5e is a toolkit.

"It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools."

Quote from: RandyB;11088845e is a toolkit.

"It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools."

"It's a dumb craftsman that buy more expensive worse tools"

Let's not pretend 5e is a very good toolkit for running OSR games. It's like hammering a screw in. You can do it and people not familiar with the work will think it looks right, but you know you are being ridiculous.

Quote from: RandyB;11088845e is a toolkit.

"It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools."

"It's a dumb craftsman that buys more expensive worse tools"

Let's not pretend 5e is a very good toolkit for running OSR games. It's like hammering a screw in. You can do it and people not familiar with the work will think it looks right, but you know you are being ridiculous.

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!

They cant camp everywhere and anything still in the area is going to have time to prep, or hit them while they are trying to recover. So they cant recover.

Quote from: Razor 007;1108845If the player characters get exhausted at 0 HP, but their enemies die at 0 HP; that's too fake for me.

5e mentions a DM can apply the same rules to monsters as they do to players. I do. Monster goes down? Others may try to revive or stabalize it. The reason why not to use it for monsters is that it can drag out combats. Which a few here allready bitch are too long.

I like to use it when it makes sense to happen. Enemies with good group unity like kobolds will. But more rough and tumble sorts like orcs and goblins might not. Depending on the individual and even their beliefs. Some orcs might see going down as a sign of weakness and do nothing to revive a fallen member. Others might move to save friends and so on. Situational.

Also situational what resources enemies have to help downed comrades. Can they even get to the downed individual? Do they have any potions or spells to apply? Which also applies to PCs. Sometimes you cant revive a fallen party member or have to take risks to do so.

Yes, I have characters try to save downed foes all the time. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.  I've had a few cases where it mattered to me, and I rolled to see if a monster could make the death saves.  Sometimes they do; sometimes they don't.  But you don't have to be a slave to the exact system.  If 20 Goblins are left for dead, I assume one or two probably revive.  Then what?  They are 1 or 2 injured goblins wandering around in the wild without their buddies.  Most likely, something eats them.  Revenge is seldom on their minds.

Quote from: RandyB;11088845e is a toolkit.

"It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools."

"I tried using my toolkit to build a house. But it was a medical toolkit and my house of Ace-bandages, lubricant, tongue depressors, cottonballs and anti-microbial jelly collapsed in on my family. We barely felt it. Fortunately."

- 'The Fable of the Craftsman that Hammered with a Stethoscope'

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1108871That's circular logic.  If you have the 15 minute adventuring day, then it is because you are running the type of game where it would have also been a problem using AD&D.  Either characters have some means to partially bounce back from being hurt, or they don't.  To the extent that they don't, they'll want to get somewhere safe and cope with it when they are hurt enough.  Once you move the game towards "depleting resources over time" (whatever version of the game and whatever house rules you use), then the responsibility moves back on you as the GM to set up situations where the characters will want to continue while so depleted.

A GM can pull some stunts to set up the illusion of being depleted without them actually being depleted, and thus escape that circle.  At least for a little time.  Eventually, as with all illusionism techniques, you'll drop the ball and the whole thing will splatter.

   I think 4E's matrix of Hit Points, Healing Surges, and milestones/Action Points/magic item uses was an attempt to address this problem, but for various reasons on both the design and user base sides, it didn't work out.

Quote from: tenbones;1108895"I tried using my toolkit to build a house. But it was a medical toolkit and my house of Ace-bandages, lubricant, tongue depressors, cottonballs and anti-microbial jelly collapsed in on my family. We barely felt it. Fortunately."

- 'The Fable of the Craftsman that Hammered with a Stethoscope'

Implied in my comment is "don't blame the toolkit if it isn't the right kit for your purpose". "It isn't suitable for Y" is valid, especially when you want to do Y. "It sucks because it doesn't make everybody do Y" is not valid. And there is a range of critiques between those extremes.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1108900I think 4E's matrix of Hit Points, Healing Surges, and milestones/Action Points/magic item uses was an attempt to address this problem, but for various reasons on both the design and user base sides, it didn't work out.

I disagree, the system actually works out very well.

The issue is when combat takes forever. Not every fight needs to be "challenging" aka taking more than an hour as everyone carefully plans their turns.

Oh, 4E worked really well... as a warband skirmish game.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1108900I think 4E's matrix of Hit Points, Healing Surges, and milestones/Action Points/magic item uses was an attempt to address this problem, but for various reasons on both the design and user base sides, it didn't work out.

No kidding.  Half-baked implementations with gaping design flaws that are poorly tested and even more poorly explained?  It's a wonder that it worked as well as it did, and a testament to the resilience of GMs everywhere.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1108911No kidding.  Half-baked implementations with gaping design flaws that are poorly tested and even more poorly explained?  It's a wonder that it worked as well as it did, and a testament to the resilience of GMs everywhere.

Gaping design flaws?

No that wasn't 4e's malfunction. 4e perfected the Adventure Design as Encounter Design of 3e while still having mechanics that allowed for other kinds of adventuring.

5e has plenty of design gaps because it's just 4e with a bunch of mechanics removed and reflavored + lots of nastolgia.

4e has problems, mainly MM1 and when the combat drags, it drags.

Quote from: Brendan;1108909Oh, 4E worked really well... as a warband skirmish game.

That's my take. I've always wondered why people insisted otherwise as if this is a bad thing. 4e fans *wanted* this to be the end-all, be-all... and lets face it, anyone that's done the Edition Rodeo long enough should know *no* edition will ever be the end-all-be-all.

5e is serviceable. It has issues. "fixing" those issues depends entirely on what you as a GM want in your game. As this thread attests to. One person's big problems are not problems at all to others.

When you want to get into the weeds of specifics - look at me and Steve's mini-discussion. We agree on 99.9% of what we'd like to change, but our specific needs are fairly (but not too much) different.

So the flipside of the question to the OP is: what are you willing to do to fix any perceived "Big Problem"? THAT is the real question.

Quote from: tenbones;1108916So the flipside of the question to the OP is: what are you willing to do to fix any perceived "Big Problem"? THAT is the real question.

Oh I know!

I don't play 5e. I play OSR games like The Black Hack 2e or some Kevin Crawford game when I am feeling like D&D.