Wizards mandates that Adventurer's League play is the highest, best, and most perfect form of D&D 5e play. That a game can conform to the rules and expectations of Adventurer's League, or it can be wrong.
Adventurer's League does not allow a DM to do any DMing - the position of 'Dungeon Master' is supposed to be filled by someone as close to a computer operating system as possible. Any deviation from the rules, for any reason, is not allowed. Not just on the part of the DM, but on the part of the players, as well. There's a list of "Actions in Combat' in the PHB - those are the sum totality of the actions your character can take, both on and off the battlefield. If an action, option, or possibility is not ennumerated in the PHB or the DMG, a player is not permitted to make that action regardless of what the scene/story/fluff say.
Furthermore, homebrew creation of rules, items, critters, or whatever else is held up as an absolute last resort in all three core books. Every one goes out of its way to stress multiple times that the preferred method is to stay within the rules, pushing many methods onto both players and DMs of reflavoring something to better fit a desired aesthetic whilst remaining in strict compliance with The Rules. All the while disregarding that sometimes, what a given game wants to homebrew is new rules, either because existing rules are bad and should feel bad (see notes on grappling above) or because there are no existing rules and a table wants to work up a system to use as a baseline reference rather than having the DM wing it whenever that situation arises. 5e despises that sort of rules patching, despite ostensibly being designed with exactly that flexibility in mind.
It's infuriating. And no, DDB doesn't particularly help with issues of fixing the game, which is just another indication of how much 5e's assumption of the complete and utter stupidity of all its players pervades the entire hobby.
I have never ever seen, heard or read AL being put on a pedestal by WoTC. Only thing I've come across is that they finally support AL properly since they never gave it much thought in the past. Only some AL players at the store have the tendency too talk out of their asses as if they're better and play the "real" D&D. So the reactions are over the top towards AL dictating anything. Unless you DM specifically at AL games. Then you knew what you signed up for and have no right of complaining to begin with. For every DM outside of AL... AL means nothing. So all these problems sound like "you" problems instead of anything else. Why worry about stuff that has no bearing at all on anything. You're just putting limitations on yourself. The core books aren't doing that. The WOTC staff isn't doing that. I see Jeremy Crawford, Perkins and others on Twitter and Twitch say to make adjustments etc if it makes your game better.
Wizards mandates that Adventurer's League play is the highest, best, and most perfect form of D&D 5e play. That a game can conform to the rules and expectations of Adventurer's League, or it can be wrong.
umm just no no no lol when have they ever said that? its their misbegotten attempt to bring FNM to dnd. In fact all WPN events are canceled which completely disproves your statement. Unless you contend that WOTC thinks that anyone playing dnd during the pandemic is playing wrong lol
Third Edition and Pathfinder had a lot more rules and a lot more character design options than 5E, that's true.
And most of it was really a straitjacket that punished you for not taking one of a few optimal character designs. Sure, there were enough weapon options for an entire splatbook, but most of them were sub-optimal in stats and also rare enough that specializing in one just meant that you were insuring that you'd never find one as treasure unless the GM felt sorry for you ad inexplicably tossed a +1 Gnome Hook-Hammer into a chest in a dungeon.
The same went for your character build- unbound stats meant that you basically had to run perfect optimization in building up everything or you'd wind up being too weak to be effective at higher levels.
And that's the issue with adding complexity- too much of the extra stuff that was in those games was there just to pad page count without adding anything meaningful.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
My own concern is that eventually, Wizards is going to find out that 5e cannot retain players. The game needs - and I heavily emphasize that word. Here, let me emphasize it more: needs needs needs needs needs needs NEEDS - a greater degree of depth for those players who're slowly starving to death on the core 5e rules.
I can say that the only reason I'm still running 5e instead of switching to a system that does not assume everyone using it is as dumb as a sack of sand and cannot handle ANY cognitive load whatsoever is because of the DDB tool. I would've jumped ship and taken my money with me long since if not for what the DDB team built here. Even then, my playgroup is constantly looking for ways to introduce choice, depth, and diversity back into the 5e ruleset somehow, and unfortunately we're butting up against the strict limitations of the DDB tool doing it.
The rest of the 5e fanbase (or at least the DDB forum userbase here) would have me believe that me and mine are the only people in existence who're starving to death on this system's lack of depth. I'm mostly pointing to this ENWorld initiative as an argument against that mindset, and a sign that maybe - just MAYBE - Wizards should get off its f#$%ing space ass and GIVE US AN OFFICIAL 5.5E SUPPLEMENT ALREADY!!!!!! They don't need to replace the core rulebooks, which everybody knows they'll never do because it'll upset their precious money cart and piss off the newbies who only just barely got conned into spending a hundred and fifty dollars on the three big books in the first place. Nobody's asking them to do that. We know better. But they do need to give the more experienced gamers, the people absolutely desperate for something to bite into when they play the game and design characters for it, a freaking bone.
Or we. Will. Leave.
I detest Pathfinder's approach to actually running games. Numbers so high you need a telescope to see them, an extremely narrow band of content the players can do effectively due to absurd scaling of the numbers, and a set of floating static modifiers long enough to make every fight a nightmare. Not required. But man - the new PF2e character creation system has been universally and effusively lauded, from what I've seen. The three-action system is ever so much cleaner and better than 5e's kludgy mess. I could see where people might want to apply some of that to 5e's leaner battle engine and the idea of bounded accuracy. If that's what ENWorld does? Maybe there'll be something to it, if they do it well.
And yeah. Additional character creation options would be excellent. Virtually all of my table's rules homebrew is groping for ways to make character creation more fun and meaningful at all levels of play. The whole "pick your species, pick your class, pick your background, wait until level 3 and pick your subclass, and now voila - you're done making significant decisions for your character for the rest of that character's life" thing can suck every last duck in existence. Including Quackthulhu.
I don't really think that people are starving to death for new rules as you think.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Wizards mandates that Adventurer's League play is the highest, best, and most perfect form of D&D 5e play. That a game can conform to the rules and expectations of Adventurer's League, or it can be wrong.
Adventurer's League does not allow a DM to do any DMing - the position of 'Dungeon Master' is supposed to be filled by someone as close to a computer operating system as possible. Any deviation from the rules, for any reason, is not allowed. Not just on the part of the DM, but on the part of the players, as well. There's a list of "Actions in Combat' in the PHB - those are the sum totality of the actions your character can take, both on and off the battlefield. If an action, option, or possibility is not ennumerated in the PHB or the DMG, a player is not permitted to make that action regardless of what the scene/story/fluff say.
Furthermore, homebrew creation of rules, items, critters, or whatever else is held up as an absolute last resort in all three core books. Every one goes out of its way to stress multiple times that the preferred method is to stay within the rules, pushing many methods onto both players and DMs of reflavoring something to better fit a desired aesthetic whilst remaining in strict compliance with The Rules. All the while disregarding that sometimes, what a given game wants to homebrew is new rules, either because existing rules are bad and should feel bad (see notes on grappling above) or because there are no existing rules and a table wants to work up a system to use as a baseline reference rather than having the DM wing it whenever that situation arises. 5e despises that sort of rules patching, despite ostensibly being designed with exactly that flexibility in mind.
It's infuriating. And no, DDB doesn't particularly help with issues of fixing the game, which is just another indication of how much 5e's assumption of the complete and utter stupidity of all its players pervades the entire hobby.
Actually Wizards don’t think or push AL to be the best or greatest. Again I don’t know where you are seeing this but it isn’t on social media or threads here.
Also, I hope that you actually look at content for DnD. Look at the campaigns that Wizards are showing on their twitch channel. Most of them run counter of that philosophy(their new one Nights of Evenstar has a player playing as UA class which wouldn’t be permitted in AL). High Rollers home brew a ton of stuff. Acquisitions Inc, Critical Role, Nerdarchy, XP3 to level, and other content creators for the game constantly are talking about home brew stuff or doing it. Hell Critical Role is one of the biggest and the whole thing is a home brew campaign and was rewarded with a book as was another home brew adventure Acquisitions Inc.
Also if AL was the perfect thing I wouldn’t have been allowed to play a Blood Hunter in AL at all.
What is sounds like to me is that you just want to be a munchkin and only play one or two builds. At least that is how I keep reading your posts. There are other systems that allow Munchinkinism and you are allowed to play them. Heck I run a Big Eye Small Mouth campaign and you want to talk about a simple system that has complexity than that is the game. I love that system but I also find 5e to be just the same, simple yet complex.
Also you seem to be confused about what GM allow or not. This is up to the GM. A lot of GM’s will change rules if the rules get in the way of the fun and 5e.
Heh. This is kinda what I was talking about when I said in my first post in this thread that people constantly poo-poo the idea of a more intricate optional ruleset. "Nyet, rulebooks are fine. Failing is with player being too stupid to know how to make good game."
If this was truly the case, then why is EN World making a push for this 5e Advanced package? Who do they intend to sell it to, if absolutely nobody save myself is fed up with 5e's over-simplistic design? Why spend all the money to develop and market that content if the 5e playerbase is blissfully happy to never see another crunch book again and just keep swallowing Wizards' infinite stream of junky Faerun adventure books?
I find myself mighty curious, really. Which was the original reason I started the thread.
Heh. This is kinda what I was talking about when I said in my first post in this thread that people constantly poo-poo the idea of a more intricate optional ruleset. "Nyet, rulebooks are fine. Failing is with player being too stupid to know how to make good game."
If this was truly the case, then why is EN World making a push for this 5e Advanced package? Who do they intend to sell it to, if absolutely nobody save myself is fed up with 5e's over-simplistic design? Why spend all the money to develop and market that content if the 5e playerbase is blissfully happy to never see another crunch book again and just keep swallowing Wizards' infinite stream of junky Faerun adventure books?
I find myself mighty curious, really. Which was the original reason I started the thread.
I wasn’t saying that there aren’t people out there who want this. There are more who still play 3.5 and pathfinder out there(myself included). I am just saying that most of the arguments that you have put forth in favor of it are baseless.
You keep saying that the rule set is over-simplistic without offering any proof of this. I seen this plenty of this with people who are starch defenders of 3.5. Here is the thing though. There are many games that seem over-simplistic but in actually aren’t(Big Eyes Small Mouth, Chess, Checkers, Magic:The Gathering). The same goes with 5e. There is a lot complex things that can be done in the game if you leave the “I attack” philosophy behind. I would say that 5E was more Role-play friendly than 3.5 because of some of the deep cuts.
As for the infinite stream of adventure books, 3.5 has endless arrays of adventure books from Faerûn. Also, I am betting that the company that is making that most likely won’t be calling it 5.5 and it will be in with other Gmguild stuff as well(or sold as a supplement in book). And while there are people that will play it most won’t.
If you want to play it that is allowed as it is just doing what other DMs have already been doing in home brew campaigns. And like I have said multiple times, DMs are allowed to change how they are running games and what is allowed/not allowed in their setting. In fact, majority of DMs are already do that now.
Heh. This is kinda what I was talking about when I said in my first post in this thread that people constantly poo-poo the idea of a more intricate optional ruleset. "Nyet, rulebooks are fine. Failing is with player being too stupid to know how to make good game."
If this was truly the case, then why is EN World making a push for this 5e Advanced package? Who do they intend to sell it to, if absolutely nobody save myself is fed up with 5e's over-simplistic design? Why spend all the money to develop and market that content if the 5e playerbase is blissfully happy to never see another crunch book again and just keep swallowing Wizards' infinite stream of junky Faerun adventure books?
I find myself mighty curious, really. Which was the original reason I started the thread.
I wasn’t saying that there aren’t people out there who want this. There are more who still play 3.5 and pathfinder out there(myself included). I am just saying that most of the arguments that you have put forth in favor of it are baseless.
You keep saying that the rule set is over-simplistic without offering any proof of this. I seen this plenty of this with people who are starch defenders of 3.5. Here is the thing though. There are many games that seem over-simplistic but in actually aren’t(Big Eyes Small Mouth, Chess, Checkers, Magic:The Gathering). The same goes with 5e. There is a lot complex things that can be done in the game if you leave the “I attack” philosophy behind. I would say that 5E was more Role-play friendly than 3.5 because of some of the deep cuts.
As for the infinite stream of adventure books, 3.5 has endless arrays of adventure books from Faerûn. Also, I am betting that the company that is making that most likely won’t be calling it 5.5 and it will be in with other Gmguild stuff as well(or sold as a supplement in book). And while there are people that will play it most won’t.
If you want to play it that is allowed as it is just doing what other DMs have already been doing in home brew campaigns. And like I have said multiple times, DMs are allowed to change how they are running games and what is allowed/not allowed in their setting. In fact, majority of DMs are already do that now.
anyone who says MTG is a simple game needs to try taking a judge exam lol
"Heh. This is kinda what I was talking about when I said in my first post in this thread that people constantly poo-poo the idea of a more intricate optional ruleset. "Nyet, rulebooks are fine. Failing is with player being too stupid to know how to make good game." "
That is exactly what one might expect to find on forums primarily used by fans of the game. Maybe you are looking for support in the wrong place?
Heh. This is kinda what I was talking about when I said in my first post in this thread that people constantly poo-poo the idea of a more intricate optional ruleset. "Nyet, rulebooks are fine. Failing is with player being too stupid to know how to make good game."
If this was truly the case, then why is EN World making a push for this 5e Advanced package? Who do they intend to sell it to, if absolutely nobody save myself is fed up with 5e's over-simplistic design? Why spend all the money to develop and market that content if the 5e playerbase is blissfully happy to never see another crunch book again and just keep swallowing Wizards' infinite stream of junky Faerun adventure books?
I find myself mighty curious, really. Which was the original reason I started the thread.
no matter how niche. there is always an audience to be found. especially now with the internet where the niche crowd are hiding in every nook and cranny around the world. That is why a lot of kickstarter, patreon, fig projects can even get started. Or how there are more and more small independent publishers creating (comic)books and other products that would've never seen the light of day in the past. With ENWorld's product...they're just like everyone else. Creating something that they want and most likely finding a small group of people that will buy it. By no means they're making it for a massive group of people. It is absolutely no different from the people creating all that content and sell it on DMguild. People make the content they like. And there will be people who buy it due to global reach.
I agree that 5e could do with some more expanded rules here and there. Also WoTC has been, on record, talking plenty of times they're considering going the AD&D route when releasing rule sets. One basic set and one advanced set instead of doing a x.5 release ever again in the future. With each new book we're getting new rules here and there. Avernus and Ghostmarsh for once presented vehicle and base nautical rules. for one. So it isn't like we're not getting anything at all. It is just too slow of a drizzle to notice unfortunately. And once again. DMguild and Patreon projects come to the rescue to create entire nautical rule books and such. And no.... WOTC in no way is against homebrew or works against it unlike wrongly claimed. I for one miss various monsters being able too drain levels. However homebrewing those monsters and instead drain Exhaustion Points has proven to be a lot more fun and scarier. Once again proving that 5e's simplicity also opens up for its greatest strength of being modular into whatever the **** you want it to be. I just love that since it doesn't make 3.x modules obsolete. You can still use those to make your game awesome in every way. While most new rule sets pretty much make you throw all that expensive stuff out of the door as if they're meaningless. People calling 5e simple just don't put in their own effort to make it as interesting as it can be. Same with people calling stuff boring all the time, because they themselves are just obnoxiously boring. Making it impossible to see things as anything else.
however your posts so far has been full with incorrect information and some really weird assumptions drenched in arrogance. similar behavior i exhibited when being in my teens which made it difficult to see things for what they really are. Your very first sentence is a clear example. The very first page. Almost everyone agreed that 5e could do with something more. The discussion was more about what it needed more off. Since not all depth is the good kind of depth because it often leads to unnecessary convoluted bullshit. Instead your first sentence quoted totally ignores that as if everyone in this thread is against "advanced rules". You're living in a fantasy world if that's how you think. Ignoring things that are actually happening. Same with saying 99 out of a 100 blablabla. Everyone on the internet makes up numbers thinking their point is the correct one. I also notice more and more idiotic statements in general on the internet that go with the extremities where something is either X or Y totally ignoring everything in between. Guess what. The world is everything in between and rarely the extreme outliers. What people say and do on the internet is rarely a good impression of what is actually happening in the world. The internet mostly shows the outlying extremities that don't matter. Just because one person says that the AL is put on a pedestal somewhere. Doesn't it mean that is what is actually happening and in no way you should take it as a fact. When the devs have clearly stated and shown otherwise.
My own concern is that eventually, Wizards is going to find out that 5e cannot retain players. The game needs - and I heavily emphasize that word. Here, let me emphasize it more: needs needs needs needs needs needs NEEDS - a greater degree of depth for those players who're slowly starving to death on the core 5e rules.
Maybe for a crowd of people who are more into rules and game design than the game? I ran our campaign from 1st level to 30th level on 2nd edition AD&D and while we picked up all extras along the way e.g. every monster manual binder, Psionics handbook etc, it never occurred to me that I was "missing" something and that we needed lots and lots of more rules.
D&D is about the player and DM interacting, weaving an amazing story, fighting evil villains, saving worlds.
Not about extended grappling rules so you can "flavor" D&D into a UFC fight.
5th edition is the most popular edition on the planet. PHB is still after all these years in the top 100 books on Amazon.
If this was truly the case, then why is EN World making a push for this 5e Advanced package?
If it's truly the case, why aren't Wizards rushing to cash in on it? Considering that the general opinion is "yay capitalism".
Personally, while I see individual rules I like from Pathfinder2e and other systems I appreciate what 5e offers me. Ultimately its so much easier to customise, because for any system I want to change I pretty much just add to the core rules. If it already had stacked rules on areas I wanted to homebrew I would have to do a lot of rewriting, which I think would be more confusing to players walking into my game.
It's all about personal preference, hell that's how there are so many different rpg/tabletop systems around, right? :)
So far, what we're seeing with D&D over the last year, is introducing flexibility and options, rather than complexity.
I think that people often conflate the two.
A more flexible system doesn't need to be more complex, but that takes some good game design skills and personally I believe the game is much better for it.
With regards complexity, I still see people saying, every week, that D&D is complicated and can be hard to get into. If the game is made more complex, that's reducing the number of people who are likely to play.
I'm not saying that there's no place for detailed, complex rules, but that anything along those lines needs to be optional and carefully added.
At D&D Beyond we support constructive debate and conversation, these topics must stay on topic and within the rules lain out on the forum. Please refrain from attacking other users, posting political views, or using topics which would be deemed unsuitable for the environment.
I disagree that most of us will leave unless things get more crunchy, I hate the crunch. Let's not kid ourselves, 5e is very complex albeit less complex than other RPG systems. Checkers is simple, chutes and ladders is simple, connect 4 is simple. What I would like to see is more content and maybe a bit more flexibility with what we have which seems to be coming in December. I think a lot of people who play don't give the system its full due before criticizing and changing things. I for one hate homebrew rules, despise them. I have played multiple characters through multiple tiers as well as one all the way to level 20. Sure there are peaks and valleys but there should be. How can you change a set of rules or homebrew rules if you haven't even played throughout the scope of an entire 1-20 campaign? It's like only reading 6 chapters of a book and then complaining about chapter 20 ending when you haven't even read it.
If you want a more complex system then play a more complex system. 5e is great the way it is, just needs more content which we keep getting so its all good!
So far, what we're seeing with D&D over the last year, is introducing flexibility and options, rather than complexity.
I think that people often conflate the two.
A more flexible system doesn't need to be more complex, but that takes some good game design skills and personally I believe the game is much better for it.
With regards complexity, I still see people saying, every week, that D&D is complicated and can be hard to get into. If the game is made more complex, that's reducing the number of people who are likely to play.
I'm not saying that there's no place for detailed, complex rules, but that anything along those lines needs to be optional and carefully added.
All of which is true.
It's extremely frustrating for me, since I can never seem to express what it is that bugs me so much about this edition without people either telling me to go sod off and play a different system or "just homebrew it, girl! 5e is modular, it's the perfect game for anyone who wants to do AAAANYTHING!"
Well, lemme say this: you cannot make a 'Master of the Blade' in D&D 5e. One of the most common, popular, and enduring fantasy archetropes out there, and it is mechanically impossible in base Fifth Edition.
I can already hear all the complaints. "But Yurei, just play a Samurai fighter!" "But Yurei, just do a Pact of the Blade warlock!" "But Yurei, ...!"
Thing is? None of those are 'masters of the blade'. Nothing in their rules says they're swordsmen. They can pick up a maul and be exactly as effective with a maul as they can with their treasured ancestral blade, handed down through a hundred generations of their family and which they've spent their entire life learning to master. Now I get it, I get it, I get it. "Why would they do that tho? They can just refuse to use any weapon except their sword, and thus be a MASTER OF THE SWORD!"
No, they cannot. Because the regular-ass Soldier background generic fighter in the party who prides himself on his jack-of-all-trades training is every bit as expert with 'The Sword' as the swordmaster. There is absolutely no method, short of extensive homebrew rewrite, for the Sword Master character to get his crunch to line up with his fluff. There are no sword feats. There is no sword class. There is nothing that player can use, without me having to do it myself, to reinforce or demonstrate the idea that their character is a master of the blade. It's all just talk, and as much as people like to say that the fluff is all-important and the only thing that matters?
I guarantee you: when your character's actual abilities, the mechanical systems that drive your story, don't match that story, it doesn't work nearly as well.
I don't want a return to the days of 3.x, where there was a specific little rule for everything and none of them really worked together. I would like for Wizards to get off its keister, stop writing seventeen adventure books a year nobody has time to play, and offer some rules supplements that fix obvious problems in 5e. Everybody complains about the oversimplification of the weapons/armor system in D&D. Everybody complains about the Sorcerer and the Ranger lagging behind other classes. There's so heckin' many places where, just as Stormknight said, some proper game design in an optional overlay ruleset - and I don't think anybody wants this to be forced, everybody I know just wants an advanced layer above the regular rules - would plug some of the egregious holes in 5e.
Which holes? >Godawful terrible putrid bad-and-should-feel-bad grappling rules. >Two different, contradictory sets of crafting rules, both of which are vague and terrible. >'Exploration' rules effectively nonexistent, DM expected to just make wilderness traversal and 'the journey' up as she goes along. >Martial combat consists of nothing but "I hit it with my weapon-like object" ad infinitum. >Ranged martial combat is even worse. >Vast majority of feats are traps; feat system requires a character to sacrifice advancement to gain the ability to actually make decisions about their character's growth. >ALL character classes are done making any significant decision for their progression by level 3, save for warlocks. Character progression is on strict, unflinching rails after 3rd - or even 2nd or 1st, in some cases. No, spell selection for spellcasters does not count.
And those are just what I can come up with off the top of my head. Now yeah, I could patch most of those with homebrew rules. DDB wouldn't allow me to do so in character-centric cases, but system-centric cases I could just write my own rulebook and hand it to players. But if I'm expected to design eighty percent of the system I'm playing/running myself...why am I paying another company hundreds of dollars for books, again? I could just write the other twenty percent myself as well and move on with my day, with a bunch of extra money besides, hm?
I think the difference between views is you want everything written down on paper, others are happy for their roleplay elements not to be prescribed by mechanics.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Wizards mandates that Adventurer's League play is the highest, best, and most perfect form of D&D 5e play. That a game can conform to the rules and expectations of Adventurer's League, or it can be wrong.
Adventurer's League does not allow a DM to do any DMing - the position of 'Dungeon Master' is supposed to be filled by someone as close to a computer operating system as possible. Any deviation from the rules, for any reason, is not allowed. Not just on the part of the DM, but on the part of the players, as well. There's a list of "Actions in Combat' in the PHB - those are the sum totality of the actions your character can take, both on and off the battlefield. If an action, option, or possibility is not ennumerated in the PHB or the DMG, a player is not permitted to make that action regardless of what the scene/story/fluff say.
Furthermore, homebrew creation of rules, items, critters, or whatever else is held up as an absolute last resort in all three core books. Every one goes out of its way to stress multiple times that the preferred method is to stay within the rules, pushing many methods onto both players and DMs of reflavoring something to better fit a desired aesthetic whilst remaining in strict compliance with The Rules. All the while disregarding that sometimes, what a given game wants to homebrew is new rules, either because existing rules are bad and should feel bad (see notes on grappling above) or because there are no existing rules and a table wants to work up a system to use as a baseline reference rather than having the DM wing it whenever that situation arises. 5e despises that sort of rules patching, despite ostensibly being designed with exactly that flexibility in mind.
It's infuriating. And no, DDB doesn't particularly help with issues of fixing the game, which is just another indication of how much 5e's assumption of the complete and utter stupidity of all its players pervades the entire hobby.
Please do not contact or message me.
I have never ever seen, heard or read AL being put on a pedestal by WoTC. Only thing I've come across is that they finally support AL properly since they never gave it much thought in the past. Only some AL players at the store have the tendency too talk out of their asses as if they're better and play the "real" D&D. So the reactions are over the top towards AL dictating anything. Unless you DM specifically at AL games. Then you knew what you signed up for and have no right of complaining to begin with. For every DM outside of AL... AL means nothing. So all these problems sound like "you" problems instead of anything else. Why worry about stuff that has no bearing at all on anything. You're just putting limitations on yourself. The core books aren't doing that. The WOTC staff isn't doing that. I see Jeremy Crawford, Perkins and others on Twitter and Twitch say to make adjustments etc if it makes your game better.
umm just no no no lol when have they ever said that? its their misbegotten attempt to bring FNM to dnd. In fact all WPN events are canceled which completely disproves your statement. Unless you contend that WOTC thinks that anyone playing dnd during the pandemic is playing wrong lol
Third Edition and Pathfinder had a lot more rules and a lot more character design options than 5E, that's true.
And most of it was really a straitjacket that punished you for not taking one of a few optimal character designs. Sure, there were enough weapon options for an entire splatbook, but most of them were sub-optimal in stats and also rare enough that specializing in one just meant that you were insuring that you'd never find one as treasure unless the GM felt sorry for you ad inexplicably tossed a +1 Gnome Hook-Hammer into a chest in a dungeon.
The same went for your character build- unbound stats meant that you basically had to run perfect optimization in building up everything or you'd wind up being too weak to be effective at higher levels.
And that's the issue with adding complexity- too much of the extra stuff that was in those games was there just to pad page count without adding anything meaningful.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I don't really think that people are starving to death for new rules as you think.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Actually Wizards don’t think or push AL to be the best or greatest. Again I don’t know where you are seeing this but it isn’t on social media or threads here.
Also, I hope that you actually look at content for DnD. Look at the campaigns that Wizards are showing on their twitch channel. Most of them run counter of that philosophy(their new one Nights of Evenstar has a player playing as UA class which wouldn’t be permitted in AL). High Rollers home brew a ton of stuff. Acquisitions Inc, Critical Role, Nerdarchy, XP3 to level, and other content creators for the game constantly are talking about home brew stuff or doing it. Hell Critical Role is one of the biggest and the whole thing is a home brew campaign and was rewarded with a book as was another home brew adventure Acquisitions Inc.
Also if AL was the perfect thing I wouldn’t have been allowed to play a Blood Hunter in AL at all.
What is sounds like to me is that you just want to be a munchkin and only play one or two builds. At least that is how I keep reading your posts. There are other systems that allow Munchinkinism and you are allowed to play them. Heck I run a Big Eye Small Mouth campaign and you want to talk about a simple system that has complexity than that is the game. I love that system but I also find 5e to be just the same, simple yet complex.
Also you seem to be confused about what GM allow or not. This is up to the GM. A lot of GM’s will change rules if the rules get in the way of the fun and 5e.
Heh. This is kinda what I was talking about when I said in my first post in this thread that people constantly poo-poo the idea of a more intricate optional ruleset. "Nyet, rulebooks are fine. Failing is with player being too stupid to know how to make good game."
If this was truly the case, then why is EN World making a push for this 5e Advanced package? Who do they intend to sell it to, if absolutely nobody save myself is fed up with 5e's over-simplistic design? Why spend all the money to develop and market that content if the 5e playerbase is blissfully happy to never see another crunch book again and just keep swallowing Wizards' infinite stream of junky Faerun adventure books?
I find myself mighty curious, really. Which was the original reason I started the thread.
Please do not contact or message me.
Nobody said that there was no audience, just that the size of the potential audience was probably not as great as you make it sound.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I wasn’t saying that there aren’t people out there who want this. There are more who still play 3.5 and pathfinder out there(myself included). I am just saying that most of the arguments that you have put forth in favor of it are baseless.
You keep saying that the rule set is over-simplistic without offering any proof of this. I seen this plenty of this with people who are starch defenders of 3.5. Here is the thing though. There are many games that seem over-simplistic but in actually aren’t(Big Eyes Small Mouth, Chess, Checkers, Magic:The Gathering). The same goes with 5e. There is a lot complex things that can be done in the game if you leave the “I attack” philosophy behind. I would say that 5E was more Role-play friendly than 3.5 because of some of the deep cuts.
As for the infinite stream of adventure books, 3.5 has endless arrays of adventure books from Faerûn. Also, I am betting that the company that is making that most likely won’t be calling it 5.5 and it will be in with other Gmguild stuff as well(or sold as a supplement in book). And while there are people that will play it most won’t.
If you want to play it that is allowed as it is just doing what other DMs have already been doing in home brew campaigns. And like I have said multiple times, DMs are allowed to change how they are running games and what is allowed/not allowed in their setting. In fact, majority of DMs are already do that now.
anyone who says MTG is a simple game needs to try taking a judge exam lol
"Heh. This is kinda what I was talking about when I said in my first post in this thread that people constantly poo-poo the idea of a more intricate optional ruleset. "Nyet, rulebooks are fine. Failing is with player being too stupid to know how to make good game." "
That is exactly what one might expect to find on forums primarily used by fans of the game. Maybe you are looking for support in the wrong place?
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
no matter how niche. there is always an audience to be found. especially now with the internet where the niche crowd are hiding in every nook and cranny around the world. That is why a lot of kickstarter, patreon, fig projects can even get started. Or how there are more and more small independent publishers creating (comic)books and other products that would've never seen the light of day in the past. With ENWorld's product...they're just like everyone else. Creating something that they want and most likely finding a small group of people that will buy it. By no means they're making it for a massive group of people. It is absolutely no different from the people creating all that content and sell it on DMguild. People make the content they like. And there will be people who buy it due to global reach.
I agree that 5e could do with some more expanded rules here and there. Also WoTC has been, on record, talking plenty of times they're considering going the AD&D route when releasing rule sets. One basic set and one advanced set instead of doing a x.5 release ever again in the future. With each new book we're getting new rules here and there. Avernus and Ghostmarsh for once presented vehicle and base nautical rules. for one. So it isn't like we're not getting anything at all. It is just too slow of a drizzle to notice unfortunately. And once again. DMguild and Patreon projects come to the rescue to create entire nautical rule books and such. And no.... WOTC in no way is against homebrew or works against it unlike wrongly claimed. I for one miss various monsters being able too drain levels. However homebrewing those monsters and instead drain Exhaustion Points has proven to be a lot more fun and scarier. Once again proving that 5e's simplicity also opens up for its greatest strength of being modular into whatever the **** you want it to be. I just love that since it doesn't make 3.x modules obsolete. You can still use those to make your game awesome in every way. While most new rule sets pretty much make you throw all that expensive stuff out of the door as if they're meaningless. People calling 5e simple just don't put in their own effort to make it as interesting as it can be. Same with people calling stuff boring all the time, because they themselves are just obnoxiously boring. Making it impossible to see things as anything else.
however your posts so far has been full with incorrect information and some really weird assumptions drenched in arrogance. similar behavior i exhibited when being in my teens which made it difficult to see things for what they really are. Your very first sentence is a clear example. The very first page. Almost everyone agreed that 5e could do with something more. The discussion was more about what it needed more off. Since not all depth is the good kind of depth because it often leads to unnecessary convoluted bullshit. Instead your first sentence quoted totally ignores that as if everyone in this thread is against "advanced rules". You're living in a fantasy world if that's how you think. Ignoring things that are actually happening. Same with saying 99 out of a 100 blablabla. Everyone on the internet makes up numbers thinking their point is the correct one. I also notice more and more idiotic statements in general on the internet that go with the extremities where something is either X or Y totally ignoring everything in between. Guess what. The world is everything in between and rarely the extreme outliers. What people say and do on the internet is rarely a good impression of what is actually happening in the world. The internet mostly shows the outlying extremities that don't matter. Just because one person says that the AL is put on a pedestal somewhere. Doesn't it mean that is what is actually happening and in no way you should take it as a fact. When the devs have clearly stated and shown otherwise.
Maybe for a crowd of people who are more into rules and game design than the game? I ran our campaign from 1st level to 30th level on 2nd edition AD&D and while we picked up all extras along the way e.g. every monster manual binder, Psionics handbook etc, it never occurred to me that I was "missing" something and that we needed lots and lots of more rules.
D&D is about the player and DM interacting, weaving an amazing story, fighting evil villains, saving worlds.
Not about extended grappling rules so you can "flavor" D&D into a UFC fight.
5th edition is the most popular edition on the planet. PHB is still after all these years in the top 100 books on Amazon.
A hundred times this.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
If it's truly the case, why aren't Wizards rushing to cash in on it? Considering that the general opinion is "yay capitalism".
Personally, while I see individual rules I like from Pathfinder2e and other systems I appreciate what 5e offers me. Ultimately its so much easier to customise, because for any system I want to change I pretty much just add to the core rules. If it already had stacked rules on areas I wanted to homebrew I would have to do a lot of rewriting, which I think would be more confusing to players walking into my game.
It's all about personal preference, hell that's how there are so many different rpg/tabletop systems around, right? :)
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
D&D Beyond FoundersSo far, what we're seeing with D&D over the last year, is introducing flexibility and options, rather than complexity.
I think that people often conflate the two.
A more flexible system doesn't need to be more complex, but that takes some good game design skills and personally I believe the game is much better for it.
With regards complexity, I still see people saying, every week, that D&D is complicated and can be hard to get into. If the game is made more complex, that's reducing the number of people who are likely to play.
I'm not saying that there's no place for detailed, complex rules, but that anything along those lines needs to be optional and carefully added.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
AlumniAfternoon Folks,
At D&D Beyond we support constructive debate and conversation, these topics must stay on topic and within the rules lain out on the forum.
Please refrain from attacking other users, posting political views, or using topics which would be deemed unsuitable for the environment.
Thanks!
[ Site Rules & Guidelines ] - [ Homebrew Rules ] - [ D&D Beyond FAQ ] - [ Homebrew FAQ ] - [ Homebrew Video Tutorials ]
Standard "free" content is restricted to the D&D 5th Edition Basic Rules, SRD, and other free content.
I disagree that most of us will leave unless things get more crunchy, I hate the crunch. Let's not kid ourselves, 5e is very complex albeit less complex than other RPG systems. Checkers is simple, chutes and ladders is simple, connect 4 is simple. What I would like to see is more content and maybe a bit more flexibility with what we have which seems to be coming in December. I think a lot of people who play don't give the system its full due before criticizing and changing things. I for one hate homebrew rules, despise them. I have played multiple characters through multiple tiers as well as one all the way to level 20. Sure there are peaks and valleys but there should be. How can you change a set of rules or homebrew rules if you haven't even played throughout the scope of an entire 1-20 campaign? It's like only reading 6 chapters of a book and then complaining about chapter 20 ending when you haven't even read it.
If you want a more complex system then play a more complex system. 5e is great the way it is, just needs more content which we keep getting so its all good!
All of which is true.
It's extremely frustrating for me, since I can never seem to express what it is that bugs me so much about this edition without people either telling me to go sod off and play a different system or "just homebrew it, girl! 5e is modular, it's the perfect game for anyone who wants to do AAAANYTHING!"
Well, lemme say this: you cannot make a 'Master of the Blade' in D&D 5e. One of the most common, popular, and enduring fantasy archetropes out there, and it is mechanically impossible in base Fifth Edition.
I can already hear all the complaints. "But Yurei, just play a Samurai fighter!" "But Yurei, just do a Pact of the Blade warlock!" "But Yurei, ...!"
Thing is? None of those are 'masters of the blade'. Nothing in their rules says they're swordsmen. They can pick up a maul and be exactly as effective with a maul as they can with their treasured ancestral blade, handed down through a hundred generations of their family and which they've spent their entire life learning to master. Now I get it, I get it, I get it. "Why would they do that tho? They can just refuse to use any weapon except their sword, and thus be a MASTER OF THE SWORD!"
No, they cannot. Because the regular-ass Soldier background generic fighter in the party who prides himself on his jack-of-all-trades training is every bit as expert with 'The Sword' as the swordmaster. There is absolutely no method, short of extensive homebrew rewrite, for the Sword Master character to get his crunch to line up with his fluff. There are no sword feats. There is no sword class. There is nothing that player can use, without me having to do it myself, to reinforce or demonstrate the idea that their character is a master of the blade. It's all just talk, and as much as people like to say that the fluff is all-important and the only thing that matters?
I guarantee you: when your character's actual abilities, the mechanical systems that drive your story, don't match that story, it doesn't work nearly as well.
I don't want a return to the days of 3.x, where there was a specific little rule for everything and none of them really worked together. I would like for Wizards to get off its keister, stop writing seventeen adventure books a year nobody has time to play, and offer some rules supplements that fix obvious problems in 5e. Everybody complains about the oversimplification of the weapons/armor system in D&D. Everybody complains about the Sorcerer and the Ranger lagging behind other classes. There's so heckin' many places where, just as Stormknight said, some proper game design in an optional overlay ruleset - and I don't think anybody wants this to be forced, everybody I know just wants an advanced layer above the regular rules - would plug some of the egregious holes in 5e.
Which holes?
>Godawful terrible putrid bad-and-should-feel-bad grappling rules.
>Two different, contradictory sets of crafting rules, both of which are vague and terrible.
>'Exploration' rules effectively nonexistent, DM expected to just make wilderness traversal and 'the journey' up as she goes along.
>Martial combat consists of nothing but "I hit it with my weapon-like object" ad infinitum.
>Ranged martial combat is even worse.
>Vast majority of feats are traps; feat system requires a character to sacrifice advancement to gain the ability to actually make decisions about their character's growth.
>ALL character classes are done making any significant decision for their progression by level 3, save for warlocks. Character progression is on strict, unflinching rails after 3rd - or even 2nd or 1st, in some cases. No, spell selection for spellcasters does not count.
And those are just what I can come up with off the top of my head. Now yeah, I could patch most of those with homebrew rules. DDB wouldn't allow me to do so in character-centric cases, but system-centric cases I could just write my own rulebook and hand it to players. But if I'm expected to design eighty percent of the system I'm playing/running myself...why am I paying another company hundreds of dollars for books, again? I could just write the other twenty percent myself as well and move on with my day, with a bunch of extra money besides, hm?
Please do not contact or message me.
I think the difference between views is you want everything written down on paper, others are happy for their roleplay elements not to be prescribed by mechanics.