutralize the spell.

x: Welcome to the site by the way.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;11099595e is my favorite system and I can say gold is pretty much non-present in the system, outside of the initial items you buy. After that it doesn't really matter. .

Curse of Strahd has ALOT of electrum pieces as treasure. Coins with his picture on it.  The true terror is not Strahd, the Vampire but Strahd, the Currency Debaser!

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1109989At first I didn't like this, but I've grown to like it as my favorite part. When I open thick rulebooks like Pathfinder 1 or 2, I instantly feel all energy leave me. As a DM, it just makes my eyes gloss over.

Would it surprise you to know that 5e is exactly as thick as PF2?

Quote from: Rhedyn;1109882The DMG and PH do not give good ways to spend gold and lean heavily on DMs just knowing how to make gold important if they want too, which 5e is made to accommodate those who don't want gold to be important too.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;11099595e is my favorite system and I can say gold is pretty much non-present in the system, outside of the initial items you buy. After that it doesn't really matter.

I cast Greater Restoration and Heroes' Feast a lot as a Druid; various spells to return people to life are nice too, as is Simulacrum, and they can consume a lot of gold. Fighters who want heavy armor are going to want to buy plate, so it's not likely to be part of initial equipment. And wizards will want to copy spells they find into their spellbooks, and probably make a copy of their spellbook as a backup. Buying healing potions is a reasonable way to spend some gold. You can craft stuff for reduced cost but still consuming gold. (My Druid bought an estate in Chult, for the chance to see dinosaurs, for 5000GP - an AL cert available at Fai Chen's in that season.)

The current season of AL bounds the amount of gold per level that characters can find; to afford plate armor you'd have to reach 10th level. Soul coins seem to be the currency of the day anyway.

Quote from: rawma;1110082to afford plate armor you'd have to reach 10th level.

...so while the wizard is learning how to communicate with other planes, summon elementals, and bind people to his will, the fighter is excited because he finally gets plate.

Not even magical plate.

That's retarded.

Quote from: Shasarak;1110071Would it surprise you to know that 5e is exactly as thick as PF2?

In page count, but the actual rules are way simpler in 5e. The PF2 DM section is way smaller than the 5e one, and the 5e DMG is mostly optional stuff. So that right there is a big drop in complexity.

Definitely simpler than PF1 though.