So, an interesting thing happened with my group. I run games at a local hobby store, which i have been doing for about 6 years now. Recently, my group wanted to run a Dark Sun game, so I dusted off my old ADnD 2e books and ran the starting adventure for them. Then i decided to run the Audio adventure, Light in the Belfry for Ravenloft (they seriously need to bring back audio adventures), also using 2e rules.
So now I plan to return to some old Ravenloft modules and I asked my group if they wanted to use 5e characters and all 5 of them said, no. I believe the reason why is because they are truly invested in their 2e characters like they have never been in 5e and I feel a lot of satisfaction being there with them in their journey.
5e characters are basically Avengers. Every level comes with new super powers, no one really earns anything. Very little comes with questing. The result is that my players in 5e are constantly switching characters when they get bored. In my 2e game, they earn every power, every ability and every level. When a character dies in 1e or 2e, it usually takes few hours of counselling to get over it. I have had 5e players go out of their way to kill their character just to play something else. In 2e, when they level, they get better at what they do. Fighters are hitting more, rogues get better at thief skills, and Wizards and Priests get better at casting their spells. In 5e the skills are all shared, including thief skills, all classes have the same combat bonuses, spells are locked in at their level, unless you spend a higher spell slot, and they are limited to 3 magic items, which means getting loot is typically meaningless by level 6.
As a DM, i can't reward them with magic items, if its not better than the 3 they have. They just want to level, and only quest for the purpose of the level to get a new super power, which comes automatically. Not only that, concentration on spells prevents my casters from being creative with spells and spell combinations. Every combat, they cast fireball, and why not, its more effective than casting a buff that will be lost when they take damage.
I was wondering if any DMs have dealt with similar issues, and how they deal with it?
I am sincerely hoping with the new edition, we see some advanced rules in the DMG that brings more earned advancement, and raises the stakes, but I have a feeling the game will remain on easy mode. I like 5e a lot. Its simpler system, that is easy to follow, but I really want my players to get that feeling of ownership we had in 1e and 2e. I want to see real tears of joy when they get that magic item, or tears of sorrow when their characters die.
5E Give players everything because its "fun" rule. DM's get to make up spells, skills magic items and powers that players will never be able to get because they need something to either beat the players or fit a narrative without thinking of how to do something inside the established rules. The "because the dm said it' rule just means there are no real rules.
In my opinion the only things that should not be available to pc's are the powers of the gods. If an npc can get it the player should be able to get it. If it unbalances the game do not let the npc have it either.
Characters are just comic book anime super hero's now.
One common 5e DMing mistake is treating items like in prior editions, giving them out with some regularity. 5e isn’t really designed for that, and if you give out items too quickly, you run into the problem outlined here. That’s partly a system problem and partly a DM not using the system as designed problem.
Personally, I strike a balance by giving out additional attunement slots at level 11 and 16–this lets them keep some of their older items and gives some additional space to attune to a fun “not combat” item if they want. This can be done through homebrewing a feat fairly easily.
As for your players not feeling attached to characters… that is a player problem, not a 5e problem. And it is a player problem that persists throughout editions—some folks just don’t get attached to certain systems or characters, even if they might get attached to others.
Therein lies the problem. Should i not give magic items to players then? Should a level 5 character only have 1 magic item? That re-enforces the idea that leveling is the only progression. If progression is limited to leveling, what is left to build past level 1? Its no wonder my players don't feel attached. They have little to no magic items, and they didn't go on any epic quest to earn them, and if they have one, its likely very low effect, and pales compared to a class ability, so they really don't lose anything by dying or switching characters.
If its just the completion of the quest that motivates them, then it doesn't matter which character they use. It all comes out the same anyway. Even my game doesn't matter in that case. I just build a railroad adventure, throw in a couple of combats, talk in a funny voice, they hit the milestone and they level. Players are super happy they leveled and get a new superpower, and my adventure is forgotten because the most important part of it, is they hit the milestone and leveled.
Therein lies the problem. Should i not give magic items to players then? Should a level 5 character only have 1 magic item? That re-enforces the idea that leveling is the only progression. If progression is limited to leveling, what is left to build past level 1? Its no wonder my players don't feel attached. They have little to no magic items, and they didn't go on any epic quest to earn them, and if they have one, its likely very low effect, and pales compared to a class ability, so they really don't lose anything by dying or switching characters.
If its just the completion of the quest that motivates them, then it doesn't matter which character they use. It all comes out the same anyway. Even my game doesn't matter in that case. I just build a railroad adventure, throw in a couple of combats, talk in a funny voice, they hit the milestone and they level. Players are super happy they leveled and get a new superpower, and my adventure is forgotten because the most important part of it, is they hit the milestone and leveled.
There are plenty of items which do not require attunement. You can give them "fun" items that might be mediocre, but mesh with their playstyle, so they'll consider attuning even if they are worse. You could give them low-level items and slowly upgrade them over time. You could give them any number of the items which level up with the character, so they have to gain the item's favor to unlock greater power. You can hand them out feats or boons as rewards for milestones.
And, if you will allow me to be frank, you need to do some deep soul searching and ask yourself--"Am I the problem here?" I see two DM red flags in your posting. The first is complaining about "superpowered" PCs--more often than not, I see this as a complaint from DMs who do not know how to balance encounters against their parties. They make the challenge too low, which makes the PCs just tear through enemies. Monsters have lots of useful tools to mitigate PC power--legendary saves, legendary actions, using tactics, sending more of them at the PCs, etc. If your PCs feel overpowered... it probably is because you are underpowering your encounters.
But that is not the biggest red flag--the biggest red flag I see in your posts is your repeated comments that your players are driven by levels or items. That means one of two things--and often both. First, it could mean you as the DM put too much focus on advancement as the only metric of rewarding players, rather than non-leveling rewards (like gaining new allies or such). Second, it very likely means your story is not resonating with the players--if they care more about advancing their RPG elements than they care about advancing the story for the story's sake, that could be a sign your story just is not working.
5e is fine--it has plenty of flaws (frankly, the lack of character options, rather than too many is its biggest problem)--but a lot of the perceived flaws come from human error in utilizing the system rather than from the system itself.
We are talking about two different play styles, ultimately: one where the PCs are Avengers and don’t need magic items unless they serve a story (the current Dev approach) and another where they need magic items to be able to keep yup with the challenges before them.
THe early editions didn’t have much in the way of guidance on doling out treasure because it was assumed that most mid levels would have at least a plus 1 sword — that was what lay beneath Arnesons initial work for role playing — you have a magical sword and you are a mighty warrior and together you are grand (role playing focus derived from older tales).
Current form basically says “give the PCs the powers they would have if they had magical weapons”, essentially doing the same thing and allowing less focus on magical weapons.
It makes it easier to introduce new player because they are already primed with the existence of super hero films and some of the newer cram it out writers who use a similar system for their books.
It simplifies play as a whole, as well, reducing the number of rules you need for objects, and easing the overall approach — many of the major special abilities of classes and subclasses are a variant of some sort or another of a magical item from previous editions.
An unintended consequence that was acceptable was that it also killed some of the Monty Haul factors, and smoothed out the whole “character showing up to a game with a +5 broadsword of destruction” thing because it does play into the power fantasies of players, and lays out rules for those power fantasies that are also easily stepped around by home brewing a new subclass or new race or new Feat.
THis coincided with a strong shift away from the traditional Dungeon Crawl. So now a lot of folks who have played only since 2014 or so (who are the largest number of all players) are used to that, and yet the game hasn’t adapted the back end for DMs because why should they? The goal is ultimately to find ways to get more players to buy more stuff, instead of relying on DMs to do all of it, lol.
But also, it ain’t broke. Not from a player side. They do get what they want, and magic items now are more focused on either helping them with a special mechanic needed to defeat a BBEG or solve a mighty puzzle, or, as noted, something fun that feeds into the role play and adds a bit of levity to the game. Look at the Deck of Many things — popular in every edition, but in the past it was a terrifying thing because some of those cards were instakill.
There ain’t a whole lot of instakill stuff in the game these days. Now the deck is being used to provide that whimsy, that connection to the larger planes, to spark a sense of adventure instead of being an adventure in and of itself.
Now, to the point of “under powering encounters”, well, that’s one of those flaws — the default tools for structuring an encounter operate on a very different basis, and seriously, the Encounter Builder here is broken as hell and usually under powers the encounter.
This is why there are umpteen bazillion variants on CR out there in the wild; the tools to help DMs are lacking, and that promotes the kind of issues you describe as a function of the game, not necessarily as a reflection of the skill or talent of the DM. Furthermore, a lot of suggestions require a greater level of familiarity with the game, with things outside the game (ever talked to someone who has never wargamed or been in the military about tactics? THey don’t know diddly — and that’s the upper half of the population, because if noting is the median, there will be half who think they do and know only bad imaginings).
That’s a tall order for someone who probably has fewer than 50 sessions under their belt. Reminds me of how I can talk about D&D Physics and have people tell me that D&D doesn’t have physics and stop using the real world for it. TOtally different levels of knowledge, skill, talent, and experience.
Older modules (adventures) also contribute to the “gear hunt” factor for increasing, and in 2e you have to have magical items to do well (and note that they got that way as a result of playing 2e, not 5e, and the players liked it more.
THere is a difference between those two very different play styles — if someone were to release 2e today, folks familiar with 5e would literally say it isn’t D&D, just as folks who played 2e still say that 5e ain’t D&D. Because while both are D&D, they are very different formulations of it, and so applying a set of constructs for 5e to what the OP did with a 2 game is unfair and unkind.
I like 5e. My top three gripes about it are “subclasses are a mess”, “oversimplified”, and “poor DM support”. That last one isn’t something that has gotten better in any edition since 1e, lol, so not exactly a new thing for me.
Turns out, while my player group (which is very large and very varied in age) sorta agrees with the OP, and it doesn’t matter who the Dm among the five main and two additional Dms we have, all of whom have different worlds and house rules and the like, is in terms of their quality. They just like the sense of adventure and are completely fine with roleplay across all the editions (which we have all played, and I don’t think any of us agree on anything about any of them, lol).
our solution has long been to start bringing 2e stuff into 5e. To add more “crunch” as it were.
But magic items are still a problem, and my players want them back. THey want them to be important to their character, They want to have them be tools that are needed, and not just for that one thing that one time.
Of course, my players also want to wear nine rings, lol, so there is a limit to my indulgence, lol.
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I was wondering if any DMs have dealt with similar issues, and how they deal with it?
Just my opinion here but your whole post reads like a bunch of "back in my day" rose-colored glasses nostalgia. Doesn't matter what DnD version you're playing, it's up to the DM to balance loot distribution, game difficulty, stories that players will be invested in, etc. Nothing changed at all in this regard
For example in my experience it was the opposite, in 2e I was a fighter at like level 4 with a vorpal sword, magical plate armor, bunch of ioun stones, etc. That has nothing to do with 2e being better or worse than 5e, is just means we had an inexperienced DM giving out too many items
You can only have 3 attuned magic items at a time - which in itself is a pet peeve, however you can have any number of unattuned. That said attunement only takes a short rest so you can potentially swap and change as situations change.
Moreover you can have any number of other magical items and part of the fun is in coming up with interesting combinations; such as an Alchemy jar, Amulet of the drunkard, and Tankard of sobriety. It’s not always about ‘mwoar power’, but more interesting and fun options.
5e characters are basically Avengers. Every level comes with new super powers, no one really earns anything. Very little comes with questing. The result is that my players in 5e are constantly switching characters when they get bored. In my 2e game, they earn every power, every ability and every level. When a character dies in 1e or 2e, it usually takes few hours of counselling to get over it. I have had 5e players go out of their way to kill their character just to play something else.
Try looking at this from another perspective for a second. Maybe players get excited about playing something else because the options inspire them with so many cool concepts, as opposed to 2e where a new character means you're back at the grind for several levels before you feel like you can do anything cool - maybe that's what the need for counselling is really about? At any rate, players get attached to their characters through roleplay, and if you can roleplay in 2e you should be equally good at roleplaying in 5e. My group has created many memorable characters over the years.
I don't even know what "very little comes with questing" means. You as the DM are the sole determinant of what comes with questing. If you want quests to be more rewarding or more heavily weighted when it comes to determining loot or exp or whatever... just do that.
Ultimately, they are different games for sure. If you prefer 2e and feel that fits your style better, have at it. You are certainly not alone. But as a DM, I don't share your dislikes. To me the biggest flaw of 5e is the wonky and imprecise CR system - there is just too much variability in party makeup and player strategy to try to determine what it takes to challenge a given party with a simple chart. You have to feel it out for each group. Once you figure that out, that takes care of the "Avengers" problem
Do you use XP or do you decide the points in your campaign when your players level-up? I used XP initially but, having played some of the published adventures which advise the DM when to grant their players new levels, I now prefer level advancement at story points. I think that provides the players with more of a sense of earned growth and reward. Reaching level 6 because the party have discovered and cleansed the demonic taint corrupting the source of the local river (and returned home to the grateful populace awarding them medals, a cup of tea and a plate of chocolate digestives) feels more meaningful than reaching level 6 for slaughtering X many goblins.
I don’t see there’s much real difference between rewarding players with levels and rewarding them with magic items: essentially, you’re rewarding them with a power-up. Personally, I prefer the idea that my character is more effective because of their acquired experience and growth of their abilities than because they’ve now got a shiny new sword.
5e characters are basically Avengers. Every level comes with new super powers, no one really earns anything. Very little comes with questing.
D&D sells itself as a game of heroic fantasy. It always has. 2E and older just weren't very good at it until you got to high levels. Low-level characters were quite bad at everything. Combats were often whiff-fests. Wizards could do one or two things and then hide in the back. Thieves were awful at the skills that they specialized in. First level characters could be killed by a house cat.
5E characters start at a higher base of competence. They're still pretty fragile, and calling them superheroes is definitely hyperbolic. The biggest problem with challenging them is that they built the CR system around a 6-8 encounters a day model, and gave no guidance for adjusting it. (There are absolutely other problems with the system, but that's the elephant in the room.)
And yeah, they get powers without having to quest for them. Those powers give them more options on things to do, both in and out of combat. It gives the game more variety, and helps distinguish between characters. (And a number of the old-edition classes got new powers as they leveled up, even if you ignore spells. The monk is the most prominent one I can think of, but not an outlier. Probably everyone but fighter, magic user, cleric, and thief did.)
The primary reward of questing ought to be narrative.
Now, maybe you prefer the old-edition style of play. Nobody's stopping you. You could get a similar experience from 5E, but it'd be more work on your part. 2E delivers the experience you want.
The result is that my players in 5e are constantly switching characters when they get bored. In my 2e game, they earn every power, every ability and every level. When a character dies in 1e or 2e, it usually takes few hours of counselling to get over it. I have had 5e players go out of their way to kill their character just to play something else. In 2e, when they level, they get better at what they do. Fighters are hitting more, rogues get better at thief skills, and Wizards and Priests get better at casting their spells. In 5e the skills are all shared, including thief skills, all classes have the same combat bonuses, spells are locked in at their level, unless you spend a higher spell slot, and they are limited to 3 magic items, which means getting loot is typically meaningless by level 6.
As a DM, i can't reward them with magic items, if its not better than the 3 they have. They just want to level, and only quest for the purpose of the level to get a new super power, which comes automatically. Not only that, concentration on spells prevents my casters from being creative with spells and spell combinations. Every combat, they cast fireball, and why not, its more effective than casting a buff that will be lost when they take damage.
Most of these sound like table issues, not system issues.
In my opinion the real problem is with DM's who think they can just pick up a campaign book read it and run the adventure.
Sorry but that's just not possible. You have to study the book and mission and tailor it to your players characters and play experience. Its easier with a premade party that comes with the campaign but after the first few times role playing a player wants their own character they make up.
And this is where and when a DM must set limits. With new DM's or players its best to limit things to one source book like the players hand book. D&DB does this quite well, just toggle off all the other books. Limit things to one world also.
To keep a player interested in the character they start with tell them(and stick to it) if their character dies they are out of the game until an undetermined time. They might not be able to come back into the game for several sessions or even until the mission is over. This WILL reduce their idea of them killing off the character and just making a new one. Plus their are several ways for a character to come back from the dead.
It really is a player problem if they can not play the character they chose to start with. The DM should be able to work with them to make the character better, not the perfect thing they had in mind, but better.
One common 5e DMing mistake is treating items like in prior editions, giving them out with some regularity. 5e isn’t really designed for that, and if you give out items too quickly, you run into the problem outlined here. That’s partly a system problem and partly a DM not using the system as designed problem.
Personally, I strike a balance by giving out additional attunement slots at level 11 and 16–this lets them keep some of their older items and gives some additional space to attune to a fun “not combat” item if they want. This can be done through homebrewing a feat fairly easily.
As for your players not feeling attached to characters… that is a player problem, not a 5e problem. And it is a player problem that persists throughout editions—some folks just don’t get attached to certain systems or characters, even if they might get attached to others.
I really like this approach and might steal it for my own games. 😏
I am having fun. But then again i enjoy making maps and designing encounters. When I want to take a break my cousin or my friend Allan takes over giving me the chance to play.
Unfortunately, there will be no reigning in player abilities in 6E, if you look at the beta test they have been presenting every subclass is getting about 33% more abilities. The cross contamination of abilities continues on in the game as well. You see your fighter casting fireballs from wand of fireballs, its totes ok because he had Magic Initiate feat and can cast spells so he's a spellcaster. You see your cleric picking a lock, sure why not?
Lockpicking in 5E bothered me, that is going to go to the rogues and to a lesser extent the bards. Legend Lore is combing back in for the bards as well. Protection from Good, Protection from Evil and radiant for good and necrotic for evil aligned is coming back in. Same thing goes for evil clerics being able to control undead.
I've got one group that really fits the OP list to a tee.
I'm just going to point out that the "the encounter system is flawed and delivers underpowered encounters" bit seems to be partially missing the actual intent behind the CR system. CR is not scaled to provide a truly challenging encounter for an appropriate level party, it's scaled to provide an encounter that an appropriately leveled party can reliably overcome about 6-8 times within a typical adventuring day. Granted, the concept of the 5e adventuring day has its own flaws, but the principle is that the encounters are supposed to be heavily weighted in the party's favor. And while yes this does play into the "power fantasy" angle, that's what most players want. And it's not just about personal gratification, it's about keeping the characters people put time into creating alive long enough to have a good run. If the system created truly "challenging" or "fair" fights, then the odds of a TPK in any single fight would be 50%, with the ultimate result being that statistically speaking you could only expect one party in eight to survive three encounters.
Now, I'm not saying it's a perfect system; they went with a simple formula in an attempt to make it easy for DM's to homebrew their own monsters while using the gauge, and I'm sure the margin for error is significant. But the point is that it was a system designed to avoid making it too easy to accidentally get the party into a TPK fight. A truly "challenging" fight has pretty much always been a handcrafted experience in any case, imo; there's too many different ways for class and subclass abilities alone to tip the scales one way or the other.
The TL:DR for your question of "what's left to play for if you don't get lots of magic items?" is that you are telling a shared story between your DM and the characters. Players should be able to make decisions that affect the game world or have goals for their characters that they can accomplish over the course of the campaign.
One of my favorite characters ever was in a VERY low magic item game (homebrew/modified Dark Sun, 5e). I joined late as a Blood Hunter / Artificer at level 6, and my equipment list was the following: starting equipment, a sending stone (plot hook), cast-off studded leather, potion of healing, bead of nourishment x10, coin of delving, mystery key. He was an eccentric old man who practiced very bizarre cooking techniques. My goal for the character was "find weird ingredients and see what I can make out of them."
I'm just going to point out that the "the encounter system is flawed and delivers underpowered encounters" bit seems to be partially missing the actual intent behind the CR system. CR is not scaled to provide a truly challenging encounter for an appropriate level party, it's scaled to provide an encounter that an appropriately leveled party can reliably overcome about 6-8 times within a typical adventuring day.
Well aside from the many examples where CR doesn't accurately reflect the challenge of the monster (I'll throw out the famous polymorphing pixie as an example), I'd argue that the 6-8 encounter day is a vital part of the CR system (if a system is dependent on context, that context is not really separate from the system), and perhaps one of its biggest flaws.
What we really need is a more comprehensive system that says "this is what a level X party can handle in a day" and then have ways to break that down into anywhere from 1 to 8 or more encounters. At the very least they need to address the single encounter day which we could then extrapolate a bit for 2 or 3.
So, an interesting thing happened with my group. I run games at a local hobby store, which i have been doing for about 6 years now. Recently, my group wanted to run a Dark Sun game, so I dusted off my old ADnD 2e books and ran the starting adventure for them. Then i decided to run the Audio adventure, Light in the Belfry for Ravenloft (they seriously need to bring back audio adventures), also using 2e rules.
So now I plan to return to some old Ravenloft modules and I asked my group if they wanted to use 5e characters and all 5 of them said, no. I believe the reason why is because they are truly invested in their 2e characters like they have never been in 5e and I feel a lot of satisfaction being there with them in their journey.
5e characters are basically Avengers. Every level comes with new super powers, no one really earns anything. Very little comes with questing. The result is that my players in 5e are constantly switching characters when they get bored. In my 2e game, they earn every power, every ability and every level. When a character dies in 1e or 2e, it usually takes few hours of counselling to get over it. I have had 5e players go out of their way to kill their character just to play something else. In 2e, when they level, they get better at what they do. Fighters are hitting more, rogues get better at thief skills, and Wizards and Priests get better at casting their spells. In 5e the skills are all shared, including thief skills, all classes have the same combat bonuses, spells are locked in at their level, unless you spend a higher spell slot, and they are limited to 3 magic items, which means getting loot is typically meaningless by level 6.
As a DM, i can't reward them with magic items, if its not better than the 3 they have. They just want to level, and only quest for the purpose of the level to get a new super power, which comes automatically. Not only that, concentration on spells prevents my casters from being creative with spells and spell combinations. Every combat, they cast fireball, and why not, its more effective than casting a buff that will be lost when they take damage.
I was wondering if any DMs have dealt with similar issues, and how they deal with it?
I am sincerely hoping with the new edition, we see some advanced rules in the DMG that brings more earned advancement, and raises the stakes, but I have a feeling the game will remain on easy mode. I like 5e a lot. Its simpler system, that is easy to follow, but I really want my players to get that feeling of ownership we had in 1e and 2e. I want to see real tears of joy when they get that magic item, or tears of sorrow when their characters die.
Thoughts?
5E
Give players everything because its "fun" rule. DM's get to make up spells, skills magic items and powers that players will never be able to get because they need something to either beat the players or fit a narrative without thinking of how to do something inside the established rules.
The "because the dm said it' rule just means there are no real rules.
In my opinion the only things that should not be available to pc's are the powers of the gods. If an npc can get it the player should be able to get it. If it unbalances the game do not let the npc have it either.
Characters are just comic book anime super hero's now.
One common 5e DMing mistake is treating items like in prior editions, giving them out with some regularity. 5e isn’t really designed for that, and if you give out items too quickly, you run into the problem outlined here. That’s partly a system problem and partly a DM not using the system as designed problem.
Personally, I strike a balance by giving out additional attunement slots at level 11 and 16–this lets them keep some of their older items and gives some additional space to attune to a fun “not combat” item if they want. This can be done through homebrewing a feat fairly easily.
As for your players not feeling attached to characters… that is a player problem, not a 5e problem. And it is a player problem that persists throughout editions—some folks just don’t get attached to certain systems or characters, even if they might get attached to others.
Therein lies the problem. Should i not give magic items to players then? Should a level 5 character only have 1 magic item? That re-enforces the idea that leveling is the only progression. If progression is limited to leveling, what is left to build past level 1? Its no wonder my players don't feel attached. They have little to no magic items, and they didn't go on any epic quest to earn them, and if they have one, its likely very low effect, and pales compared to a class ability, so they really don't lose anything by dying or switching characters.
If its just the completion of the quest that motivates them, then it doesn't matter which character they use. It all comes out the same anyway. Even my game doesn't matter in that case. I just build a railroad adventure, throw in a couple of combats, talk in a funny voice, they hit the milestone and they level. Players are super happy they leveled and get a new superpower, and my adventure is forgotten because the most important part of it, is they hit the milestone and leveled.
There are plenty of items which do not require attunement. You can give them "fun" items that might be mediocre, but mesh with their playstyle, so they'll consider attuning even if they are worse. You could give them low-level items and slowly upgrade them over time. You could give them any number of the items which level up with the character, so they have to gain the item's favor to unlock greater power. You can hand them out feats or boons as rewards for milestones.
And, if you will allow me to be frank, you need to do some deep soul searching and ask yourself--"Am I the problem here?" I see two DM red flags in your posting. The first is complaining about "superpowered" PCs--more often than not, I see this as a complaint from DMs who do not know how to balance encounters against their parties. They make the challenge too low, which makes the PCs just tear through enemies. Monsters have lots of useful tools to mitigate PC power--legendary saves, legendary actions, using tactics, sending more of them at the PCs, etc. If your PCs feel overpowered... it probably is because you are underpowering your encounters.
But that is not the biggest red flag--the biggest red flag I see in your posts is your repeated comments that your players are driven by levels or items. That means one of two things--and often both. First, it could mean you as the DM put too much focus on advancement as the only metric of rewarding players, rather than non-leveling rewards (like gaining new allies or such). Second, it very likely means your story is not resonating with the players--if they care more about advancing their RPG elements than they care about advancing the story for the story's sake, that could be a sign your story just is not working.
5e is fine--it has plenty of flaws (frankly, the lack of character options, rather than too many is its biggest problem)--but a lot of the perceived flaws come from human error in utilizing the system rather than from the system itself.
So, it is much more than that.
We are talking about two different play styles, ultimately: one where the PCs are Avengers and don’t need magic items unless they serve a story (the current Dev approach) and another where they need magic items to be able to keep yup with the challenges before them.
THe early editions didn’t have much in the way of guidance on doling out treasure because it was assumed that most mid levels would have at least a plus 1 sword — that was what lay beneath Arnesons initial work for role playing — you have a magical sword and you are a mighty warrior and together you are grand (role playing focus derived from older tales).
Current form basically says “give the PCs the powers they would have if they had magical weapons”, essentially doing the same thing and allowing less focus on magical weapons.
It makes it easier to introduce new player because they are already primed with the existence of super hero films and some of the newer cram it out writers who use a similar system for their books.
It simplifies play as a whole, as well, reducing the number of rules you need for objects, and easing the overall approach — many of the major special abilities of classes and subclasses are a variant of some sort or another of a magical item from previous editions.
An unintended consequence that was acceptable was that it also killed some of the Monty Haul factors, and smoothed out the whole “character showing up to a game with a +5 broadsword of destruction” thing because it does play into the power fantasies of players, and lays out rules for those power fantasies that are also easily stepped around by home brewing a new subclass or new race or new Feat.
THis coincided with a strong shift away from the traditional Dungeon Crawl. So now a lot of folks who have played only since 2014 or so (who are the largest number of all players) are used to that, and yet the game hasn’t adapted the back end for DMs because why should they? The goal is ultimately to find ways to get more players to buy more stuff, instead of relying on DMs to do all of it, lol.
But also, it ain’t broke. Not from a player side. They do get what they want, and magic items now are more focused on either helping them with a special mechanic needed to defeat a BBEG or solve a mighty puzzle, or, as noted, something fun that feeds into the role play and adds a bit of levity to the game. Look at the Deck of Many things — popular in every edition, but in the past it was a terrifying thing because some of those cards were instakill.
There ain’t a whole lot of instakill stuff in the game these days. Now the deck is being used to provide that whimsy, that connection to the larger planes, to spark a sense of adventure instead of being an adventure in and of itself.
Now, to the point of “under powering encounters”, well, that’s one of those flaws — the default tools for structuring an encounter operate on a very different basis, and seriously, the Encounter Builder here is broken as hell and usually under powers the encounter.
This is why there are umpteen bazillion variants on CR out there in the wild; the tools to help DMs are lacking, and that promotes the kind of issues you describe as a function of the game, not necessarily as a reflection of the skill or talent of the DM. Furthermore, a lot of suggestions require a greater level of familiarity with the game, with things outside the game (ever talked to someone who has never wargamed or been in the military about tactics? THey don’t know diddly — and that’s the upper half of the population, because if noting is the median, there will be half who think they do and know only bad imaginings).
That’s a tall order for someone who probably has fewer than 50 sessions under their belt. Reminds me of how I can talk about D&D Physics and have people tell me that D&D doesn’t have physics and stop using the real world for it. TOtally different levels of knowledge, skill, talent, and experience.
Older modules (adventures) also contribute to the “gear hunt” factor for increasing, and in 2e you have to have magical items to do well (and note that they got that way as a result of playing 2e, not 5e, and the players liked it more.
THere is a difference between those two very different play styles — if someone were to release 2e today, folks familiar with 5e would literally say it isn’t D&D, just as folks who played 2e still say that 5e ain’t D&D. Because while both are D&D, they are very different formulations of it, and so applying a set of constructs for 5e to what the OP did with a 2 game is unfair and unkind.
I like 5e. My top three gripes about it are “subclasses are a mess”, “oversimplified”, and “poor DM support”. That last one isn’t something that has gotten better in any edition since 1e, lol, so not exactly a new thing for me.
Turns out, while my player group (which is very large and very varied in age) sorta agrees with the OP, and it doesn’t matter who the Dm among the five main and two additional Dms we have, all of whom have different worlds and house rules and the like, is in terms of their quality. They just like the sense of adventure and are completely fine with roleplay across all the editions (which we have all played, and I don’t think any of us agree on anything about any of them, lol).
our solution has long been to start bringing 2e stuff into 5e. To add more “crunch” as it were.
But magic items are still a problem, and my players want them back. THey want them to be important to their character, They want to have them be tools that are needed, and not just for that one thing that one time.
Of course, my players also want to wear nine rings, lol, so there is a limit to my indulgence, lol.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
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Just my opinion here but your whole post reads like a bunch of "back in my day" rose-colored glasses nostalgia. Doesn't matter what DnD version you're playing, it's up to the DM to balance loot distribution, game difficulty, stories that players will be invested in, etc. Nothing changed at all in this regard
For example in my experience it was the opposite, in 2e I was a fighter at like level 4 with a vorpal sword, magical plate armor, bunch of ioun stones, etc. That has nothing to do with 2e being better or worse than 5e, is just means we had an inexperienced DM giving out too many items
You can only have 3 attuned magic items at a time - which in itself is a pet peeve, however you can have any number of unattuned. That said attunement only takes a short rest so you can potentially swap and change as situations change.
Moreover you can have any number of other magical items and part of the fun is in coming up with interesting combinations; such as an Alchemy jar, Amulet of the drunkard, and Tankard of sobriety. It’s not always about ‘mwoar power’, but more interesting and fun options.
Try looking at this from another perspective for a second. Maybe players get excited about playing something else because the options inspire them with so many cool concepts, as opposed to 2e where a new character means you're back at the grind for several levels before you feel like you can do anything cool - maybe that's what the need for counselling is really about? At any rate, players get attached to their characters through roleplay, and if you can roleplay in 2e you should be equally good at roleplaying in 5e. My group has created many memorable characters over the years.
I don't even know what "very little comes with questing" means. You as the DM are the sole determinant of what comes with questing. If you want quests to be more rewarding or more heavily weighted when it comes to determining loot or exp or whatever... just do that.
Ultimately, they are different games for sure. If you prefer 2e and feel that fits your style better, have at it. You are certainly not alone. But as a DM, I don't share your dislikes. To me the biggest flaw of 5e is the wonky and imprecise CR system - there is just too much variability in party makeup and player strategy to try to determine what it takes to challenge a given party with a simple chart. You have to feel it out for each group. Once you figure that out, that takes care of the "Avengers" problem
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Do you use XP or do you decide the points in your campaign when your players level-up? I used XP initially but, having played some of the published adventures which advise the DM when to grant their players new levels, I now prefer level advancement at story points. I think that provides the players with more of a sense of earned growth and reward. Reaching level 6 because the party have discovered and cleansed the demonic taint corrupting the source of the local river (and returned home to the grateful populace awarding them medals, a cup of tea and a plate of chocolate digestives) feels more meaningful than reaching level 6 for slaughtering X many goblins.
I don’t see there’s much real difference between rewarding players with levels and rewarding them with magic items: essentially, you’re rewarding them with a power-up. Personally, I prefer the idea that my character is more effective because of their acquired experience and growth of their abilities than because they’ve now got a shiny new sword.
To answer the question in the post title, yes, many, likely most, DMs are having fun with 5e. We can tell this because they keep playing and DMing.
Of course, for a good many DMs, almost any system will allow them to have fun, because the primary rewards are mostly unrelated to system.
As for the players, there are very few wrong ways to have fun.
D&D sells itself as a game of heroic fantasy. It always has. 2E and older just weren't very good at it until you got to high levels. Low-level characters were quite bad at everything. Combats were often whiff-fests. Wizards could do one or two things and then hide in the back. Thieves were awful at the skills that they specialized in. First level characters could be killed by a house cat.
5E characters start at a higher base of competence. They're still pretty fragile, and calling them superheroes is definitely hyperbolic. The biggest problem with challenging them is that they built the CR system around a 6-8 encounters a day model, and gave no guidance for adjusting it. (There are absolutely other problems with the system, but that's the elephant in the room.)
And yeah, they get powers without having to quest for them. Those powers give them more options on things to do, both in and out of combat. It gives the game more variety, and helps distinguish between characters. (And a number of the old-edition classes got new powers as they leveled up, even if you ignore spells. The monk is the most prominent one I can think of, but not an outlier. Probably everyone but fighter, magic user, cleric, and thief did.)
The primary reward of questing ought to be narrative.
Now, maybe you prefer the old-edition style of play. Nobody's stopping you. You could get a similar experience from 5E, but it'd be more work on your part. 2E delivers the experience you want.
Most of these sound like table issues, not system issues.
Unless you are a control freak, a highly immersive story fanatic.. Being a DM sucks in comparison to being a player.
[Redacted]
In my opinion the real problem is with DM's who think they can just pick up a campaign book read it and run the adventure.
Sorry but that's just not possible. You have to study the book and mission and tailor it to your players characters and play experience.
Its easier with a premade party that comes with the campaign but after the first few times role playing a player wants their own character they make up.
And this is where and when a DM must set limits. With new DM's or players its best to limit things to one source book like the players hand book. D&DB does this quite well, just toggle off all the other books. Limit things to one world also.
To keep a player interested in the character they start with tell them(and stick to it) if their character dies they are out of the game until an undetermined time. They might not be able to come back into the game for several sessions or even until the mission is over. This WILL reduce their idea of them killing off the character and just making a new one. Plus their are several ways for a character to come back from the dead.
It really is a player problem if they can not play the character they chose to start with. The DM should be able to work with them to make the character better, not the perfect thing they had in mind, but better.
I really like this approach and might steal it for my own games. 😏
I am having fun. But then again i enjoy making maps and designing encounters. When I want to take a break my cousin or my friend Allan takes over giving me the chance to play.
The game is only as good as we make it
Unfortunately, there will be no reigning in player abilities in 6E, if you look at the beta test they have been presenting every subclass is getting about 33% more abilities. The cross contamination of abilities continues on in the game as well. You see your fighter casting fireballs from wand of fireballs, its totes ok because he had Magic Initiate feat and can cast spells so he's a spellcaster. You see your cleric picking a lock, sure why not?
Lockpicking in 5E bothered me, that is going to go to the rogues and to a lesser extent the bards. Legend Lore is combing back in for the bards as well. Protection from Good, Protection from Evil and radiant for good and necrotic for evil aligned is coming back in. Same thing goes for evil clerics being able to control undead.
I've got one group that really fits the OP list to a tee.
I'm just going to point out that the "the encounter system is flawed and delivers underpowered encounters" bit seems to be partially missing the actual intent behind the CR system. CR is not scaled to provide a truly challenging encounter for an appropriate level party, it's scaled to provide an encounter that an appropriately leveled party can reliably overcome about 6-8 times within a typical adventuring day. Granted, the concept of the 5e adventuring day has its own flaws, but the principle is that the encounters are supposed to be heavily weighted in the party's favor. And while yes this does play into the "power fantasy" angle, that's what most players want. And it's not just about personal gratification, it's about keeping the characters people put time into creating alive long enough to have a good run. If the system created truly "challenging" or "fair" fights, then the odds of a TPK in any single fight would be 50%, with the ultimate result being that statistically speaking you could only expect one party in eight to survive three encounters.
Now, I'm not saying it's a perfect system; they went with a simple formula in an attempt to make it easy for DM's to homebrew their own monsters while using the gauge, and I'm sure the margin for error is significant. But the point is that it was a system designed to avoid making it too easy to accidentally get the party into a TPK fight. A truly "challenging" fight has pretty much always been a handcrafted experience in any case, imo; there's too many different ways for class and subclass abilities alone to tip the scales one way or the other.
The TL:DR for your question of "what's left to play for if you don't get lots of magic items?" is that you are telling a shared story between your DM and the characters. Players should be able to make decisions that affect the game world or have goals for their characters that they can accomplish over the course of the campaign.
One of my favorite characters ever was in a VERY low magic item game (homebrew/modified Dark Sun, 5e). I joined late as a Blood Hunter / Artificer at level 6, and my equipment list was the following: starting equipment, a sending stone (plot hook), cast-off studded leather, potion of healing, bead of nourishment x10, coin of delving, mystery key. He was an eccentric old man who practiced very bizarre cooking techniques. My goal for the character was "find weird ingredients and see what I can make out of them."
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Well aside from the many examples where CR doesn't accurately reflect the challenge of the monster (I'll throw out the famous polymorphing pixie as an example), I'd argue that the 6-8 encounter day is a vital part of the CR system (if a system is dependent on context, that context is not really separate from the system), and perhaps one of its biggest flaws.
What we really need is a more comprehensive system that says "this is what a level X party can handle in a day" and then have ways to break that down into anywhere from 1 to 8 or more encounters. At the very least they need to address the single encounter day which we could then extrapolate a bit for 2 or 3.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm