My current DM and I trade back and forth...I run my game a while and then he runs his. We discuss rules we like, don't like, or feel we need to homebrew a lot.
My main pet peeve, out of ALL of the rules in 5e that I don't care for, is the Long Rest. My memory is imperfect at my age but as I recall in earlier editions you had to rest longer than 1 day if you were really beat up. Now, I can be down over 100 HP, Poisoned, and down to 1 spell slot and it's all good. Cast Cure Poison, sleep 8 hours and wake up fresh as a daisy. HUH?
I've heard from Youtubers that the new Mordenkainan book is phasing out the Short Rest Mechanic and I think that's crazy. What...you're going to FORCE your players to not rest when they want? They get lucky, take some initiative, use some strategy, find out where the BBEG's lair is and you're going to tell them they CAN'T stop for an hour to rest, reload stuff, and form a battle plan before going in?
Supposedly this is to make 5e more of a challenge. IMHO they need to keep SR and modify LR so you don't go from death's door to fully healed in one night.
Which new Mordenkainen book? Some mechanics changed in Monsters of the Universe to allow PB times/long rest instead of X times/short rest.
Short Rest mechanic was never available in 3.5 or earlier - it came along at the same time as Long Rest. I've learnt to use both since starting 5E, and it is a fantasy world so why not heal up overnight?
There's nothing to prevent a DM throwing encounters at the party during the LR. But without fully healing it just slows the entire adventure down - the party will rest for as many days as it takes to fully heal up.
In the past, the party would sleep, cast all their healing spells to get back to full, take the day off and sleep again, then go adventuring at full hp.
In the past, the party would sleep, cast all their healing spells to get back to full, take the day off and sleep again, then go adventuring at full hp.
This is what I remember as well. If there was a time pressure, we might trudge off at less than full HP but earlier editions were more lethal IIRC.
+ Death comes really slowly, making a DM's work really a lot easier.
+ Multiclassing greatly improved from previous editions, especially when it comes to casters.
+ Customized origins may not be realistic, but they give players far greater choice when creating characters.
+ Short rests are a good middle ground between getting the party in too much danger and taking too much time.
+ Subclasses are more beginner friendly compared to prestige classes.
+ Spell preparation now gives players far more flexibility than older editions.
Dislike:
- Not a specific 5e thing but rather a D&D thing: I think armor should be damage reduction instead of reduce hit chance. Most other TTRPGs handle armor that way and just makes more sense. After all, you may still hit a character in full plate armor, but you will do far less damage.
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+ Instaboot to murderhobos + I don't watch Critical Role, and no, I really shouldn't either +
For dislike, saving throws. When my players attack or such, I want them to be rolling the dice. Rolling dice is part of the fun, and it more proactive to be the one who gets to chance fate and see what happens. With saves no joy of rolling the high roll, no despair at the low, no real trepidation as you roll a middle number and add up whatever mods and inspirations you have with your fingers crossed. There’s just the DM saying “yep, you failed/passed, roll damage (and half it if needed).”
4e had a much better system - in addition it AC, you had different defences for reflex (how good you were at dodging, equivalent of a dex save), fortitude (staving off poisons and such, equivalent of a con save), and willpower (mental attacks, equivalent to wis or int save). The attacker got the fun of rolling to see if they hit and checked that against the appropriate defence. It also just made learning the game a bit easier - players, particularly magic players in 5e, have to get used to two different attack/defence systems, due to an arbitrary decision to treat some spells differently than other combat.
For like, probably how much more streamlined 5e is, making it easier on new players. I personally enjoyed the great complexity of 4e character development, where there were dozens of different attack options to choose at each level for each class, but it created a barrier to entry and slowed down actual gameplay. 5e has made it a lot easier to get new players on board and make sure they have a fun, efficient game even with novice skills, which seems to work better for all involved.
My current DM and I trade back and forth...I run my game a while and then he runs his. We discuss rules we like, don't like, or feel we need to homebrew a lot.
My main pet peeve, out of ALL of the rules in 5e that I don't care for, is the Long Rest. My memory is imperfect at my age but as I recall in earlier editions you had to rest longer than 1 day if you were really beat up. Now, I can be down over 100 HP, Poisoned, and down to 1 spell slot and it's all good. Cast Cure Poison, sleep 8 hours and wake up fresh as a daisy. HUH?
I've heard from Youtubers that the new Mordenkainan book is phasing out the Short Rest Mechanic and I think that's crazy. What...you're going to FORCE your players to not rest when they want? They get lucky, take some initiative, use some strategy, find out where the BBEG's lair is and you're going to tell them they CAN'T stop for an hour to rest, reload stuff, and form a battle plan before going in?
Supposedly this is to make 5e more of a challenge. IMHO they need to keep SR and modify LR so you don't go from death's door to fully healed in one night.
There already are optional rules to make long rest take longer. You can do that today. It seems like, in practice, you end up hand-waving a week of resting instead of eight hours, but that would be table dependent, certainly. And it does seem like short rests are maybe going away in the future, if only because it doesn't seem like any of the new subclasses have short rest-recharge abilities in favor of PB/day.
Generally, I'm pretty happy with this edition. Part of me aches for the extra-crunchy character options a la 3.x, but then those got to be a mess. When I think about it, I realize I don't want to go back. I'd like to decouple feats from asi, though.
I'm not sure how phasing out a short rest would even work. Too many classes rely on it. Maybe they're phasing out short rest based racial features?
I could see the 2024 revamp maybe rewrite classes to not use short rests anymore, if they feel like the varying amount of short rests a party might get in a day can skew balance too much, and want to make everyone a long rest class. But they would have to rewrite many class features in order to actually phase out short rests. Warlocks, fighters, monks etc. Even if they never add another short rest ability into the game going forward, they would have to replace a LOT of existing content to get rid of short rests.
My main pet peeve, out of ALL of the rules in 5e that I don't care for, is the Long Rest. My memory is imperfect at my age but as I recall in earlier editions you had to rest longer than 1 day if you were really beat up. Now, I can be down over 100 HP, Poisoned, and down to 1 spell slot and it's all good. Cast Cure Poison, sleep 8 hours and wake up fresh as a daisy. HUH?
In previous editions, you were dependent on having a healer to heal up in a reasonable amount of time; 5e eliminated "your party must include a healer" though it's still pretty strongly advised. In practice needing multiple days of rest has never been a terribly significant limitation in any edition of D&D because you'd call a break when your high level spell slots were exhausted and your low level spell slots were enough to top everyone off. Not to mention wands of cure light wounds in 3.5e.
It's not terribly realistic, but... realism is not particularly an objective of D&D. If you want people to need longer to recover, use Gritty Realism.
Going fundamental, I really like Advantage/Disadvantage. It was one of the biggest selling points to me to convert from Pathfinder 1e and what felt like an endless sea of random +1 or +2s and -1 or -2s that shifted character by character, round by round. Advantage/Disadvantage was such a pleasant breath of fresh air that was feels so much faster to manage in play.
Also seconding multiclass spellcasters better balanced as great! Big fan of that!
As for dislikes, over time, I've come to also dislike long rests. Sometimes the "get a good night's sleep and be completely healed after nearly dying" goes a bit too far for both believability as well as threat & challenge. (I have far less of a problem when magic is involved in healing someone from dead to perfectly healthy. But this is an area where game mechanics might make sense, but in-world, non-magical total healing overnight goes too far into unbelievability for me.)
Our campaigns story-wise have shifted more towards single major battle a day pattern rather than multiple little battles, so short rests are pretty nonexistent so some character abilities are not as well balanced with that style of play. But it's partially on me as DM going with a pattern of combats/day that the system wasn't primarily focused on, but it'd be nice and it's not that difficult to balance class abilities for either. Having some classes more powerful in one and other classes more powerful in the other is a design choice that isn't actually necessary.
Something that I've considered is to have enemies have reduced abilities as they lose HP. The biggest problem with this is the level of record-keeping involved.
A 5E rule i realky like is moving before and after action and between attacks as well as in tandem with object interactions. This makes 5E more fluid than ever before.
As for dislikes, over time, I've come to also dislike long rests. Sometimes the "get a good night's sleep and be completely healed after nearly dying" goes a bit too far for both believability as well as threat & challenge. (I have far less of a problem when magic is involved in healing someone from dead to perfectly healthy. But this is an area where game mechanics might make sense, but in-world, non-magical total healing overnight goes too far into unbelievability for me.
Since hit points are described as "a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck" then a good night's rest will restore all four aspects that are represented by HP.
As for dislikes, over time, I've come to also dislike long rests. Sometimes the "get a good night's sleep and be completely healed after nearly dying" goes a bit too far for both believability as well as threat & challenge. (I have far less of a problem when magic is involved in healing someone from dead to perfectly healthy. But this is an area where game mechanics might make sense, but in-world, non-magical total healing overnight goes too far into unbelievability for me.
Since hit points are described as "a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck" then a good night's rest will restore all four aspects that are represented by HP.
I'd argue that it wouldn't. Physical durability being degraded implies you being physically injured, which won't be slept off, not completely. Mental durability implies your morale and determination, which won't completely be restored by sleeping. The will to live is something that really shouldn't be degraded in a day - nor restored in a day. That's a long term thing, in either direction. Luck, well, shouldn't be something that degrades really. It just is.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Hate with the fires of a thousand suns: Multi-classing.
But then this is not a new issue ... I have despised the mechanic since its first introduction way back in the day.
Any particular reason why or just the idea of it in general? Just curious.
Both the concept and the execution.
The concept: I am going to spend the majority of my life up until now learning to do ABC... now on a whim I am going to throw all that away and in the span of a few weeks to months learn to do XYZ. This is especially egregious when the path is Martial to Magical (modern iterations with expanded magical classes helps to alleviate this.)
The execution? The mechanics have never been properly balanced. The costs for the benefit are disproportionate (not steep enough) and each iteration has only lessened or pushed back the costs to the point they are never paid. (At least when the mechanics were first introduced one had to pay ALL the costs up front; not ideal but it did reign in the "I win button" mentality).
And in 5e with the judicious selection of sub-class, skills, feats, and backgrounds it's unnecessary. There is no character concept that "requires" Multi-classing.
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My current DM and I trade back and forth...I run my game a while and then he runs his. We discuss rules we like, don't like, or feel we need to homebrew a lot.
My main pet peeve, out of ALL of the rules in 5e that I don't care for, is the Long Rest. My memory is imperfect at my age but as I recall in earlier editions you had to rest longer than 1 day if you were really beat up. Now, I can be down over 100 HP, Poisoned, and down to 1 spell slot and it's all good. Cast Cure Poison, sleep 8 hours and wake up fresh as a daisy. HUH?
I've heard from Youtubers that the new Mordenkainan book is phasing out the Short Rest Mechanic and I think that's crazy. What...you're going to FORCE your players to not rest when they want? They get lucky, take some initiative, use some strategy, find out where the BBEG's lair is and you're going to tell them they CAN'T stop for an hour to rest, reload stuff, and form a battle plan before going in?
Supposedly this is to make 5e more of a challenge. IMHO they need to keep SR and modify LR so you don't go from death's door to fully healed in one night.
Which new Mordenkainen book? Some mechanics changed in Monsters of the Universe to allow PB times/long rest instead of X times/short rest.
Short Rest mechanic was never available in 3.5 or earlier - it came along at the same time as Long Rest. I've learnt to use both since starting 5E, and it is a fantasy world so why not heal up overnight?
There's nothing to prevent a DM throwing encounters at the party during the LR. But without fully healing it just slows the entire adventure down - the party will rest for as many days as it takes to fully heal up.
In the past, the party would sleep, cast all their healing spells to get back to full, take the day off and sleep again, then go adventuring at full hp.
This is what I remember as well. If there was a time pressure, we might trudge off at less than full HP but earlier editions were more lethal IIRC.
Like:
+ Death comes really slowly, making a DM's work really a lot easier.
+ Multiclassing greatly improved from previous editions, especially when it comes to casters.
+ Customized origins may not be realistic, but they give players far greater choice when creating characters.
+ Short rests are a good middle ground between getting the party in too much danger and taking too much time.
+ Subclasses are more beginner friendly compared to prestige classes.
+ Spell preparation now gives players far more flexibility than older editions.
Dislike:
- Not a specific 5e thing but rather a D&D thing: I think armor should be damage reduction instead of reduce hit chance. Most other TTRPGs handle armor that way and just makes more sense. After all, you may still hit a character in full plate armor, but you will do far less damage.
+ Instaboot to murderhobos + I don't watch Critical Role, and no, I really shouldn't either +
For dislike, saving throws. When my players attack or such, I want them to be rolling the dice. Rolling dice is part of the fun, and it more proactive to be the one who gets to chance fate and see what happens. With saves no joy of rolling the high roll, no despair at the low, no real trepidation as you roll a middle number and add up whatever mods and inspirations you have with your fingers crossed. There’s just the DM saying “yep, you failed/passed, roll damage (and half it if needed).”
4e had a much better system - in addition it AC, you had different defences for reflex (how good you were at dodging, equivalent of a dex save), fortitude (staving off poisons and such, equivalent of a con save), and willpower (mental attacks, equivalent to wis or int save). The attacker got the fun of rolling to see if they hit and checked that against the appropriate defence. It also just made learning the game a bit easier - players, particularly magic players in 5e, have to get used to two different attack/defence systems, due to an arbitrary decision to treat some spells differently than other combat.
For like, probably how much more streamlined 5e is, making it easier on new players. I personally enjoyed the great complexity of 4e character development, where there were dozens of different attack options to choose at each level for each class, but it created a barrier to entry and slowed down actual gameplay. 5e has made it a lot easier to get new players on board and make sure they have a fun, efficient game even with novice skills, which seems to work better for all involved.
There already are optional rules to make long rest take longer. You can do that today. It seems like, in practice, you end up hand-waving a week of resting instead of eight hours, but that would be table dependent, certainly. And it does seem like short rests are maybe going away in the future, if only because it doesn't seem like any of the new subclasses have short rest-recharge abilities in favor of PB/day.
Generally, I'm pretty happy with this edition. Part of me aches for the extra-crunchy character options a la 3.x, but then those got to be a mess. When I think about it, I realize I don't want to go back. I'd like to decouple feats from asi, though.
I'm not sure how phasing out a short rest would even work. Too many classes rely on it. Maybe they're phasing out short rest based racial features?
I could see the 2024 revamp maybe rewrite classes to not use short rests anymore, if they feel like the varying amount of short rests a party might get in a day can skew balance too much, and want to make everyone a long rest class. But they would have to rewrite many class features in order to actually phase out short rests. Warlocks, fighters, monks etc. Even if they never add another short rest ability into the game going forward, they would have to replace a LOT of existing content to get rid of short rests.
In previous editions, you were dependent on having a healer to heal up in a reasonable amount of time; 5e eliminated "your party must include a healer" though it's still pretty strongly advised. In practice needing multiple days of rest has never been a terribly significant limitation in any edition of D&D because you'd call a break when your high level spell slots were exhausted and your low level spell slots were enough to top everyone off. Not to mention wands of cure light wounds in 3.5e.
It's not terribly realistic, but... realism is not particularly an objective of D&D. If you want people to need longer to recover, use Gritty Realism.
Going fundamental, I really like Advantage/Disadvantage. It was one of the biggest selling points to me to convert from Pathfinder 1e and what felt like an endless sea of random +1 or +2s and -1 or -2s that shifted character by character, round by round. Advantage/Disadvantage was such a pleasant breath of fresh air that was feels so much faster to manage in play.
Also seconding multiclass spellcasters better balanced as great! Big fan of that!
As for dislikes, over time, I've come to also dislike long rests. Sometimes the "get a good night's sleep and be completely healed after nearly dying" goes a bit too far for both believability as well as threat & challenge. (I have far less of a problem when magic is involved in healing someone from dead to perfectly healthy. But this is an area where game mechanics might make sense, but in-world, non-magical total healing overnight goes too far into unbelievability for me.)
Our campaigns story-wise have shifted more towards single major battle a day pattern rather than multiple little battles, so short rests are pretty nonexistent so some character abilities are not as well balanced with that style of play. But it's partially on me as DM going with a pattern of combats/day that the system wasn't primarily focused on, but it'd be nice and it's not that difficult to balance class abilities for either. Having some classes more powerful in one and other classes more powerful in the other is a design choice that isn't actually necessary.
Something that I've considered is to have enemies have reduced abilities as they lose HP. The biggest problem with this is the level of record-keeping involved.
A 5E rule i realky like is moving before and after action and between attacks as well as in tandem with object interactions. This makes 5E more fluid than ever before.
Hate with the fires of a thousand suns: Multi-classing.
But then this is not a new issue ... I have despised the mechanic since its first introduction way back in the day.
Since hit points are described as "a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck" then a good night's rest will restore all four aspects that are represented by HP.
I'd argue that it wouldn't. Physical durability being degraded implies you being physically injured, which won't be slept off, not completely. Mental durability implies your morale and determination, which won't completely be restored by sleeping. The will to live is something that really shouldn't be degraded in a day - nor restored in a day. That's a long term thing, in either direction. Luck, well, shouldn't be something that degrades really. It just is.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Any particular reason why or just the idea of it in general? Just curious.
Both the concept and the execution.
The concept: I am going to spend the majority of my life up until now learning to do ABC... now on a whim I am going to throw all that away and in the span of a few weeks to months learn to do XYZ. This is especially egregious when the path is Martial to Magical (modern iterations with expanded magical classes helps to alleviate this.)
The execution? The mechanics have never been properly balanced. The costs for the benefit are disproportionate (not steep enough) and each iteration has only lessened or pushed back the costs to the point they are never paid. (At least when the mechanics were first introduced one had to pay ALL the costs up front; not ideal but it did reign in the "I win button" mentality).
And in 5e with the judicious selection of sub-class, skills, feats, and backgrounds it's unnecessary. There is no character concept that "requires" Multi-classing.