[video] D&D 5e Is Utterly BAFFLING

[Finarvyn]

This is an interesting video. It's an hour long, but it tries to discuss the main concepts that went into the design of 5E. And then talks about what works well and what doesn't, and then the mathematics behind why it works or not.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIoFFyo1ANY

His fundamental question is: "Why is high-level D&D so bad?"

I wish I had taken notes, and may end up watching again just to do so. If anyone does watch and take notes, please post.

- - - - -

One of the big flaws is that when the math "breaks" the game, the GM is encouraged to hand wave events so that the results work out right.

[kwll]

I have not watched the entire video, but aside from the numbers presented in there, is it the generally shared experience of people playing this edition that it falls apart at higher levels? If yes, which editions do it better?

[Finarvyn]

Sept 6, 2024 2:59:30 GMT -6 kwll said:

is it the generally shared experience of people playing this edition that it falls apart at higher levels?

On a WotC video they said they had done a survey and found that something like 90% of the campaigns ended by level 7, and I think the same video said that they didn't playtest the game at high level much because it was too hard to anticipate the options. (I wish I could remember the exact source, as it's kind of lame on my part to rely on my memory without a link to back it up.)

My own personal experience is that I have really enjoyed tier-1 (levels 1-4) and tier-2 (levels 5-10) in Adventurer's League play, but have hardly ever advanced characters into tier-3 (11-15, I think) and only once or twice into tier-4 (16-20). In those few experiences into tiers 3&4 I have found that the game slows down quite a bit as characters have so many options during each of their turns. Your turn is sort of awesome if you like power gaming, but then the wait for your next turn is a drag.

Sept 6, 2024 2:59:30 GMT -6 kwll said:

If yes, which editions do it better?

Honestly, I'm not sure that any edition does it that well and I think it comes down to the limited number of dice-faces on a d20. Unless you slow the advancement of attribute bonuses and such quite a bit, pretty soon you overwhelm the numbers on the dice.

I noticed a similar effect with Decipher's old Lord of the Rings RPG, which tied action rolls to 2d6 and for NPCs like Aragorn the bonus quickly overwhelmed the dice roll. Great game overall, but easy to "break."

[hamurai]

I agree that higher levels have too many options with too many special rules. I played with people who started to get overwhelmed at 6th level already and had to be reminded of what they could and could not do with their character. Of course, they were the more casual player type, but 5E is not supposed to be so crunchy as to appeal only to hardcore gaming nerds.

I'd have appreciated level tables with only 1 new ability every 2 levels, especially for spell-casters who also tend to get new spells.

Sept 6, 2024 7:02:31 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Honestly, I'm not sure that any edition does it that well and I think it comes down to the limited number of dice-faces on a d20. Unless you slow the advancement of attribute bonuses and such quite a bit, pretty soon you overwhelm the numbers on the dice.

That's where the system has a merit over other editions with small bonuses of +1 to +3, which hardly matter when rolling that swingy d20. A skill bonus of +5 to +7 is easy to get in 5E for some focus skills (especially with Rogue Expertise), which makes those skills more reliable and componsates the huge range of the d20. At 10th level, these focus skills are probably at +8 to +10, at 15th level at +10 to +12. Sure, dice rolling using these skills is hardly necessary unless you have a really hard task at hand, but less dice rolling can mean more role-playing, right? A character of 15th level should no longer have to rely on pure chance to get something done, but should be able to rely on their skill and experience.

We started to employ the "take 10" mechanic (which, I think, originated in 3.5E?), which allows to assume a d20 result of 10 when the character has enough time and no other pressure. It's also used for passive perception in 5E. With a skill modifier of +7, you automatically pass tests with a difficulty of 17, for example. The DM used this against passive perception of enemies, for example, when our party travelled cautiously, but were not actively sneaking around. He used the Stealth skill mod +10 as a "passive sneak" rating and compared it to the passive perception of the enemies to see if they noticed our party.

[Malcadon]

I just seen the video.

In the end his answer to improve 5e at higher levels was simple: Add proficiency bonus to AC and all saving throws, with saves you are good at getting expertise (double proficiency bonus). This allows players to better protect themselves when they get better in combat, as everything else (landing hits and taking damage) gets better, and to be less dependent on magical protection. This is something I wholly agree with! (That, and I really like the type of scantly-dressed beefcake/cheesecake fighters you'll find on a Frank Frazetta painting. )

As an optional rule, he proposes: Add proficiency bonus to damage rolls. I also like this as it speeds up combat at higher levels.

One thing I would add: Just like with Heroic Careers, all backgrounds and classes provide a ad-hac, open-ended proficiency bonus to anything DM and players agree a blackground or class is "good at," above and beyond the listed tools and skills listed in the background and class entries, as well as a few expertise for some tool/skill focus.

Also: Kill Tool Proficiencies! No one need to good at a single type of musical instrument!

[hamurai]

I've finally had the time to watch the entire video and while his arguments are quite reasonable, he omits one thing entirely, which is really a big thing in D&D: Hit Points.

Sure, it's the same AC of 18 for (in his example) the CR 2 Orog and the CR 23 Kraken, but the Kraken has more than 10 times the HP of an Orog. And that's really been an issue in D&D from the beginning: AC is limited and HP are (technically) not. You will have an easier time to hit something when you level up, but you need to hit it more often. The same is true for PCs.

The Orog's 42 HP will be gone in about 5-8 rounds of combat, depending on the attacker's weapon and bonuses, but it's manageable. The problem is, it does 10 damage (d12 + 4) twice each round, which will be enough to kill lower-level PCs before they can take out the Orog in 1:1 combat.
The Kraken's 472 HP will take a lot longer to grind down because PC damage doesn't scale up that much. But at the same time, the Kraken's tentacles alone do 20 damage 6 times (iirc) each round, plus some other tricks like poison etc. It can easily kill even high-level PCs within 1 round, because with its +17 attack bonus, it will more or less hit every time.

If you want to "fix" 5E with the proposition in the video, you will need to lower HP unless you want to drag combat out even more. And use the rule to add PB to damage. Because even at high levels, a normal sword will basically do 1d8 damage.
If you like 5E as it is, you will probably have to accept that combat will turn into another big resource management sub-game and not a matter of hitting and missing blows.

[Finarvyn]

Sept 15, 2024 2:03:50 GMT -6 hamurai said:

If you want to "fix" 5E with the proposition in the video, you will need to lower HP unless you want to drag combat out even more. And use the rule to add PB to damage. Because even at high levels, a normal sword will basically do 1d8 damage.

I've been pondering one of a couple options along these lines:

(1) Calculate the HP of a character the usual way, then take half as the actual number.

(2) Downgrade HD types by one factor (e.g. d12 becomes d10, d10 becomes d8, d8 becomes d6, and d6 becomes d4) to essentially put the hit point totals closer to that found in older edition D&D.

Either method would seem to drop HP enough to help. Heck, when I run monsters I often double their HP so that they don't die too quickly, so maybe I could start using BTB hit points instead. The notion of hit point reduction but damage left alone would seem to make the game a lot more exciting and dangerous.

[hamurai]

I've been thinking about the relation of AC and HP a lot.

The original idea of HP mostly being a combination of luck and endurance makes sense when you keep AC and HP as they are - it doesn't matter how good you are, you still have to dodge blows and your armour doesn't get any better either. But with experience, you can keep on fighting a lot longer, taking more bruises, enduring more glancing blows, etc. I tend to think of Conan, or any of those half-naked barbarians, really, who don't wear armour but who keep dodging the blows, taking bruises and small cuts, all of which wear the fighter down after a while, even though no lethal hit was taken, no bone broken, etc. Low AC, but tons of HP.
What doesn't make sense in this context is the original idea of regaining only 1 HP per day's rest. When your fighter PC loses most of their 80 HP they'd have to rest for months to regain their strength which is not along the lines of the fantasy heroes.
What also doesn't make sense in this context is attacking with surprise - when your archer has enough time to aim, a "hit" on the d20 roll should be an actual hit which does actual damage to the target and should be able to take it out most of the time. (Personally, in cases like that, I let the archer roll to hit with a bonus and/or advantage and have the target go down on a hit. No damage roll needed.)

The modern idea seems to be that every "hit" which meets or beats AC is actually a hit which does real damage. So with more experience, you can sustain more actual damage to your body before you fall unconscious and/or die. If yoou figure dodging and parrying into AC by increasing it with experience, HP should rise a lot more slowly - the idea of someone (even high level) being able to get stabbed with a dagger (d4) 20 times and survive is hard to believe.

Finarvyn , reducing the HP dice a step would mean 2 HP less per level, if you take the average proposed in 5E By 10th level, this is 20 HP less than before (with the exception of the d4, which will lose only 10 HP), which accounts to 1 round of attacks by an equivalent of a 10th-level monster. (Several attacks and/or some nasty tricks like poison etc.). At the same time, the monsters' hit chance will be reduced by 20% (Proficiency Bonus 4 figured into AC). I wonder if that would be a huge impact, one should do the maths some time.

Of course, this will still feel different for each class. A wizard would lose 25% of their HP (using the "average" of 3 HP for a d4, without a CON bonus), having 30 HP instead of 40. Which means that CR 2 Orog will need only 3 hits instead of 4 to kill the wizard, which still means it needs 2 rounds.  A fighter with a CON bonus of +5 (easy at 10th level with all the ability increases they get) and a d8 HD will have 110 HP at 10th level instead of 130. Which means the Orog will need 1 round less to kill the fighter, but will still need 6 rounds. Of course, the 10th level fighter will likely kill the Orog before that happens.

[Desparil]

Sept 15, 2024 15:02:51 GMT -6 hamurai said:

I've been thinking about the relation of AC and HP a lot.

The original idea of HP mostly being a combination of luck and endurance makes sense when you keep AC and HP as they are - it doesn't matter how good you are, you still have to dodge blows and your armour doesn't get any better either. But with experience, you can keep on fighting a lot longer, taking more bruises, enduring more glancing blows, etc. I tend to think of Conan, or any of those half-naked barbarians, really, who don't wear armour but who keep dodging the blows, taking bruises and small cuts, all of which wear the fighter down after a while, even though no lethal hit was taken, no bone broken, etc. Low AC, but tons of HP.
What doesn't make sense in this context is the original idea of regaining only 1 HP per day's rest. When your fighter PC loses most of their 80 HP they'd have to rest for months to regain their strength which is not along the lines of the fantasy heroes.
What also doesn't make sense in this context is attacking with surprise - when your archer has enough time to aim, a "hit" on the d20 roll should be an actual hit which does actual damage to the target and should be able to take it out most of the time. (Personally, in cases like that, I let the archer roll to hit with a bonus and/or advantage and have the target go down on a hit. No damage roll needed.)

The modern idea seems to be that every "hit" which meets or beats AC is actually a hit which does real damage. So with more experience, you can sustain more actual damage to your body before you fall unconscious and/or die. If yoou figure dodging and parrying into AC by increasing it with experience, HP should rise a lot more slowly - the idea of someone (even high level) being able to get stabbed with a dagger (d4) 20 times and survive is hard to believe.

Finarvyn , reducing the HP dice a step would mean 2 HP less per level, if you take the average proposed in 5E By 10th level, this is 20 HP less than before (with the exception of the d4, which will lose only 10 HP), which accounts to 1 round of attacks by an equivalent of a 10th-level monster. (Several attacks and/or some nasty tricks like poison etc.). At the same time, the monsters' hit chance will be reduced by 20% (Proficiency Bonus 4 figured into AC). I wonder if that would be a huge impact, one should do the maths some time.

Of course, this will still feel different for each class. A wizard would lose 25% of their HP (using the "average" of 3 HP for a d4, without a CON bonus), having 30 HP instead of 40. Which means that CR 2 Orog will need only 3 hits instead of 4 to kill the wizard, which still means it needs 2 rounds.  A fighter with a CON bonus of +5 (easy at 10th level with all the ability increases they get) and a d8 HD will have 110 HP at 10th level instead of 130. Which means the Orog will need 1 round less to kill the fighter, but will still need 6 rounds. Of course, the 10th level fighter will likely kill the Orog before that happens.

I think a big problem for people has always been the dissonance between characters and creatures. An elephant gets a lot of hit points because it's a big creature - they're effectively "meat points." But what about a dragon, a vampire, or a demon, how much of their hit dice are "meat points" versus the more nebulous stuff? On top of that, in the eternal quest to keep combat moving quickly, it's quite common for a lot of DMs to describe common hits (i.e., not especially high damage, not first blood, not a killing blow, etc.) with a perfunctory "you hit" or "you get hit for X damage," which is nice and concise for communicating the game-mechanical impact but also carries an unintentional implication that a "hit" did indeed occur.

Also, a mathematical correction that reducing hit dice by one step would only be 1 HP less per level, when taking the average-rounded-up that 5E assumes. The maximum when choosing to roll is two less, but the average only differs by one. Proficiency bonus added to AC is also a whole discussion of its own on how it impacts different classes, since AC is a stat where each point is more effective than the last in terms of "how many rounds can I last against this opponent." For example, let's say a monster deals enough damage to take you down in 4 hits, and let's ignore critical hits for the sake of simplicity. If your AC is good enough that it only hits 25% of the time, it will take an average of 16 rounds for that enemy to defeat you. If you get a +4 bonus to your AC, then it only hits 5% of the time and needs an average of 80 rounds to take you down. On the other hand, if you have a poor AC and it would normally hit you 70% of the time (about 6 rounds to take you down) then a +4 bonus to AC reduces that to a 50% hit chance, for an average of 8 rounds to take you down. So it's a "rich get richer" situation, where the one who already had a high AC quintuples his survivability with the +4 bonus, while the one with a poor AC gets a much more modest benefit.

[hamurai]

Sept 16, 2024 1:45:11 GMT -6 Desparil said:

I think a big problem for people has always been the dissonance between characters and creatures. An elephant gets a lot of hit points because it's a big creature - they're effectively "meat points." But what about a dragon, a vampire, or a demon, how much of their hit dice are "meat points" versus the more nebulous stuff? On top of that, in the eternal quest to keep combat moving quickly, it's quite common for a lot of DMs to describe common hits (i.e., not especially high damage, not first blood, not a killing blow, etc.) with a perfunctory "you hit" or "you get hit for X damage," which is nice and concise for communicating the game-mechanical impact but also carries an unintentional implication that a "hit" did indeed occur.

Absolutely agree. Non-humanoids mostly seem to have meat points as HP. And yes, DMs don't say the attack "would hit unless you have some HP left to dodge" or something like it. We know it from computer games, you get hit for X damage and it's normal that high-level characters can endure being stabbed a hundred times and not die...

Sept 16, 2024 1:45:11 GMT -6 Desparil said:

Also, a mathematical correction that reducing hit dice by one step would only be 1 HP less per level, when taking the average-rounded-up that 5E assumes. The maximum when choosing to roll is two less, but the average only differs by one.

You are, of course, right. No idea why I thought it's a difference of 2, I just re-read it and shook my head. I guess my HP were low when I wrote it, after working so long at our local con.

That means, downgrading the HD will have even less of an effect for all classes, as it's just 1 HP per level.

The Dark Eye 4.1 had a "wound threshold", every damage above a certain number (depending on CON) would inflict a wound and depending on the hit body part, you'd get a malus to your rolls. 3 wounds in one part would usually be an unusable body part and/or unconsciousness. This could be implemented into D&D as well. Just one idea I had over years of playing...

[Parzival]

On the question of 5e design, for all that they say they did the math, they clearly didn’t do the math on the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. Probabilities multiply. So when you have the disadvantage on a d20, and you normally hit on an 11 or better (45%), your odds of hitting drop to 20%! That’s the equivalent of a -4 penalty; it’s horrific— yet that is the typical penalty of a cursed weapon, or even just minor mishaps! Conversely, if you have advantage at the same roll requirement, you now hit 80% of the time— equivalent of a +7 bonus! That’s an absurd boost at any level.

As for the HP thing, the problem is the low damage effect of weapons. Even +5 magical swords are topping out at doing 13 points of damage on the best possible result. Let’s take 20 level fighter, facing a 15 HD foe (average HP 68) with AC -3– a mid-level “large” red dragon for Classic— without magic, he’s got a chance to hit of %50, and and average damage of 5 per hit— so at least 24 rounds (on average) to take the thing down. That’s a lot of rolling. With magic the odds improve, but you’re still looking at double-digit round numbers. And we’re ignoring anything the dragon does to the fighter.
Presumably, of course, the fighter has allies. But at that point you’re also goosing the dragon up to Huge and giving it minions as well. So the number of rounds is going to be just as high— though hopefully the fighter has a wizard and a cleric in his band of supporters.

In this context, the +5 max magical bonus the classic game typical gives is not an overwhelming boost to that feeble single die damage roll. The wizard and cleric are lobbing out multi-die attacks, but the fighter is still just hacking away in a sometimes tedious war of HP attrition:
Lucy the Wizard: Let’s see… 6d6 (roll)— my spell does 21 points of damage!
Linus the Cleric: (rolls 5d6)… I did 18.
Patty the Thief: Backstab for 12!
Charlie the Fighter: I got a 3.

And I’m not considering the opponent’s low saving throw targets, which can clobber even the wizard’s best magic.

I think maybe there should be some sort of level kick that switches the attrition to assumed results. What it would be, I haven’t decided.

[waysoftheearth]

Sept 18, 2024 13:05:20 GMT -6 Parzival said:

So when you have the disadvantage on a d20, and you normally hit on an 11 or better (45%), your odds of hitting drop to 20%! That’s the equivalent of a -4 penalty; it’s horrific— .... Conversely, if you have advantage at the same roll requirement, you now hit 80% of the time— equivalent of a +7 bonus!

The probability of rolling 11+ on a d20 is 50%.
With disadvantage it is close to 25%.
With advantage it is close to 75%.
So advantage/disadvantage is close to -5/+5 adjustment when the target number is 11.
However, the adjustment varies by target number.

See: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2014/07/12/dnd-5e-advantage-disadvantage-probability/

[Finarvyn]

Sept 18, 2024 13:05:20 GMT -6 Parzival said:

On the question of 5e design, for all that they say they did the math, they clearly didn’t do the math on the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. Probabilities multiply. So when you have the disadvantage on a d20, and you normally hit on an 11 or better (45%), your odds of hitting drop to 20%! That’s the equivalent of a -4 penalty; it’s horrific— yet that is the typical penalty of a cursed weapon, or even just minor mishaps! Conversely, if you have advantage at the same roll requirement, you now hit 80% of the time— equivalent of a +7 bonus! That’s an absurd boost at any level.

I think the question here should be: is a simple mechanic with large swing to the odds a good thing or a bad thing.

I mean, clearly we are removing a number of highly-specific plus/minus tables for a number of variable situations, and we are replacing them with a single mechanic to do all of that heavy lifting. Whether they did the math for this or not (and +5 to -5 is the typical number that I have seen most often) it's certainly a big effect, and we need to decide if that exchange (simplicity replacing detail) is a good or bad thing.

Personally, I like the advantage/disadvantage mechanic because it's simple and elegant and replaces a bunch of charts. I get the impression ("horrific" and "absurd") that not everyone agrees. One thing that I disliked about 3E is that they had modifiers for everything. Highly accurate, of course, but a lot of minutia to track along the way and I saw that as a big downside to a game which otherwise had many good things going for it..

On the other hand, some games like Alternity introduce a dice chain mechanic where you can add or subtract dice to the d20 roll based on the specifics of the setting at the moment (dark and rainy? move the dice chain by two so subtract a d6 to your roll) and this also has the effect of introducing potentially big swings in the odds. Tradeoff.

I don't know "the answer" to any of this, but clearly it's a design decision and one with effects worth pondering.

[waysoftheearth]

+5 is not the typical adjustment of the advantage mechanic. It is the maximum adjustment, and it only occurs when the target number is 10-12.
When the target number is 20, the adjustment due to advantage is close to +1.
The average adjustment of advantage over the target number range 1-20 is +3.325.

[hamurai]

Shadow of the Demon Lord uses a different kind of advantage, adding one (or more) d6 to the d20 roll, and the highest d6 result is added to the d20 - disadvantage works the same, but the highest result is subtracted from the d20. I've seen people use it instead of 5E's (dis)advantage mechanic to get away from the "average (?) +/-5" adjustment.

Personally, I agree with Finarvyn that 5E's solution is simple and its elegance might be disputed. Personally, I prefer a quick way to adjust the roll over a chart I have to look up. I also like Shadow of the Demon Lord's way, though, simply because I like the clacking of the dice in my hand before I let them roll

[Parzival]

Sept 19, 2024 1:02:27 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Sept 18, 2024 13:05:20 GMT -6 Parzival said:

So when you have the disadvantage on a d20, and you normally hit on an 11 or better (45%), your odds of hitting drop to 20%! That’s the equivalent of a -4 penalty; it’s horrific— .... Conversely, if you have advantage at the same roll requirement, you now hit 80% of the time— equivalent of a +7 bonus!

The probability of rolling 11+ on a d20 is 50%.
With disadvantage it is close to 25%.
With advantage it is close to 75%.
So advantage/disadvantage is close to -5/+5 adjustment when the target number is 11.
However, the adjustment varies by target number.

See: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2014/07/12/dnd-5e-advantage-disadvantage-probability/

Yes, I goofed on the odds, there.
But the point is that the swing is significant in either direction— so, yes it’s a -5, +5 difference, which the original game treats as very rare, high level magic. With 5e, you’re getting slapped with that at 1st level as a routine effect!

Let’s take an attempt in 5e to hit a person clad in chain mail and wielding a shield— which in that game is AC 16– meaning it takes a 1st level Fighter (with +2 proficiency) must roll a 14 or higher to hit such a foe (35%)— meaning he misses 65% of the time. If he has disadvantage, then his odds of hitting fall to 12%. Yes, twelve percent. He will miss almost 88% of the time!This is because he MUST roll 14 or better on two[/i] dice consecutively to hit. Because of that, the odds of each success are divided by each other— so you take the 35%, convert it into the decimal value 0.35, and multiply that by itself. The result is the value 0.1225– which is effectively 12%. Disadvantage sucks.  It’s worse than halving one’s original odds!
Compare to the classic curse mechanic, which is a simple -1.
The odds of hitting (if applied to 5e) would thus drop to 30%, his odds of missing rise to 70%. Awful, but not debilitating, and bet-able odds.

That’s why I say the A/D mechanic is bad. It’s too much of a swing, and no fun in play. As a player, I want a decent chance of success. I’ll take the -1 hit; I don’t feel shut out by it. Disadvantage just frustrates me— frustration is not fun. And as a DM, I don’t want my players feeling frustrated by game mechanics. I *want* the PCs to have a decent chance of success, not be crippled by a single unfortunate event. Amusingly hindered, yes. Crippled, no.

I hate A/D.

YMMV.

[Desparil]

Sept 19, 2024 15:29:34 GMT -6 Parzival said:

Sept 19, 2024 1:02:27 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

The probability of rolling 11+ on a d20 is 50%.
With disadvantage it is close to 25%.
With advantage it is close to 75%.
So advantage/disadvantage is close to -5/+5 adjustment when the target number is 11.
However, the adjustment varies by target number.

See: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2014/07/12/dnd-5e-advantage-disadvantage-probability/

Yes, I goofed on the odds, there.
But the point is that the swing is significant in either direction— so, yes it’s a -5, +5 difference, which the original game treats as very rare, high level magic. With 5e, you’re getting slapped with that at 1st level as a routine effect!

Let’s take an attempt in 5e to hit a person clad in chain mail and wielding a shield— which in that game is AC 16– meaning it takes a 1st level Fighter (with +2 proficiency) must roll a 14 or higher to hit such a foe (35%)— meaning he misses 65% of the time. 

It is a big swing, but not nearly as dire as you're making it out to be with regard to hit percentages. You've forgotten that a 1st level fighter is expected to have 16 Strength (or Dexterity, if focusing on ranged and finesse weapons), which gives another +3 to attack rolls.

[hamurai]

Parzival , as Desparil correctly points out, even at 1st level, you already get much bigger bonuses than in the earlier editions. A Fighter with a +3 STR bonus using a weapon with Proficiency gets +5 to hit at 1st level. At higher levels, these bonuses also get higher and higher. Disadvantage sort of cancels the big bonus to make closer to an unmodified d20 roll. You can still succeed on those rolls.

Also, you might be lucky and roll high on both d20s. I still vividly remember our cleric player praying to his character's deity before making an attack against a boss monster when our group was almost down already. He had disadvantage on the roll and rolled two 20s. His god was clearly with him and the crit killed the boss monster, saving the entire group. Legendary.

Sure, it's rare. Even better when it succeeds.

Additionally, advantage cancels disadvantage and you can roll normally. Getting advantage (on attacks and/or skill rolls) isn't too hard for some classes, for example a 3rd-level Totem Warrior Barbarian will grant advantage on attack rolls to all allies next to them (5 ft) while they're raging.

Personally, a flat -5 modifier to my d20 roll is more frustrating to me than disadvantage. With the -5 mod I can at best get a result of 15, while disadvantage at least leaves the chance to roll two high results. (Not counting other modifiers here)

[waysoftheearth]

Disadvantage is equivilent to an average adjustment of -3.325 across the target range of 1-20.

But it differs by target number across that range, so it matters which specific number you are dicing for.

Low level fighters are typically matched against poor AC and low hp opponents. So... whether the above matchup is "typical" in 5e might be another question. E.g., in OD&D-land, most of the "normal" tier monsters are AC 6 or 7, not AC 4 (chain+shield). Perhaps the same is typical in 5e-land?

It's also important (regardless of edition) that players decide when to dice and not to dice. That is part of player agency. Ideally, players would not dicing at all when their odds are poor and the consequences matter. Poor odds/high consequence is a signal to players that maybe they are outclassed here... and... well, sometimes not dicing is the smarter play.


FWIW, an OD&D cursed sword has a -2 adjustment (M&T p23).
Arguably, that was originally -2 on a 2d6 throw, which is near enough to an average of -4 on a d20.
By GH it was -2 on a d20.

[Parzival]

Sept 19, 2024 18:45:15 GMT -6 Desparil said:

Sept 19, 2024 15:29:34 GMT -6 Parzival said:

Yes, I goofed on the odds, there.
But the point is that the swing is significant in either direction— so, yes it’s a -5, +5 difference, which the original game treats as very rare, high level magic. With 5e, you’re getting slapped with that at 1st level as a routine effect!

Let’s take an attempt in 5e to hit a person clad in chain mail and wielding a shield— which in that game is AC 16– meaning it takes a 1st level Fighter (with +2 proficiency) must roll a 14 or higher to hit such a foe (35%)— meaning he misses 65% of the time. 

It is a big swing, but not nearly as dire as you're making it out to be with regard to hit percentages. You've forgotten that a 1st level fighter is expected to have 16 Strength (or Dexterity, if focusing on ranged and finesse weapons), which gives another +3 to attack rolls.

? I don’t recall ever reading that a 1st Level fighter is “expected” to have STR 16.
However, it is true that the “quick build” numbers max at 15 as the highest. But of course the racial adjustments come into play, which makes a human fighter potentially STR 16, if you decide that’s where you want to put the 15 (or don’t roll dice).

So yes, +5 to start with. Yegads. Yet another reason to dislike 5e. (I have a lot, which is why I normally ignore this sub-forum.)

Carry on.

[Finarvyn]

There is no doubt that 5E is a lot more "player friendly" than previous editions, and that is a trend that has slowly crept in from 1974 to today. Each edition takes a little away from the DM and adds a little more to the player. From the player perspective this is more races and classes to pick from, more hit points and plusses, less probability of character death. From the DM perspective this is all in terms of prep and the difficulty in anticipation on how challenging an encounter might be. (More character options means harder to counter them for the DM.)

I think Mork Borg is cool, but my players don't like the "no hit points, crappy stats, your character will probably die" vibe. That's also why they aren't interested in DCC's character funnel adventures. My players want to spend an hour making a character with back story, then want to complain when I don't make their back story a big part of the campaign.

[Desparil]

Sept 20, 2024 21:28:52 GMT -6 Parzival said:

Sept 19, 2024 18:45:15 GMT -6 Desparil said:

It is a big swing, but not nearly as dire as you're making it out to be with regard to hit percentages. You've forgotten that a 1st level fighter is expected to have 16 Strength (or Dexterity, if focusing on ranged and finesse weapons), which gives another +3 to attack rolls.

? I don’t recall ever reading that a 1st Level fighter is “expected” to have STR 16.
However, it is true that the “quick build” numbers max at 15 as the highest. But of course the racial adjustments come into play, which makes a human fighter potentially STR 16, if you decide that’s where you want to put the 15 (or don’t roll dice).

So yes, +5 to start with. Yegads. Yet another reason to dislike 5e. (I have a lot, which is why I normally ignore this sub-forum.)

Carry on.

I don't think it's ever stated explicitly, but if you look at the character creation example in the PHB and the various premade characters from the starter sets, they almost all have 16 as their highest ability score. I think there's one exception in the Stranger Things themed starter set and one in the Rick & Morty version that have a 14 or 15 as their top score instead. So maybe "expected" was the wrong word to use, but it's definitely the norm.

[waysoftheearth]

Sept 21, 2024 6:13:37 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

There is no doubt that 5E is a lot more "player friendly" than previous editions, and that is a trend that has slowly crept in from 1974 to today. Each edition takes a little away from the DM and adds a little more to the player. From the player perspective this is more races and classes to pick from, more hit points and plusses, less probability of character death. From the DM perspective this is all in terms of prep and the difficulty in anticipation on how challenging an encounter might be. (More character options means harder to counter them for the DM.)

I think Mork Borg is cool, but my players don't like the "no hit points, crappy stats, your character will probably die" vibe. That's also why they aren't interested in DCC's character funnel adventures. My players want to spend an hour making a character with back story, then want to complain when I don't make their back story a big part of the campaign.

The evolution of a game like D&D is a natural process, to be expected. But by now, I wonder if it's still evolution or has it been more a quiet revolution? By which I mean: the D&D RPG of today is arguably a whole different game compared to, say, what DA describes in FFC or what EGG describes in the 3LBBs.

To generalise enormously...

In the early days, there were up to 50 (or even 100, according to FCC) players coming in and out of a campaign, which might have multiple referees running their own dungeons. The big players managed armies and resources of the realms, including characters (some run by other players) who could go off on adventures. Not surprisingly, there were subgames for the various types of battles the players could fight (including against each other). 1:1 scale combat was more abstract (and relatively fast). For the ref, there was the world-wilderness-dungeon-building subgames, comprising a bunch of content generation tables and requiring a lot of input and imagination, including involving the players.

Nowadays, the campaign is for a group of 3-6 (or so) players who almost always work together, with a single DM providing fodder for them to beat up on. 1:1 scale combat is ever more detailed (and relatively slow). The mini-wargames are gone. The armies and realms game is pushed out to obscurity. World-building is now a commercial interest in IP and content sales. Instead, much of the modern D&D game comprises lists of player options for a subgame that wasn't originally there: the character build game.


Sure, the IP and window dressing claim these are the same thing, but it's interesting to think about just how different these two games are.

[hamurai]

Adding to waysoftheearth 's good observations:

A change in power level - in the early days, a lot of the players' power would come from NPCs. Followers, retainers, hirelings, armies, subdued/allied monsters...

Today, most of the players' power comes from their characters alone. PCs are mighty superheroes compared to their counterparts 50 years ago, especially at higher levels. They gain magical powers early on and develop them further - I'm not talking about spells, because they have been part of the game in OD&D, too. But, for example, the Ranger (Beastmaster) summons a Beast of the Land as animal companion and the Barbarian (Path of the World Tree) draws on the power of Yggdrasil itself to gain abilities.

Today's heroes remind me a lot of Earthdawn, where all PCs were tapping into some kind of magic because it was a high magic setting. Maybe D&D's setting changed over the decades, from medieval fantasy to high magic, and the characters simply evolved along the line.

[Finarvyn]

I think it's a natural evolution, and one prompted by the fact that D&D by it's very nature is a creative-person's game. This leads to a continual influx of ideas, mostly involving new cool stuff for players to do.

All the way back to Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, when someone wanted to play a vampire and someone wanted to play a cleric to counter it. Or in the Strategic Review, where folks would suggest new classes one could play. Or OD&D "Greyhawk supplement I" when fighters could go "over 18" in strength with percentile numbers in the exceptional range, complete with higher bonuses. Ands spells suddenly could go to level 9 (or 7 for clerics). These things were all proposed and hit print in the early days of the game. Arduin took the concept and allowed characters to be level 100, or something like that. None of these were "DM friendly" but all helped players have more kewl powerz.

OD&D's "name level" was around level 9 or so but with a paragraph of rules for going higher, but then Greyhawk printed charts that went well above the white box. AD&D's class charts showed that adventures up to level 20 were part of the core rules. 2E had a Dark Sun supplement book that took characters to level 30 in that campaign, then 3E made an "Epic Level" book to allow progression to level 30 in any campaign. And I heard from 4E players that you had to map out your character from level 1-30 at creation, otherwise you would make a wrong choice somewhere and your character wouldn't be able to do what you want at level 30.

Always higher and better.

5E actually bucks the trend, bringing the game back a little. Level cap of 20 again (which is absurd because in a decade I've only advanced a half dozen characters to level 10) and "bounded accuracy" philosophy to cap stats at 20 and reduce a lot of the crazy-number bonuses of 3E and 4E. If nothing else, this is a good reason to love 5E.

[waysoftheearth]

I dunno if bigger/higher numbers across editions are necessarily better.

Bigger numbers only means a finer level of detail in modelling a fictional concept. So, whether I divide a game concept into 4 parts, or into 20 parts, the overall concept remains the same.

E.g., an orc is an orc, no matter the edition.
An 0e-orc has (1d6) 1-6 hp while a 5e-orc has (2d8+6) 8-22 hp. It's the same monster with the same game function. It's just that the 5e:0e exchange rate on hp is around 4:1 (in this example).

Same goes for player levels. A Lord is a Lord, no matter the edition.
If a 5e fighter needs to hit 18th level to be a Lord (not saying this is true, just an example), that simply means the 5e:0e exchange rate on fighter levels would be 2:1.

The bigger numbers don't change the fictional concept of an orc or a fighter Lord; they only change the level of detail these concepts are modelled at in a game edition.


edit:
Thinking more on this overnight, I do agree there's another category of "additions" (additional spells levels, fighter levels, etc.) that are "over and above" what was already there, rather than amortising a pre-existing whole into a greater number of slices. The additional spell levels, and progression to MU levels such as "Wizard, 18th level" (over and above the original "Wizard" achieved at 11th level) would be obvious examples.
However, whether players ever or frequently manage to utilise these additional end-game options is another question.

[Desparil]

Sept 22, 2024 4:11:02 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

And I heard from 4E players that you had to map out your character from level 1-30 at creation, otherwise you would make a wrong choice somewhere and your character wouldn't be able to do what you want at level 30.

I'd call that a gross exaggeration by whomever told you that. Frankly, even the most basic Paragon and Epic choices are perfectly serviceable unless the DM is specifically expecting high optimization characters and making the encounters commensurately deadlier. The most that I can can agree with it is that if you want to do something very "off book" like mixing barbarian and wizard powers, then yeah you do need to make sure that both your Strength and Intelligence scores are decent at 1st level and continue to improve both of them when you have the opportunity. However, loads of combinations only require taking one or two prerequisite feats - which you have plenty of opportunities to do so, since you get a feat at every even-numbered level - and with generous rules on retraining feats and powers, if you're considering one of these you don't really have to make a decision until a level or two ahead of time.

[geoffrey]

I thoroughly regret that Gary in his 1979 advanced D&D Dungeon Masters Guide recommended that the six ability scores be rolled in various ways other than 3d6 in order.

I do not think that I have ever seen a module in which the ability scores were clearly rolled 3d6 in order. In modules I see scores of 15, 16, 17, or 18 all the time, but I pretty much never see scores of 3, 4, 5, or 6. Those latter four would be just as common as the former if the scores were rolled 3d6 in order.