Quote from: S'mon;1061011I have played 5e to high level (18-20) a few times and while some spells had issues it still worked ok.

Pathfinder at double digit by contrast is a steaming pile of shit, far worse than 3.5e. I ran it to 14th and the Summoned so totally dominated that he STOPPED BOTHERING TO LEVEL UP.  He also stopped BOTHERING with his eidolon even though it is insanely powerful. He could just summon enough octopi to lock down the battlefield.

After my 3-year long Pathfinder/3.x Hybrid game that got to 20th level... I've never wanted to pick up 3.x again. I ran 5e for a good bit when it launched... it didn't stick. LOL the Summoner was the 80-ton anvil on the already overloaded camel's back. It pretty much ended my 40-years of D&D playing.

That takes an awful lot of suckage to break that streak. Yet here we are.

Quote from: tenbones;1061015That takes an awful lot of suckage to break that streak. Yet here we are.

No one in my group wants to run Pathfinder and only half like playing it.

I've personally had far more success running 3.5 with noobs than ever running Pathfinder or 5e. I think Pathfinder is better, but my 3.5 group did get to epic levels plus divine ranks without the game breaking down.  (I think a level 36 swashbuckler/fighter was my highest level PC I ever GM'd for)

Mathfinder has an issue of every PC being it's own seperate math engine and it's just really hard to handle and low levels kind of suck.

It doesn't matter to me whether teenage 3.*/PF "works" or not.  It's such an annoying thing to run, and a play style that I detest, that even if they made it work, I wouldn't run it.  I don't have that issue with 5E.  Whether it "works" because I make it work or something inherent in the system, I can have a fun game with it.  

I think Rhedyn would be happier running something like GURPS or Hero or the like.

Well this may be a little Meta...

But I don't think WotC gives a flying shit about what any of us think. Nor do I think any of their designers other than to pretend to do lip-service. 5e is an excellent example of that.

I have *zero* reason to believe 6e will do anything challenging, kill off some sacred cows. etc. They have no reason to.

Quote from: Razor 007;1060752How likely are you to drop coin and buy the Books?

I'm suspicious that a percentage of players will cling to 5E; assuming they are still rolling with D&D.

5E is more popular than 3.5 was, and people chose to cling to it.

It depends on why they make a 6E and what the design goals are, and what I'm currently interested in at the time. Money on the TTRPG scale isn't really an issue for me but time is and emotional energy is. I continue to buy 5E books like Xanathar's and Mordenkainen's because I find 5E an interesting combat system and an intriguing basis for a CRPG (current hobby: prototyping an adaptation of the Bard's Tale built on top of the 5E combat engine/classes instead of the native Bard's Tale classes; I've shelved my 5E/XCOM prototype for now). But 5E isn't a good TTRPG compared to the other systems I know (GURPS, AD&D, early D&D, DramaSystem, Shadowrun). It can be made into one but it takes a ton of work by the DM, you have to rewrite some rules, augment a lot of monster statistics, create your own game structures and adventures, etc., etc. I think the only reason I'd want to run a 5E campaign would be if I wanted to hybridize it with a computer game, so I could run roleplaying sessions in person but the players could get together for hack-and-slash dungeon crawls online, and then in person we'd do overland/social/wilderness adventures where they get to actually DO DRAMATIC THINGS with the cool loot they found in their dungeon crawls. Essentially I'd want to offload everything combat-related onto the computer (with an option for ad hoc DM alterations of game state) and only DM the out-of-combat bits--but outside of combat, 5E doesn't really even have a system.

So, yeah, I might potentially spend some time and money on it, but I wouldn't expect WotC to produce anything really innovative. Their track record does not inspire confidence. I was perfectly fine ignoring WotC's 3E and 4E and I might very well do the same thing to 6E and maybe even 5E after a while.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1061018It doesn't matter to me whether teenage 3.*/PF "works" or not.  It's such an annoying thing to run, and a play style that I detest, that even if they made it work, I wouldn't run it.  I don't have that issue with 5E.  Whether it "works" because I make it work or something inherent in the system, I can have a fun game with it.  

I think Rhedyn would be happier running something like GURPS or Hero or the like.

Oh it works because you make it work. That's the whole point of 5e. Ignore Sage Advice, official rulings, errata, etc, all that just get in the way of what 5e is suppose to do, act as a platform for the DM to run D&D how they feel D&D should be like, while at the same time giving the players enough "bits" that they feel like they can engage.

GURPS is a fine system. One of my favorites. Savage Worlds is my favorite though because it combines ease of play with "rules for things", along with starting and stopping at a competence level I like. I do miss some of the crazy intricate magic, but my Rifts, Shaintar, or Supers campaigns can scratch that itch. No dungeon crawler needs anything like greater teleport. (And well Savage Worlds magic still ends up being cooler than PF2e magic somehow, at least with the no PP variant)

Quote from: Rhedyn;1061013Did you/your GM make custom monsters?

The summoner is so badly designed that the Unchained version was just nerfs. The Unchained summoner is a decent class.

Giant Octopi: +13 to-hit and +21 grapple broke your game? How? At level 14?

I was running Curse of the Crimson Throne. 3 octopi meant 17 x3 = 51 attack rolls per round. 24 tentacle attack followed by 24 tentacle grapple and 3 bites. They could easily immobilize any foe with the grapples. The adventure expected F8 Gray Maidens to be threatening; it was a joke. The PCs were actually several levels lower than the adventure assumed at the end and I heavily buffed the opposition but there was no way to threaten them without blatant cheating.

5e custom monsters - not really. First campaign the demigod Kainos was an Empyrean with double attacks and a +3 shield for 5 better AC. Second campaign was converted Runelords and I converted some stat blocks from PF. But I used plenty of MM stats too, along with Tome of Beasts.

Quote from: S'mon;1061026I was running Curse of the Crimson Throne. 3 octopi meant 17 x3 = 51 attack rolls per round. 24 tentacle attack followed by 24 tentacle grapple and 3 bites. They could easily immobilize any foe with the grapples. The adventure expected F8 Gray Maidens to be threatening; it was a joke. The PCs were actually several levels lower than the adventure assumed at the end and I heavily buffed the opposition but there was no way to threaten them without blatant cheating.

So level 14, superior augmented summons, rolled a 2 on his d3 to get 3 octopi with 8 tentacle attack and a bite.

You realize grab only activates on a hit right? So its not 17 attacks, it's 9 attacks.

Still, level 8 fighters with NPC gear are a complete joke to a single level 14 PC. I never really like Paizo APs, but that encounter seems extra borked. (By level 14, I assume any optimized party is handling APL+4 encounter and nothing CR 18 cares about Giant octopi)

Just because I find Pathfinder more workable than 5e does not mean I find Pathfinder perfect or even satisfactory. It is a very interesting puzzle, less so RPG or Wargame. It's a math puzzle to me.

The enemy had ca AC20 and I don't recall any tentacles ever missing. They seemed to really like those Gray Maidens... cue the hentai jokes from the female player of the Ranger (not broken like the Summoner, but doing a couple hundred damage a round it was like the German MG42s at the start of Saving Private Ryan).
The only CR 18 in the AP was Queen Ileosa, and only then because I doubled her regen from 25 to 50 a round. I gave her a lot more minions too in the final battle but it was still a cakewalk.

For the record; I like D&D 5E a lot, as presented in the Core 3 Books plus Volo's and Xanathar's.  It doesn't have to be perfect, to be a great game.  There is a lot there that I like.  The climb through the first 11 levels or so seems about right to me.  I can't speak with great authority beyond that though.  I'm not a fan of complexity.

Quote from: S'mon;1061026I was running Curse of the Crimson Throne. 3 octopi meant 17 x3 = 51 attack rolls per round. 24 tentacle attack followed by 24 tentacle grapple and 3 bites. They could easily immobilize any foe with the grapples. The adventure expected F8 Gray Maidens to be threatening; it was a joke. The PCs were actually several levels lower than the adventure assumed at the end and I heavily buffed the opposition but there was no way to threaten them without blatant cheating.

So level 14, superior augmented summons, rolled a 2 on his d3 to get 3 octopi with 8 tentacle attack and a bite.

You realize grab only activates on a hit right? So its not 17 attacks, it's 9 attacks.

Still, level 8 fighters with NPC gear are a complete joke to a single level 14 PC. I never really like Paizo APs, but that encounter seems extra borked. (By level 14, I assume any optimized party is handling APL+4 encounter and nothing CR 18 cares about Giant octopi)

Just because I find Pathfinder more workable than 5e does not mean I find Pathfinder perfect or even satisfactory. It is a very interesting puzzle, less so RPG or Wargame. It's a math puzzle to me.

Quote from: S'mon;10610265e custom monsters - not really. First campaign the demigod Kainos was an Empyrean with double attacks and a +3 shield for 5 better AC. Second campaign was converted Runelords and I converted some stat blocks from PF. But I used plenty of MM stats too, along with Tome of Beasts.

1. Edited a monster

2. I would consider these just custom monsters.

3. Someone else made custom monsters for you.

Our group of 7 ran out of anything useful in the MM by level 8. I think the MM is one of the worst books in 5e. It's where all the system problems really come to a head. If DM can make custom monster to make their campaigns work and 3rd party can as well. It's just WotC that doesn't know what it is doing.

Quote from: S'mon;1061029The enemy had ca AC20 and I don't recall any tentacles ever missing. They seemed to really like those Gray Maidens... cue the hentai jokes from the female player of the Ranger (not broken like the Summoner, but doing a couple hundred damage a round it was like the German MG42s at the start of Saving Private Ryan).
The only CR 18 in the AP was Queen Ileosa, and only then because I doubled her regen from 25 to 50 a round. I gave her a lot more minions too in the final battle but it was still a cakewalk.

Based on my rough CR math, anything less than a thousand Gray Maidens per player should have been a cake walk for a level 14 party.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1061033Based on my rough CR math, anything less than a thousand Gray Maidens per player should have been a cake walk for a level 14 party.

The adventure had something like 8 at a time in patrols - these had not been threatening even when the PCs were 8th themselves. Backed up by a horned devil and such.

Easy fights combined with rocketing up levels every 2 sessions for much of the AP.

Edit: To be fair the last Gray Maidens were at 13th level. The PCs hit 14 at Ileosa's ziggurat.

Quote from: S'mon;1061034The adventure had something like 8 at a time in patrols - these had not been threatening even when the PCs were 8th themselves. Backed up by a horned devil and such.

Easy fights combined with rocketing up levels every 2 sessions for much of the AP.

Idk why Paizo gets so make credit for their "amazing" APs, I've never been that impressed with them. I guess they are still better than WotC at it? But is that an accomplishment?

I guess for an industry that for the most part will focus on at most two companies, that can be good enough.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1061031So level 14, superior augmented summons, rolled a 2 on his d3 to get 3 octopi with 8 tentacle attack and a bite.

You realize grab only activates on a hit right? So its not 17 attacks, it's 9 attacks.

Still, level 8 fighters with NPC gear are a complete joke to a single level 14 PC. I never really like Paizo APs, but that encounter seems extra borked. (By level 14, I assume any optimized party is handling APL+4 encounter and nothing CR 18 cares about Giant octopi)

Just because I find Pathfinder more workable than 5e does not mean I find Pathfinder perfect or even satisfactory. It is a very interesting puzzle, less so RPG or Wargame. It's a math puzzle to me.



1. Edited a monster

2. I would consider these just custom monsters.

3. Someone else made custom monsters for you.

Our group of 7 ran out of anything useful in the MM by level 8. I think the MM is one of the worst books in 5e. It's where all the system problems really come to a head. If DM can make custom monster to make their campaigns work and 3rd party can as well. It's just WotC that doesn't know what it is doing.

I think the 5e MM is definitely skimpy at the high end. But I have used a Lich and an ancient black Dragon to good effect. Some demons like the Nalfeshnee are quite nasty.  It certainly works way better than PF for me anyway.

There are definitely problems with 5e MM monsters. I just find these easy to fix. I don't find 3e/PF structural problems fixable.